Online Summit: FinOps
It’s 2026 and it’s time to make new friends.
Come along to this Online Summit and hear everything you need to know about fostering close ties between ITAM and FinOps, playing to your strengths, and managing your increasingly complex and essential IT estate.
This summit will cover:
- What is FinOps and why is it important for ITAM teams
- Practical strategies for engaging with FinOps teams
- Understanding how your strengths in ITAM are vital to FinOps’ continuing success – and to ensuring your IT estate delivers business value and competitive advantage
- The role you will play in managing the coming wave of AI solutions – measuring ROI, measuring business value, and ensuring governance which enables innovation
- Best practices and case studies provided by our patrons
This event is brought to you by The ITAM Forum and our sponsors. When you register for this event, you are consenting to your data being supplied to all parties for the purposes of delivering the event and post-event follow up. More details about how we use your data can be found within our privacy policy.
Sponsors:
This event is brought to you by The ITAM Forum and our sponsors. When you register for this event, you are consenting to your data being supplied to all parties for the purposes of delivering the event and post-event follow up. More details about how we use your data can be found within our privacy policy.
Hourly Schedule
Online Summit: FinOps
- 14:00 - 14:05
- Welcome & Introduction
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Speakers:
AJ Witt
- 14.05 - 14.35
- Executive Reality Check: Your AI Spend Isn’t Special—Apply FinOps Unit Costs + ITAM Controls Before You Scale
- AI promises transformation—but without financial discipline, it can quickly become a margin-killer. AI workloads don’t just consume resources—they magnify bad financial habits. Boards are asking tough questions: What’s the true cost per inference, per customer, or per model run? Traditional chargeback models can’t answer—and that’s where risk begins. This session shows how FinOps unit economics and ITAM governance deliver the clarity leaders need to turn AI from an uncontrolled experiment into a strategic advantage. Learn how to enforce tagging standards for model IDs and GPU pools, apply lifecycle controls for AI licenses, and calculate cost per inference or training epoch. By mastering these practices, FinOps and ITAM become strategic catalysts for innovation—helping CFOs, CIOs, and CTOs scale AI responsibly, make smarter investment decisions, and deliver measurable ROI. Don’t let AI derail your forecasts—govern it for growth.
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Speakers:
Kevin Wade
- 14:35 - 15:05
- Maximising ESR: Win at cloud cost optimisation with this playbook for ROI
- We’re all making significant investments in technology to power our businesses, whether it’s on AI, containers, on-premises, or IaaS and PaaS services from the hyperscalers. Measuring and achieving a return on this investment can be challenging, but when done well, FinOps can help improve margins, deliver better value, and drive growth. Hear how Flexera’s FinOps portfolio can help you achieve market-leading Effective Savings Rates (ESR), a key FinOps metric for ROI.
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Speakers:
Jeremy Chaplin
- 15:05 - 15:35
- Java, AI, and FinOps: Intelligent Control at the Intersection of ITAM and Cloud Spend
- As AI adoption accelerates, Java continues to underpin enterprise AI platforms, data pipelines, and cloud-native services. These Java-based AI workloads introduce highly dynamic consumption patterns that challenge traditional IT Asset Management (ITAM) and drive unpredictable cloud spend. FinOps is essential to restoring visibility and accountability—but without application-level intelligence, cost optimization remains reactive. By combining AI-powered in-use intelligence with Java runtime data, organizations can converge ITAM and FinOps into a unified decision framework. Machine learning enables teams to correlate Java activity with AI workload demand, cloud consumption, and licensing exposure—transforming raw telemetry into actionable insight. The result is smarter forecasting, optimized licensing strategies, reduced cloud waste, and proactive risk management. This session explores how Java, AI, ITAM, and FinOps together enable intelligent governance of modern AI-driven cloud environments.
