FinOps is a collaborative practice and for many organizations, managed service providers (MSPs) are stepping in as the bridge between engineering, finance, and business value. But with so many stakeholders involved, responsibilities can blur.
If ownership is not defined, unused resources, mistagged workloads, and poor forecasting can quickly result in budget surprises. In this blog, we’ll break down roles and responsibilities, highlight where they overlap, and show how MSPs amplify value across the FinOps practice.
Why clarity matters in a collaborative FinOps model
Cloud spending continues to rise, and with it come new challenges for organizations. Without clear ownership, teams often run into:
- Slow decision-making when engineering and finance are not aligned on priorities
- Duplicate efforts where multiple teams attempt to solve the same problem without coordination
- Limited accountability when it is unclear who is responsible for cloud spend decisions
- Inconsistent reporting that leaves leadership uncertain about the true state of cloud costs
- Missed savings opportunities when no one is tasked with monitoring and acting on recommendations
FinOps creates visibility, accountability, and cost control, but it only works when every team understands its role and takes ownership.
This is where MSPs can play a critical role.
MSPs bring the playbook: tools, expertise, and repeatable processes that drive FinOps success. They provide real-time dashboards and reporting that make cloud costs visible to both engineering and finance. They help enforce tagging standards and governance policies so usage data is accurate and actionable. MSPs can also bridge communication gaps, translating technical usage patterns into financial insights that finance teams can understand. By creating a single source of truth for cloud costs, MSPs ensure that all stakeholders have the same visibility, which reduces friction and speeds up decision-making.
Breaking down responsibilities by team
Client Engineering teams
Engineering owns the build and run side of the cloud. In practice. this means they are responsible for:
- Designing cost-aware architectures.
- Provisioning and scaling resources.
- Maintaining tagging and allocation hygiene.
- Rightsizing and performance monitoring.
Client Finance teams
Finance, on the other hand, ensures that cloud spend aligns with overall business strategy. Their responsibilities include:
- Budgeting and forecasting.
- Reviewing invoices and allocations.
- Defining governance and approval policies.
- Reporting cost metrics and unit economics to leadership.
MSPs
MSPs bring expertise, scale, and operational rigor. Their responsibilities include:
- Setting up governance frameworks (tagging standards, alerts, access control).
- Providing reporting and actionable insights.
- Detecting and acting on anomalous spend.
- Continuous optimization (rightsizing, RIs/SPs, waste elimination).
- Acting as a partner to both engineering and finance, bridging gaps.
- Scaling FinOps practices across multi-cloud environments.
Each team has its own priorities, but success in FinOps comes from the overlaps: aligning budgets with technical decisions, enforcing governance with automation, and turning cost data into actionable insights. MSPs play a unique role at the intersections, bridging gaps and ensuring all three groups operate with shared visibility and accountability.
- Engineering + Finance: Unit economics, cost trade-offs, budget alignment.
- Engineering + MSP: Tagging compliance, automation, cost/performance tuning.
- Finance + MSP: Forecasting support, invoice validation, commitment strategy.
- All three together: Cost visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Where MSPs add the most value
MSPs bring the greatest impact when organizations face gaps in bandwidth, expertise, or visibility. Their support helps accelerate FinOps maturity in several key ways:
- Preventing cost surprises. MSPs set up real-time reporting, anomaly detection, and proactive budget alerts that keep cloud bills predictable and under control.
- Amplifying engineering teams. By automating optimization tasks like rightsizing and scaling, MSPs free developers to focus on delivering features instead of managing cloud costs.
- Empowering finance teams. MSPs translate complex cloud usage data into clear, business-aligned insights and forecasts, giving finance leaders confidence in their budgets and strategies.
- Scaling FinOps practices. With repeatable playbooks, multi-tenant dashboards, and consistent governance frameworks, MSPs help organizations expand FinOps across projects, business units, or entire client portfolios.
By addressing these challenges, MSPs act as force multipliers. They do not replace engineering or finance teams; instead, they enhance their capabilities and make cloud cost management more collaborative, efficient, and effective.
How to build a collaborative FinOps practice
To build an effective FinOps practice with engineering, finance, and MSPs working together, follow these best practices:
- Define roles with a RACI matrix. Assign who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each FinOps task.
- Set measurable KPIs. Track forecast accuracy, percent of spend with valid tags, waste reduction, and realized cost savings.
- Schedule regular FinOps reviews. Hold monthly or quarterly sessions with all stakeholders to review budgets, variances, and opportunities.
- Standardize governance early. Establish tagging policies, budget thresholds, and anomaly alerts to maintain transparency and accountability.
- Pilot before scaling. Start with one project or business unit, refine processes, and expand FinOps practices across the organization.
Why Ternary is the platform of choice for MSPs
Ternary provides the multi-cloud FinOps platform that brings engineering, finance, and MSPs together in one place. With real-time cost data, customizable dashboards, and multi-tenant support, Ternary helps MSPs deliver FinOps as a scalable service.
Learn more about why Ternary is best positioned to help partners grow their FinOps services business and enable them to do it more efficiently than ever before.
Conclusion
FinOps is about collaboration. Engineering builds, finance governs, and MSPs bridge the gaps by bringing expertise, visibility, and scale. When roles are clear and partnerships are strong, organizations move from firefighting surprise invoices to operating with predictability, accountability, and confidence.
MSPs are not replacements; they are accelerators. In FinOps, that acceleration can make the difference between simply managing cloud spend and unlocking real business value.
Join Ternary’s partner program today.
