Why Cloud-Native Tools Alone Fall Short for Multi-Cloud FinOps And What Enterprises Need Instead

— By Gurpreet Singh, Sr. Director – Sales, CoreStack

Enterprises today are navigating an increasingly complex multi-cloud reality. From AWS and Azure to GCP and Oracle Cloud, IT leaders are managing sprawling infrastructures, fast-evolving cost models, and growing pressure to demonstrate cloud ROI. The reflex for many organizations has been to rely on cloud-native tools Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, GCP Billing, etc. to track and manage spending. But here’s the reality: native tools are no longer enough.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the financial operations (FinOps) domain.

The Multi-Cloud Problem Is Not Just Technical It’s Financial
According to recent industry data, over 40% of cloud spend is wasted, and 64% of enterprises struggle with managing the complexity of their cloud operations. Despite the availability of native tools, these inefficiencies persist because the tools themselves were not designed to support:

• Unified cross-cloud visibility
• Persona-based dashboards for CIOs, CFOs, FinOps leaders
• Budgeting and chargeback across cloud boundaries
• Deep optimization tied to usage metrics and business context
• Policy-based automation and remediation

Cloud-native tools were built to manage their own clouds. But they don't speak across cloud environments. And they weren't designed with financial accountability in mind.

Polling Reality: What Enterprises Are Saying
During a recent CoreStack webinar on going beyond cloud-native tools, attendees (representing IT and finance leaders across industries) shared telling insights:

• 67% said cloud-native tools did not provide them with detailed showback, chargeback, or custom reporting.
• 89% could not generate persona-based dashboards from native tools.
• Budgeting and chargeback across cloud boundaries
• 63% reported native tools could not integrate third-party data or enable multi-cloud cost aggregation.

These are not edge cases they reflect a systemic gap in enterprise FinOps capability.

What Enterprises Actually Need for FinOps at Scale
Enterprise FinOps isn’t just about cutting costs. It’s about building a culture of accountability, efficiency, and strategic alignment between IT and finance. Achieving that in a multi-cloud world requires capabilities native tools don’t offer:

1. Unified Visibility Across Clouds
   CoreStack delivers a single-pane-of-glass view that spans AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI. Executives can finally see consolidated spend, usage, and forecast data in one place with deep drill-downs and cross-cloud analytics.
2. Persona-Based Dashboards
   FinOps isn’t one-size-fits-all. CIOs care about optimization trends, CFOs need budget variance and chargeback, and project owners want cost center-level views. CoreStack enables role-specific dashboards and access control out of the box.
3. Advanced Budgeting, Showback & Chargeback
   Unlike native tools, CoreStack enables complex budgeting scenarios applying a single budget across cloud providers or allocating based on usage tags, resource groups, or business units.
4. Optimization with Business Context
   Native recommendations lack nuance. CoreStack integrates resource utilization data, application metadata, and policies to offer actionable optimization recommendations (e.g., disk tiering, VM rightsizing) and supports automated or approval-based remediation.
5. Integrated Governance & Compliance
   CoreStack includes over 2,700 guardrails for policy-driven governance across FinOps, SecOps, and CloudOps. These run autonomously or on-demand, detecting violations and enforcing compliance with internal and external standards.
6. Third-Party Integration & Automation
   From ServiceNow to Jira to GitHub, CoreStack connects with your existing ecosystem. Cloud-native tools are walled gardens; CoreStack breaks those walls.

FinOps Is a Boardroom Concern CoreStack Makes It Boardroom-Ready
FinOps is no longer just a technical domain. It's central to strategic cloud transformation. Native tools may show you isolated costs, but they won’t deliver accountability, agility, or alignment across stakeholders.

CoreStack FinOps⁺ is purpose-built to address the gaps that matter most to enterprise executives: multi-cloud clarity, financial accountability, and continuous optimization.

Learn More
Ready to take your FinOps strategy beyond the limitations of native tools?

Learn more about CoreStack FinOps⁺ and how it delivers the unified, automated, and intelligent governance your enterprise needs:
corestack.io/finops.