About

Managing spend remains the number one cloud challenge.

Traditionally IT spend has run on fixed budgets but with cloud running on consumption, costs can fluctuate often as a result of over-provisioning, cloud sprawl, poor visibility, inefficient pricing models and tagging failures.

The true cost is more than just financial and brings with it operational drag, encumbered strategic processes, wasted time and damaged confidence.

The FinOps model based on three pillars - inform, optimise, operate - brings together finance, engineering and business teams to increase confidence and ensure measurable business value.

CIOs, CFOs and business leaders aiming for clarity and control with cloud spend should join this session for a practical look at how Palo Alto networks optimised cloud spend as a strategic priority.

Topics covered will include:

- The holistic approach to delivering cloud value
- How visibility drives better decisions
- Organising for collaborative effectiveness
- Talent and the growth mindset

Zhen Cao is currently the JAPAC Value Realization Lead at Google Cloud, where he supports strategic customers in realizing cloud and AI value at scale during their adoption journey.

Previously, Zhen worked at Palo Alto Networks (PANW) as Director of Product Operations and Cloud Finance, where he built and led the company's Cloud FinOps function from the ground up. He served as a strategic business partner to the CEO, CFO, and CPO, advising executives on infrastructure hosting strategy across the company-wide product portfolio. He led negotiations and closed multi billion dollar commitments with all major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI, Alibaba) and AI/SaaS companies.

Prior to PANW, Zhen worked at McKinsey, focused on digital transformation. He holds a PhD in Computational Materials Science and completed his postdoctoral training at MIT. After 13 years in the US, Zhen recently relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Hong Kong.