Steer Your Cloud Strategy

Austin, TX | October 24-26 at the TBM Conference

What is CloudyCon?

Calling all FinOps enthusiasts, practitioners, and Cloudability users – CloudyCon is back!

In 2019, CloudyCon debuted as the first ever FinOps conference in the world. This year, it is back as an integrated event within TBM Conference 2023. CloudyCon includes cloud-focused breakout sessions, meet-ups, workshops, hands-on labs, and more – all designed for you and aimed to accelerate your cloud financial management journey.

Session highlights

  • Breakout Session
  • Intro

Getting FinOps Right in a Cloudy World

Tracy Woo
Principal Analyst
Forrester
Guest speaker Forrester Principal Analyst Tracy Woo explores how Cloud has become part of most enterprise organizations’ IT strategies, but despite its widespread use, successful cloud management can be incredibly difficult. She explores the challenges of operationalizing cloud and explains how to create a successful cloud management plan.
  • Hands-On Lab
  • Advanced
  • Apptio

Cloudability: Tagging Strategy and Compliance Hands-On Lab – Session 1

Justin Kean
Principal Instructor
Apptio
This class is designed for Cloudability users who want to take a deeper dive into cloud tagging. We’ll talk about the importance and challenges of tagging, how to set a tagging strategy, and how to check compliance with that strategy. Learners will participate in hands-on activities and walk away with…

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  • Breakout Session
  • Intro
  • Customer

Why Collaboration is the Key to FinOps Success

Eric Mulartrick
FinOps Lead
Boomi, LP
Nisha Raghava
FP&A
Boomi
You’ll hear from Eric Mulartrick (Head of FinOps) and Nisha Raghava from Boomi (Sr. Manager of Financial Analysis) discussing why collaboration between finance and engineering is so important to get right on your FinOps journey.
See More CloudyCon Sessions

Agenda

7:45 – 8:45 AM
Breakfast

8:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Keynotes

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

12:00 – 2:00 PM
Lunch & Expo Hall

12:00 – 10:00 PM
CloudyCon Zone

2:00 – 4:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

4:00 – 5:30 PM
TBM Council Awards Keynote & Happy Hour

6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Welcome Party – Start Your Engines!

7:45 – 8:45 AM
Breakfast

12:00 – 6:00 PM
CloudyCon Zone

8:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Keynotes

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

12:00 – 2:00 PM
Lunch & Expo Hall

2:00 – 5:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

5:00 – 6:00 PM
Expo Hall Happy Hour

6:30 – 7:30 AM
Tech Trot Charity Race

7:45 – 8:45 AM
Breakfast

12:00 – 7:00 PM
CloudyCon Zone

8:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Keynotes

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

12:00 – 2:00 PM
Lunch & Expo Hall

2:00 – 5:00 PM
Breakout Sessions

5:00 – 7:00 PM
CloudyCon Happy Hour

7:00 – 10:00 PM
Closing Party – The Finish Line!

Recommended arrival: anytime on Monday, October 23
Recommended departure: anytime on Friday, October 27

CloudyCon Exclusives

Cool swag!

Get the exclusive CloudyCon sweatshirt! Register with the code HOODIE10 and we'll enter you into our raffle to win one.

CloudyCon zone!

Hang out with your FinOps friends! Relax, unwind, take a coffee break, and share FinOps best practices in our CloudyCon zone.

Fuel Your Future

Conference Home

Executive Strategy Forum Sessions

Meet face to face with some of the world’s foremost AI experts and practitioners. From those working in public and private sector AI strategy, governance and policy, to the executives that are making and applying AI technologies that are shaping the modern landscape.

Join Forrester industry analyst Tracy Woo and tech industry executives to exchange insight into the successes and failures of operating a tech organization in a hybrid world, where Agile and waterfall combine with private, public and multi-cloud strategies, creating operational challenges modern organizations must master. Meet your tech and finance executive peers, to exchange insight into how these modern obstacles are being addressed.

Who wouldn’t want to find 3% of their technology budget to be used differently – either for cost savings or to move from run the business to change the business? Even if you aren’t in cost cutting mode, you’re most likely still have budgets stuck in contracts, redundant services, or legacy infrastructure. Hear from leaders who have successfully uncovered millions of dollars to put into savings or redirected to strategic initiatives and transformation.

Digital innovation is driving organizations to adopt new technologies, delivery capabilities and operating models. Adoption of Agile methods and cloud services often figure prominently on the digital agenda, join our panel of executive industry practitioners and partners as they share insight into their journey from Project to Product.

Pressure from investors, customers, governments and regulators is driving the ESG agenda, and tech has a key role to play. Sustainability is increasingly linked to brand identity as regulatory compliance requirements become more demanding worldwide. Join us to explore the standards, approaches and solutions organizations are leveraging to mitigate the challenging environment of “Tech Sustainability”.

Agenda subject to change

Executive Strategy Forum Sessions

A look back at 10 years of TBM leadership and community building.

