Orange Accelerates Shift of FinOps Responsibility Across the Enterprise with AI Agents

French telecom operator Orange introduced AI agents to transition cloud cost management (FinOps) from a central team's task to a responsibility for all engineers. To address the issue of optimization tasks being deprioritized in favor of deployments in Agile environments, they introduced 'FinOps Clean Days' and gamification, building an internal FinOps community of over 100 people and achieving an internal NPS above 70.

Orange organized the community by referencing McKinsey's change management framework, aiming to overcome the limitation that a central team cannot directly reach thousands of engineers through AI agents. The adoption strategy was phased to build trust. First, they solidified the community foundation, then introduced read-only agents for awareness and recommendations, and subsequently expanded to execution agents that apply actual changes while managing operational risks.

For the technology stack, they utilized Gemini Enterprise App for teams seeking rapid deployment and minimal code, and Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI) along with the Agent Development Kit (ADK) for cases requiring fine-grained control and developer integration. Orange emphasized that this community-based approach is key to accelerating AI adoption and ROI.