CloudBolt Software has unveiled a revealing new report highlighting a persistent challenge facing many organizations: while most IT leaders express confidence in their organization’s FinOps maturity, they continue to struggle with demonstrating clear return on investment (ROI) from their cloud initiatives.
Titled ‘Performance vs. Perception: The FinOps Execution Gap,’ the report was developed in collaboration with Wakefield Research and surveyed 350 senior IT leaders across diverse industries in the United States to assess the current state of cloud financial operations and cost management practices.
The findings expose a significant disconnect between how organizations perceive their FinOps capabilities and their actual operational effectiveness. Many respondents regard their FinOps approaches as mature and highly automated; however, a large portion admit they face ongoing difficulties in consistently proving the tangible value derived from cloud spending. An alarming 78% of IT leaders acknowledged challenges in demonstrating cloud ROI consistently. When asked what constitutes ROI, most cited revenue growth (43%), followed by operational efficiency and productivity (36%), and cost savings (35%).
The report underscores the growing impact of Kubernetes on cloud expenditure, with 98% of participants recognizing it as a major driver of rising cloud costs. Yet, 91% admitted they are unable to optimize their Kubernetes clusters effectively, revealing a significant operational gap as container adoption accelerates. Despite many organizations claiming high levels of automation — 66% say their environments are mostly or fully automated for managing waste and optimizing spend — the reality remains that identifying and addressing cloud waste still takes weeks or months for 58% of respondents. This discrepancy raises questions about the true extent of automation and operational maturity.
“A good percentage of organizations may be taking a victory lap before even navigating the first turn,” said Kyle Campos, Chief Technology and Product Officer at CloudBolt.
The research indicates that many organizations are in the early stages of operationalizing and optimizing their FinOps practices, and overconfidence in perceived capabilities can obscure the real challenges that hinder progress. This misalignment hampers efforts to generate meaningful business impact from cloud investments.
One of the key barriers identified is the difficulty in directly linking cloud spend to tangible business outcomes — cited by 55% of respondents. Other significant obstacles include organizational misalignment and operational silos (48%), as well as inefficient resource management practices such as poor tagging and lack of accountability (44%). The report also notes that despite the focus on public cloud, private cloud and data centres remain vital in driving ROI. Hybrid multi-cloud management is a priority for 42% of organizations, with 39% planning to fund initiatives in this area over the next six to twelve months. Additionally, optimizing artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads is a focus, with 40% aiming to improve AI/ML cloud cost management.
Campos pointed out that many organizations believe they have visibility into their cloud spend, but without proper governance, enforcement, and automated remediation, they fail to close the insight-to-action gap.
“Rapid adoption of Kubernetes and AI workloads without operational controls and automation exacerbates this disconnect,” said Campos.
If FinOps practices do not shift towards continuous optimization and automation, organizations will continue to struggle with proving and improving their cloud ROI. The report provides detailed data analysis and actionable recommendations, emphasizing that bridging the gap between perception and operational reality is critical for achieving sustainable cloud cost efficiency and business value.
