In this interview from FinOps X 2026 in Sydney, Trent Allgood, vice president of ITAM at SoftwareOne, joins Parker Nancollas, global FinOps practice lead at SoftwareOne, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and theCUBE Research's Paul Nashawaty about the evolution of FinOps from cloud cost control into an enterprise operating model for AI value and token economics. Allgood notes that the FinOps Foundation has deliberately broadened its scope as AI workloads introduce a new class of cost complexity that cloud-era frameworks were never built to handle. Using the analogy of judging a car's total cost by the price of gasoline alone, Nancollas explains why measuring cost per token in isolation is misleading without anchoring it to actual business outcomes. Allgood also highlights the "Shift Left" principle, arguing that FinOps practitioners must work closer to engineering teams as AI optimization becomes as much a technical challenge as a financial one.
The conversation also explores how organizational silos are undermining AI cost governance, with Nancollas revealing that enterprises are aligned on only 45% of FinOps topics on average across executives, engineers and finance teams. Allgood details a concrete example where an ITAM team declined a $50,000 license purchase that would have reduced cloud spend by far more, underscoring why FinOps must take a system-level view rather than a budget-line view. Both guests unpack the emerging three-foundation landscape — the ITAM Forum, the FinOps Foundation and the Tokenomics Foundation — now operating under the Linux Foundation umbrella to share a common vocabulary while preserving domain-specific expertise. From breaking down cross-functional barriers to operationalizing token economics at enterprise scale, Allgood and Nancollas outline why organizations that master this unified operating model will hold a decisive competitive edge in the AI era.
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Trent Allgood & Parker Nancollas, SoftwareOne
At FinOps X 2026 in Sydney, theCUBE Research hosts John Furrier and Paul Nashawaty sit down with Parker Nancollas of SoftwareOne, global FinOps practice lead, and Trent Allgood of SoftwareOne, vice president IT asset management and FinOps consulting services. The panel addresses FinOps for artificial intelligence, abbreviated to AI, token-based cost models and token economics. It also examines unit economics and model lifecycle management. The discussion highlights the evolving skillsets and cross-functional collaboration required to govern AI costs across engineering, finance and IT asset management, abbreviated to ITAM, and product teams.
Nancollas emphasizes prioritizing business outcomes over raw token metrics and stresses that tokens are only one variable in AI unit economics. They recommend aligning model evaluation metrics with product key performance indicators and embedding cost awareness into the model lifecycle. Allgood emphasizes the need for unified frameworks and cross-functional collaboration between FinOps, IT asset management and engineering. They highlight governance patterns to measure and allocate costs, establish accountable ownership and integrate ITAM with FinOps practices. theCUBE Research observes that organizations must embrace rapid iteration, start with pragmatic practices, measure impact and evolve governance continuously.
In this interview from FinOps X 2026 in Sydney, Trent Allgood, vice president of ITAM at SoftwareOne, joins Parker Nancollas, global FinOps practice lead at SoftwareOne, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and theCUBE Research's Paul Nashawaty about the evolution of FinOps from cloud cost control into an enterprise operating model for AI value and token economics. Allgood notes that the FinOps Foundation has deliberately broadened its scope as AI workloads introduce a new class of cost complexity that cloud-era frameworks were never built to handle. Using the...Read more
