Technology Value
intermediate
Adam MoradManages $10M+ in annual multi-cloud spendCourse Syllabus · 6 Weeks
Last updated August 31, 2026
A 6-week course on FinOps beyond public cloud — using FinOps Scopes to connect SaaS, data center, and data-platform spend to business value, covering the same ground as the FinOps Foundation's own "FinOps Certified: Technology Value" path.
Why This Course.
FOCP's Quantify Business Value domain (Practitioner, Week 3) teaches you to forecast, budget, and build unit economics for cloud spend. This course starts from a more recent piece of the FinOps Foundation's own material: in 2025 the Framework added Scopes as a core element, and by 2026 it named five Technology Categories — public cloud, SaaS, data center, data cloud platforms, and AI. Most technology budgets aren't just cloud anymore, and until recently FinOps had no formal way to apply the same rigor to a SaaS renewal, a data-center depreciation schedule, or a Snowflake credit burn. That's what this course teaches: how to define a Scope that ties any of those categories to a business outcome, and how to run the FinOps moves you already know — Understand, Quantify, Optimize — against SaaS, data center, and data-platform spend specifically.
What You’ll Walk Away With.
- ✓Define a FinOps Scope that ties a real chunk of non-cloud technology spend to a specific business outcome, with the right personas and KPIs attached.
- ✓Audit a SaaS portfolio for license utilization and shadow-IT risk, and write a consolidation recommendation backed by real savings math.
- ✓Build a total-cost-of-ownership model for an on-prem or data-center service, including depreciation and Power Usage Effectiveness.
- ✓Attribute cost on a consumption-priced data platform down to the query or pipeline level, and calculate a computational-waste estimate.
- ✓Build a cross-category technology value scorecard that rolls public cloud, SaaS, data center, and data-platform spend into one view for leadership.
- ✓Pitch an Executive Strategy Alignment case that connects a real architecture or roadmap decision — build vs. buy, platform consolidation, or a migration — to P&L impact.
Why Not Just a Crash Course.
There isn't much public material on this yet — the Foundation only formalized Scopes and Technology Categories in the 2025-2026 Framework updates. This is a different kind of course:
- ✓Goes past public cloud on purpose — SaaS, data centers, and data cloud platforms each get a full week with their own KPIs, not a footnote on a cloud-cost course.
- ✓Built on Framework changes that are barely a year old — Scopes, Technology Categories, and Executive Strategy Alignment. Most existing FinOps content still treats "FinOps" as synonymous with "public cloud."
- ✓Grounded in the real per-category metrics — License Utilization Rate, Power Usage Effectiveness, Data Value Density — pulled from the Foundation's own Technology Category pages, not generic "optimize your value" advice.
Scroll right to see the full comparison →
| Option | Price | Format | Beyond Public Cloud? |
|---|---|---|---|
| This course | $89 | Text + interactive | Yes |
| FinOps Certified: Technology Value (FinOps Foundation) | Not publicly listed* | Self-paced modules + exam, self-study | Yes — official certification |
| General FinOps / cloud-cost content online | Free–$90 | Blog posts / video | Rarely — almost all public-cloud only |
*We couldn't find published per-seat pricing for the official FinOps Certified: Technology Value course and exam on the pages we could access — check learn.finops.org directly for current pricing.
Who It’s For.
FinOps practitioners who already have the fundamentals (FOCP-level or equivalent) and now own, or are about to own, technology spend that isn't just public cloud — a SaaS portfolio nobody's audited, an on-prem data center, or a Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery bill the team can't explain.
It's not a general FinOps introduction (that's Practitioner, above) and it's not for teams whose only technology spend is public cloud — every week here assumes at least one non-cloud cost center: SaaS, a data center, or a data platform bill.
Your Instructor.
Adam Morad
Cloud FinOps & Data Engineering. Manages $10M+ in annual multi-cloud spend, with a track record of cutting cloud costs 20–30% through rightsizing and commitment management.
LinkedIn →Worked With
Anodot
Wiv.ai
DoiT
Previously Worked At
The FinOps Foundation runs its own certification path for this material, FinOps Certified: Technology Value, covering Scopes and four Technology Categories (public cloud, data center, SaaS, and data cloud platforms). This course is independently built to cover the same conceptual ground — it isn't the official course and doesn't include their exam. See the FAQ for exactly what that does and doesn't mean.