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Speakers:
Simon Taylor
- 15:35 - 16:05
- Bridging ITAM and FinOps for a Unified Cloud & Asset Strategy
- In hybrid and multi-cloud organizations, financial accountability and asset visibility often live in separate domains — leading to blind spots in spend, compliance, and operational risk. This session will explore how IT Asset Management (ITAM) and FinOps practitioners can break down silos and build integrated data models that deliver unified visibility across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem environments. Attendees will walk away with actionable frameworks for data unification, governance processes that support both cost optimization and compliance, and real examples of how collaboration between ITAM and FinOps drives measurable business value.
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Speakers:
Beau Nelford
- 16:05 - 16:35
- 3 ways to apply FinOps practices to your SaaS Management Strategy
- As perpetual licenses age into obsolescence (or become an intolerable security risk), successful ITAM practices must identify models accommodating increasingly complex SaaS license and pricing scenarios. The FinOps framework offers a compelling solution by emphasizing shared ownership, continuous optimization, and event-based management. Attendees of this session will get practical tips for transitioning to a SaaS-first environment, including how to balance cost avoidance, accountability, and business agility in a dynamic software landscape.
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Speakers:
Ben Kamper
- 16:35 - 17:00
- Q&A & Close
Speakers
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AJ WittITAM Industry Analyst, The ITAM ForumAJ is an ITAM Industry Analyst at the ITAM Forum. He was previously a Software Asset Manager for Carnival UK, operators of the P&O & Cunard cruise lines. Coming from a background in IT Infrastructure, technical operations, IT Security & Compliance, AJ is well-placed to share his experience of how dynamic SAM teams can build mutually-beneficial stakeholder engagement.
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Beau NelfordHead of FinOps, Anglepoint
Beau Nelford is a FinOps professional with broad expertise in cloud, DevOps, data center optimization, and consumption-based SaaS. He focuses on integrating lifecycle management and FinOps practices to help organizations drive cost transparency, strengthen governance, and enable financially accountable technology decisions at scale.
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Ben KamperDirector, Product Marketing, Calero
Ben Kamper is a globally recognized speaker and thought leader among Software Asset Managers, IT Asset Managers, and IT Procurement professionals. In his role as Director, Product Marketing, he helps practitioners future-proof their roles and become champions in their organization for achieving documentable cost savings and avoidance.
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Jeremy ChaplinDirector, Solutions Architecture & Advisory (Cloud/FinOps), Flexera
With 20+ years in IT, Jeremy specialises in cloud financial management, helping global enterprises optimise multi-cloud environments for cost and performance. He is a trusted advisor to enterprise-scale cloud teams, with deep expertise across AWS, Azure, and GCP. At Flexera, he leads strategy and delivery for Cloud Cost Optimization (FinOps), aligning innovation with enterprise and hybrid IT needs.
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Kevin WadeFinOps Manager, SHI
Kevin is a U.S. Army Infantry veteran. He is passionate about FinOps and helping customers implement effective solutions to business challenges. He has been on the FinOps services team at SHI International for 4 years, first as a FinOps Consultant and for the last 2 years, he’s been the manager of the team. Prior to coming to SHI, Kevin worked in non-profit healthcare. Kevin lives in Texas with his amazing wife and 2 wonderful children.
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Simon TaylorSVP, Channel & Alliances, Azul
Simon, as the Senior Vice President of Azul’s global channel and alliances, is a seasoned executive with a wealth of experience spanning over three decades in the industry. His expertise encompasses Software Asset Management (SAM), IT Asset Management (ITAM), machine learning, insight engines, data analytics, and information governance. Beginning his career with humble roots as a project manager at Glaxo Smithkline, Simon has since ascended to various executive roles in renowned organizations such as Commvault, Proofpoint, Firemon, Lucidworks, and Nitro. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to rapidly develop channel and partnership organizations. Simon’s strategic focus lies in core go-to-market areas, including application modernization, digital workplace, and transformative AI solutions. His leadership has been instrumental in driving innovation and growth within these sectors. As an accomplished industry speaker, Simon is a recognizable figure on the global stage, frequently traveling worldwide to support value-added SAM/ITAM practices. His engagements extend to advising integrator businesses and providing strategic insights to alliance organizations.