 
Speakers:
  • Eileen Wade, General Manager, TBM Council
  • Tom Murphy, VP IT & CIO, University of Pennsylvania

Innovating through technology is not new. For decades technology leaders have navigated the landscape of delivering competitive innovations that drive business value. CIOs have been known as “Transformational Leaders” and “Change Agents” – and this remains true today. However, what escalated seemingly overnight was the competing need to reconceptualize both employee and customer engagements that deliver anytime, anywhere experiences with minimal risk and a nimbleness rarely seen before. In this session, discussion leaders will share their own experiences and set up table engagements for attendees to answer various questions, including:

  • Is modernization the driving force behind the “Mega CIO”?
  • Is the “Mega CIO” a fit for all strategies?
  • Are executives with line-of-business backgrounds relegating professionals with technology-focused backgrounds to the executive sidelines?
  • If not the CIO, then who else is as uniquely positioned to understand and lead company and product strategy transformations?
Discussion Leader:
  • Les Ottolenghi, EVP & Chief Information and Technology Officer, Stride
  • Greg Douglass, Senior Managing Director, Global Technology Strategy & Advisory, Accenture
  • Rhonda Gass, CIO, Stanley Black & Decker

Public cloud strategies are often embraced for the promise of rapid scalability, on-demand agility, and best-in-class security, resiliency, and features. However, public cloud adoption presents significant financial challenges that, when not addressed, inhibit any firm’s ability to exploit the promises of public cloud. In this session, we’ll hear from leaders who are managing their cloud strategy with both TBM and FinOps, and how they are leveraging the maturity and rigor of TBM to align their organization’s capabilities and requirements. We’ll then break into small groups to discuss both challenges and approaches for building and launching a TBM-for-Cloud journey, including:

  • Defining a TBM-for-Cloud function with FinOps
  • Practices for tailoring FinOps to your organization based on goals and capabilities
  • Establishing company financial constructs and controls
  • Benefits of building a FinOps capability with the oversight and governance of TBM

 

Discussion Leader:
  • Nathan Besh, TBM-for-Cloud Evangelist, TBM Council
  • Melissa Croft, Managing Director, UBS
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in 2021 surpassed the level achieved before the global pandemic, with $5.1 trillion worth of M&A transactions being completed across multiple industries. Success is non-negotiable, so corporate boards look to technology leaders to articulate how a deal will lower costs, mitigate risk, and increase revenue. To achieve this, many leaders have found that TBM is their Rosetta stone for navigating the three key phases of M&A: due diligence, integration, and run/optimize. In this discussion hear from Jack Bischoff, Regional VP of the TBM Council, as he shares use cases gathered from across our membership on the ways global organizations are leveraging TBM to deliver successful M&A processes with transparency, including the ability to:
  • Better identify areas of synergistic opportunity, risk, activity, and expected outcomes
  • Prioritize critical decisions about people, organizational structure, major system consolidation, and standardization
  • Provide the capabilities that determine how the organization is running, where costs are, and how to prioritize and optimize activities that are realized
  • Establish an improvement loop that creates a repeatable M&A playbook

 

Discussion Leaders:
  • Jack Bischof, VP, Europe & Middle East, TBM Council

Delivering business value faster is a primary reason why many organizations are aggressively scaling Agile practices across their enterprise. At the same time these practices can conflict with traditional ways of working including planning, organizational, and funding models. Agile practices risk creating financial blind spots for both product teams who are expected to make decisions faster and with more autonomy than ever before, and their financial peers. In this session, hear from executives who are applying the rigor and guidance of TBM to Agile-at-scale so they can maximize their shift from projects-to-products quickly and transparently. Discussion topics will include:

  • Best practices for gaining company-wide support to make the shift
  • Experiences and challenges maintaining cost transparency alongside Enterprise Agile
  • Identifying and prioritizing opportunities for TBM and Enterprise Agile frameworks (SAFe, Spotify Model, Scrum of Scrums, etc.)
  • Prioritizing Agile-specific financial management solutions for TBM
 
Discussion Leader:
  • Carolyn Gehrke, TBM Product Manager, John Deere
  • Kathy Higgins, VP – Tech Business Management, Lowe’s Companies, Inc.
  • Justin Mann, TBM-for-Agile Evangelist, TBM Council

Financial management of your technology investments is critical, now more than ever in high-paced and increasingly financially constrained markets. Cloud, hybrid, and digital development of products and services is integral to your business. But the decentralized, federated nature of those technological advancements has made it more difficult than ever to get a clear, accurate picture of the total costs of delivering those products and services. Furthermore, once you have an accurate view of those total costs, concerns arise on the best way to understand and communicate how those costs drive value, specifically the profitability of those products. In this session, we would like to hear your thoughts on how you, your peers, and your organization sees the evolution of technology costs and the need to see the profitability of the products that incur those costs informing your future decision-making processes.

Discussion Leader:
  • Eugene Khvostov, SVP, Products, Apptio

To understand what drove the Great Resignation, Humu asked more than 90,000 employees across large, global organizations why they are (or are not) looking for new roles. Their biggest finding? For most would-be quitters, culture matters more than compensation.

Join Laszlo Bock, former CHRO at Google, and now Co-Founder of Humu – a software platform that combines technology and behavioral science to make managers and their teams more effective – as he leads an interactive session on the essential traits that drive high-performing teams and engaged employees, including:

  • The difference between team culture vs. team composition
  • The five top factors that make (or break) team performance and retention
  • How leadership can encourage managers to build a team culture worth sticking around for
Discussion Leader:
  • Laszlo Bock, Co-Founder & Chairman, Humu (Former CHRO at Google)

Agenda subject to change