Curriculum.
01 · Foundations · Scopes & Technology Categories
Where Technology Value Fits
- The FinOps Framework has four Domains: Understand, Quantify, Optimize, Manage. "Technology Value" isn't a fifth one — it's the Foundation's certification path across two other Framework elements: Scopes and Technology Categories.
- How this differs from Quantify Business Value (Practitioner, Week 3): that domain forecasts and budgets cloud spend; this course extends the same discipline to spend that isn't cloud at all.
- The five FinOps Technology Categories: public cloud, SaaS, data center, data cloud platforms, and AI. This course covers the first four — AI gets its own full course (see AI Value in the catalog below).
- What a FinOps Scope is, and why the Foundation added it to the Framework in 2025.
- The 2026 Framework update: Executive Strategy Alignment, and "Intersecting Disciplines" — ITAM, ITFM, security, sustainability, and enterprise architecture, treated as allies rather than separate silos.
02 · Scopes · Public Cloud as the Reference Case
Writing a FinOps Scope
- The anatomy of a Scope: the business construct it aligns to, the personas involved, the capabilities in play, and the KPIs that define success.
- Using public cloud as the reference Scope — you already know its rate/usage optimization playbook from Practitioner, so this week reuses it as the design pattern for every other category.
- Who owns a Scope, and how that ownership shifts as spend crosses from engineering-run cloud into procurement-run SaaS or facilities-run data center.
- Case study: Target's extension of its cloud FinOps Scopes into data centers and retail infrastructure.
03 · Technology Category · SaaS
FinOps for SaaS
- Why SaaS breaks cloud-style FinOps: decentralized purchasing, shadow SaaS, and corporate-card spend with no central inventory.
- Building a SaaS inventory from financial records, SSO logs, and Cloud Access Security Broker data.
- The SaaS KPI set: License Utilization Rate, Active-to-Provisioned User Ratio, SaaS Unit Cost, and Redundant Application Coverage.
- Renewal and contract risk: auto-renewal clauses, price-lock guarantees, true-up requirements, and entitlement tracking.
- Build-vs-buy: when Product and Engineering should evaluate replacing a SaaS tool instead of renewing it.
04 · Technology Category · Data Center
FinOps for Data Center
- Capex vs. opex, and why data-center cost has none of cloud's pay-as-you-go elasticity.
- Depreciation schedules and multi-year investment horizons — short, medium, and 5+ year cycles.
- Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), and why unit economics run backwards versus cloud: utilization pushes cost per workload down, not up.
- The procurement-provisioning disconnect: forecasting capacity months ahead of physical need.
- Total Cost of Ownership per workload, including amortized capex, power, and facility costs.
05 · Technology Category · Data Cloud Platforms
FinOps for Data Cloud Platforms
- How consumption-priced platforms — Snowflake credits, Databricks DBUs, BigQuery slots — break resource-based cloud billing assumptions.
- Cost attribution below the account level: query, job, and pipeline granularity over shared warehouses and clusters.
- The data-platform KPI set: Computational Waste %, Storage Decay Ratio, Effective Scan Efficiency, and Data Value Density.
- Commitment management: pre-purchased capacity, rollover terms, and burndown tracking.
- FOCUS 1.2's virtual-currency support for unifying SaaS/PaaS billing views across providers.
06 · Capstone · Executive Strategy Alignment
Bringing Scopes Together
- Rolling up multiple Scopes into one cross-category technology value view for leadership.
- Executive Strategy Alignment: connecting technology spend to strategic priorities and multi-year investment plans.
- Facilitating a cost/speed/quality trade-off conversation for a real architecture or roadmap decision.
- Case study: Gerdau's unified allocation model spanning OpenShift, Kafka, MongoDB, and Databricks.
- Presenting a build-vs-buy or platform-consolidation case in P&L terms, not just infrastructure terms.
Frequently Asked.
How much time does this take?
Do I need to take Practitioner first?
How is this different from the Practitioner course?
Is this the official FinOps Foundation course?
Does this prepare me for the official FinOps Certified: Technology Value exam?
Interested?.
$89
One-time payment · full 6-week course and all exercises. Pricing to be announced before launch.
Not right for you? Refunds are handled per our refund policy — email support@finopscourse.com.
This course's curriculum is finalized; lessons aren't live yet. Email us to be notified when Week 1 opens.
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