StormForge and CloudBolt unite on cloud cost optimization tools – News

As FinOps matures, CloudBolt Software Inc.’s acquisition of StormForge Inc.’s highlights a shift from cloud cost awareness to intelligent, automated cloud cost optimization tools. The opportunity behind the acquisition reflects a growing trend in the enterprise market: Optimization as a service, not just a dashboard.

Only 13% of organizations have a mature FinOps program, according to the FinOps Foundation. But with cloud spending continuing to rise and Kubernetes environments growing more complex, companies are no longer satisfied with insights alone — they want outcomes.

In a recent episode of the AppDevANGLE podcast, Yasmin Rajabi, chief security officer at CloudBolt (acquired StormForge), joined News and theCUBE Research’s Paul Nashawaty to unpack the drivers behind the acquisition, the evolution of the FinOps landscape and the cultural and technical shifts required to make cost efficiency a real-time practice — not an afterthought.

Breaking down silos between finance and engineering

FinOps, much like DevOps before it, isn’t about a single team or two. It’s about collaboration. Yet in most organizations, finance sees Kubernetes as a mysterious black box, and engineering doesn’t always prioritize cost when deploying at scale.

“You can’t have siloed organizations looking at cost in isolation,” Rajabi said.
“Without shared context between FinOps teams and platform engineers, insights go unused, and costs spiral.”

This disconnect is one of the primary reasons so few organizations have reached a “run” stage of FinOps maturity. According to FinOps Foundation data, only 12.6% report having FinOps embedded in daily operations and culture. Most remain stuck in the crawl or walk stages.

From insights to automation: Cloud cost optimization tools that close the FinOps gap

CloudBolt’s differentiation lies in its ability to reduce the time between insight and action, according to Rajabi. Many tools visualize cloud costs or flag anomalies, but few provide the tooling to resolve them automatically.

StormForge brings to the table a machine language-powered optimization engine that right-sizes Kubernetes workloads in real time. Rather than relying on after-the-fact adjustments, it actively tunes resources to meet real-world needs without waiting for human intervention.

“A lot of FinOps tools will tell you what to do,” Rajabi said. “We built something that actually does it.”

This aligns with what many IT leaders seek: Fewer dashboards and more decisions. According to recent research from theCUBE, 54% of organizations want to consolidate tooling and gain unified visibility across their application and infrastructure landscape.

Driving adoption through trust and transparency

A recurring theme throughout the conversation was trust, especially among developers. Many engineers resist cloud cost optimization tools because they fear losing control or believe their workloads are too unique for one-size-fits-all solutions.

StormForge’s approach addresses this issue by incorporating developer inputs and allowing teams to review, override or approve changes as needed. It’s a blend of automation and transparency designed to accelerate adoption without friction.

“Once you can show the savings — and more importantly, that nothing broke — you build momentum to tackle the more complex or sensitive workloads,” she said.

What’s next for StormForge and CloudBolt

Looking ahead, the integration aims to deliver deeper cost visibility and broader infrastructure reach, according to Rajab. StormForge will now incorporate CloudBolt’s billing engine, enabling teams to overlay Kubernetes resource optimization with real cloud costs, down to granular usage data.

Perhaps more significantly, the combined platform is expanding beyond Kubernetes. New initiatives are already underway to bring the same ML-powered automation to virtual machines, storage, networking and the broader cloud estate.

“We’re taking what we’ve done well with Kubernetes and extending it to the rest of the cloud,” she said.

In an era where AI and cloud-native technologies are accelerating software delivery, cost governance must evolve in tandem with technical innovation. The StormForge and CloudBolt combination represents a practical and developer-friendly step forward in this evolution.

It’s not just about seeing the problem — it’s about solving it.

Here’s the complete conversation with theCUBE Research’s Paul Nashawaty and Nathen Harvey, part of theCUBE Research’s AppDevANGLE podcast series:

Image: News