Chart Your Tech Course for 2024: 5 Highlights from TBMC 2023

That’s a wrap on the 2023 TBM Conference in Austin, TX and it couldn’t have gone better! The conference offered a power-packed experience with keynotes, 100+ breakouts, and hands-on labs, as well as certification programs and dedicated networking sessions. The participants gained a wealth of knowledge on how they can propel their TBM, cloud, and Agile journeys forward.

Here are five highlights from TBM Conference to help accelerate your TBM, FinOps, and Agile transformations into 2024.

1. TBM: A catalyst for tech evolution

With technology investments expected to continue growing in the upcoming years, Technology Business Management (TBM) will become the differentiator in how organizations grow and thrive. In their keynote, Apptio COO, Ajay Patel, and Field Operations President, Larry Blasko, discussed foundational capabilities of TBM that play a pivotal role in enabling financial stewardship. They highlighted how TBM helps:

• Justify tech investments — gaining cost transparency, measuring value generated, and optimizing workloads — and drive innovation across the board.
• Maximize the value of every dollar of public cloud spend, reducing waste, and making informed spend decisions.
• Manage portfolio and resources, providing visibility into work, capacity, and value streams — accelerate business agility.

In the executive fireside chat that followed, Ajay Patel was joined by Rob Thomas, SVP software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM, and George Maddaloni, EVP & CTO, Mastercard. Among other topics, the sneak peek into the future of TBM and impacts of AI stood out the most. Hybrid cloud and Agile practices are already seeing benefits from the integration of TBM; the rise of integration of complementing practices will only get better and faster with wide adoption.

Thomas predicts three use cases that we could see in the near future with AI: automated programming, personalized customer service, and digital labor automation.

Shawn Kanungo, innovation strategist and bestselling author, noted in his keynote, “There will be two types of companies: ones that leverage AI and ones that don’t exist.” Adapting to change and leveraging the latest technologies to innovate, hasten processes, and deliver value is the key to thriving in the years to come.

2. Shape your cloud future with FinOps and TBM

The need for an effective cloud strategy that will enable you to see your entire cloud spend, maximize its value, and cut waste was a repeating theme throughout the sessions of CloudyCon, the original FinOps Conference.

While FinOps awareness is growing faster than ever, many organizations are still struggling in the Walk phase. Parker Nancollas, FinOps Practice Lead, North America, for SoftwareOne, shared in a sponsor discussion that many organizations are taking more than 18 months to see value from FinOps practices. Some common pitfalls that delay value delivery are misalignment of cloud strategy and business objectives, siloed teams and lack of collaboration, and sluggish action plans and processes. Adding to it, he recommended organizations focus on small incremental FinOps changes rather than doing everything at once.

J.R. Storment, founder and executive director of the FinOps Foundation, in his keynote, discussed the value of FinOps and how fast the practice is growing and evolving, with a staggering 10k+ certified professionals. “FinOps is not a race and it’s not just about cost. Increasingly we want to talk about value,” he said.

The synergy between TBM and FinOps is also relatively under-leveraged. Touching briefly on FinOps 2.0 integrating sustainability metrics, Storment called out how TBM and FinOps are similar in strategic themes with spend visibility, cost optimization, and informed decision-making at the core, but for different consumers. He also emphasized standardizing data collection and organization for cloud-related expenses – such as SaaS, infrastructure, services, and resources – and integrating this data into the broader framework of TBM to elevate cloud financial management to new heights.

3. Supercharge business agility

As expected, adoption of SAFe 6.0 was prominently featured. In one of the breakouts, Mark Des Biens, Sr. Solutions Consultant at Apptio, discussed how the latest SAFe 6.0 enables organizations to further enhance business agility through business value streams and expanded guidance around OKRs. Attendees were quite excited to discover they can seamlessly implement SAFe 6.0 using the new Targetprocess Solution Library.

Kaarina Bourquin, Director of Strategy & Portfolio Operations and Technology at Standard Insurance emphasized the role of digital transformation in accelerating value delivery to customers. However, working with multiple lines of business has its own challenges: little to no visibility into investments. Agile transformation is about breaking down these siloes and fostering a culture of active collaboration, maximizing value across product, program, and project portfolios.

She also highlighted how Targetprocess helped The Standard enable strategic alignment, cross-portfolio planning, and delivery transparency. With extended Labor Financial Management capabilities, Targetprocess brings labor, work, and financial insights to one place to make decision-making data-driven, nimble, and seamless.

4. New innovations swept through the conference

Eugene Khvostov, Chief Product Officer, Apptio, and Jeremy Ung, Chief Technology Officer, Apptio, unveiled a slew of new product releases and community-driven innovations, addressing critical concerns and expanding functionalities. Here are a few from the list:

Apptio Cost Management

Apptio Cost Management enables new customers to get started quickly with their first IT financial management solution and gain foundational cost transparency. Leveraging a prescriptive onboarding process focused on delivering actionable insights within the first 30 days, it helps you:

• Understand which apps and services drive the highest business value.
• Make smarter decisions about your technology budget when it’s under pressure.
• Prioritize investment for growth vs. maintain the status quo.

Extended Multi-cloud Support

We have added support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in addition to existing AWS, Azure, and GCP, so you can have a more unified and consistent view of your costs and usage across cloud providers.

Cloudability MSP

A new set of Cloudability MSP services are in beta and now available. Cloudability MSP offers a powerful billing portal for cloud invoicing and unified cost visibility across the major public clouds with interactive features that enable teams to own and optimize their cloud spend.

Targetprocess Solutions Library for Partners

Targetprocess Solutions Library is now available to partners so they can create, share, and deploy new or customized solution templates. This enables them to better serve their customers with differentiated or fit-to-purpose solutions, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and faster time to value.

ApptioOne + ServiceNow

Two new integrations with ServiceNow to deliver unparalleled visibility and analytics for your organization:

1. Bi-directional data flow: ApptioOne tech cost data can now flow back into ServiceNow. This integration brings the fully burdened cost structure of applications to other ServiceNow data, combining operational and financial metrics into one view.
2. FinOps-automated workflow management: Cloudability integration with ServiceNow enables end-to-end workflow management of rightsizing recommendations in public clouds, allowing customers to automate workflows for cost saving opportunities.

5. Extraordinary achievements in TBM

The TBM Council Awards, the Academy Awards equivalent for TBM, recognized excellence based on tangible results in cloud transformation, Agile evolution, IT financial leadership, business innovation, and more. Here are all the award winners and their respective categories:

TBM Pacesetter – Enbridge Inc.

Cloud Transformation – Iress Limited

Business Innovation – Wells Fargo

Business Optimization – Red Hat

Service Excellence – Deutsche Bank

Service Excellence – NatWest Group

IT Financial Leadership – Markel Group

Public Sector Excellence – eHealth NSW

Agile Evolution – McGraw-Hill Education

Judges Choice – UPS

Take the next step

Now that the big event has concluded, it’s time to put your learnings into action and accelerate your TBM, cloud, and Agile practices to new heights. Let’s meet again at TBM Conference 2024, where we’ll be back with an even more exciting line-up of speakers, sessions, and networking events packed with the latest insights and innovations. Be the first one to register.