IBM Apptio AI Assistant feature in Beta, carbon emission metrics, and proactive cost management tools enable organizations to streamline and modernize application of FinOps and TBM, optimize business value and drive sustainable tech investments.

BELLEVUE — October 30, 2024 — Apptio, an IBM company, today unveiled a series of new features and updates across its portfolio of technology business management (TBM) and FinOps solutions. Apptio will showcase its expanded product suite at the annual TBM Conference in San Diego, CA on November 4 – 6, 2024.

Following IBM’s recent acquisition of Kubecost to enhance container management within its FinOps Suite, Apptio is working to further strengthen its product offerings across its portfolio of SaaS applications with a new AI assistant (in Beta), carbon emission reporting and FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification (FOCUS) support in Cloudability, expanding the IBM Apptio Essentials suite, and more.

“Apptio is committed to empowering businesses to better manage technology investments and operations. We aim to make FinOps and TBM accessible to everyone within an organization, driving clear alignment to business outcomes,” said Eugene Khvostov, Chief Product Officer at Apptio. “The portfolio additions we’re announcing today are designed to create an ecosystem that promotes transparency, efficiency, sustainability, and proactive decision-making.”

Accelerate and modernize FinOps and TBM deployments

Enterprises navigating FinOps and TBM domains often struggle to obtain self-service support during implementation. At the same time, more organizations are realizing the need to automate technology planning and costing practices and build more rigor into the IT financial management (ITFM) practice.

• Apptio AI Assistant: The Apptio AI Assistant feature, powered by the IBM watsonx AI platform, will deliver around-the-clock support for IBM Cloudability and, in Q1 2025, IBM Apptio. Using instant guidance from FinOps and product documentation, customers can obtain immediate answers in response to “how-to” questions, product guides and help with documentation.
• IBM Apptio Essentials Suite: As part of its ongoing commitment to optimize the value of any organization’s IT investments, Apptio is enhancing its Essentials suite by introducing a new, streamlined planning solution to automate and simplify budget and forecasting processes and a new upcoming solution that automates billing for defensible chargeback planned availability by end of 2024. Organizations will have foundational tools for costing, planning, billing and benchmarking. This provides a solid foundation for building an ITFM practice, positioning organizations to make informed decisions and optimize their IT investments.
• Expanded Workforce Analytics: IBM Targetprocess, now available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace, has expanded capabilities to provide advanced reporting and hybrid dashboards that offer side-by-side tracking of agile and waterfall frameworks progress concurrently. This unified approach is engineered to enhance visibility, optimize resource allocation and enable  alignment with strategic goals, delivering capabilities for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM).

Manage diversifying cloud costs and optimize proactively with Cloudability innovations

As FinOps teams manage increasingly diverse cloud costs, leaders benefit from utilizing tools that connect these expenses to business outcomes, while proactively addressing waste and promoting sustainable practices.

• Enhanced Third-Party Vendor and FOCUS Support: IBM Cloudability now provides native cost management support for specialist third party PaaS cloud vendors, , along with support for FOCUS-focused cost data. Organizations can bring in this cost and usage data to enrich and deepen their understanding of cloud costs,  formatting their cost data into the FOCUS specification  for ingestion where necessary. This allows them to manage and visualize these costs via a single-pane-of-glass interface alongside cloud provider spend – with data personalization and filtering capabilities.
• New Carbon Emissions Reporting in IBM Cloudability: In response to growing environmental concerns and increasing regulatory pressures, Apptio worked with IBM Research to introduce new cloud infrastructure sustainability metrics for IBM Cloudability reports and dashboards: estimated carbon emissions (MTCO2e) and power consumed (kWh). These metrics consider factors such as region, resource utilization and central processing unit (CPU) architecture to provide accurate estimates across major third-party cloud platforms, helping FinOps teams quantify environmental impact alongside cost impact for their cloud deployments .
• CostGuard: Proactive Cost Insights (Private Beta): FinOps practitioners are actively working to “shift left” FinOps practices, to more proactively optimize costs in the development cycle before overruns arise. To support this initiative, Cloudability is launching a new feature, CostGuard (available in Beta in Q4), to enable customers to access cost estimates directly within developer workflows, including GitOps pipeline tools like GitHub and using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform. Additionally, CostGuard, provides capabilities to  help engineers  comply with internal policies, such as tagging and resource management, before deploying infrastructure.

Maintain a single source of truth with complete platform integrations

Transferring insights from disparate tools can take significant time and effort. Organizations need a comprehensive picture of their IT environments to make more informed decisions, including financial and operational data.

• IBM Apptio + Turbonomic (Early Access): As an early access release, Turbonomic and Apptio Costing are now integrated through a seamless, prescriptive interface, providing comprehensive visibility into hybrid IT environments. Clients can make informed decisions to optimize the value of their IT infrastructure investments by bringing actionable insights from Turbonomic into Apptio, quantifying and visualizing optimization recommendations and tracking and communicating cost savings.

Learn more about Apptio’s recent innovations

Learn more about Apptio and its upcoming TBM Conference

About Apptio, an IBM Company

Apptio, an IBM company, is a leading technology spend and value management software provider. Apptio’s AI-powered data insights empower leaders to make smarter financial and operational decisions across Information Technology (IT), multi-cloud FinOps, and digital product development. Apptio’s mission is to deliver business value with every technology investment and team. Powered by Apptio’s cloud platform, Apptio’s SaaS applications help translate technology spend into clear business outcomes and financial ROI. As a pioneer and category leader in Technology Business Management (TBM), FinOps, and Agile Portfolio Management, Apptio works with thousands of customers, partners, and community members worldwide.

Media Contact:
Jas McDonald
jas.mcdonald@ibm.com