Top 5 Questions on Maestro from CFO in 2026

Selecting a new solution for an enterprise is a complicated decision that grounds on numerous parameters. This especially applies to selecting a cloud management platform, as it significantly affects the major part of the corporate lifestyle, including financial, operational, security, and technological aspects.

Today, we introduce a new post in our "Top 5 Questions" series and will give answers to the top questions a CFO may ask before Maestro is introduced to their infrastructure.

1. How does Maestro move us from 'Cost Tracking' to 'Unit Economics'?

The main change MAESTRO brings is cutting inefficient infrastructure utilization and enabling high visibility to detect anomalies and trends.

As a rule, MAESTRO introduction starts with cloud resources inventory and owners detection. Understanding who is responsible for specific resources allows to detect idle and forgotten infrastructure (some resources may be launched and forgotten, while others are created by people who left the project, or are outdated and can be optimized, etc.).

The next phase is making sure that the infrastructure remains clear and optimized. This includes introducing effective management, monitoring and analytics, which also engages Maestro multi-layered infrastructure and costs investigation possibilities.

Having this, Maestro helps customer re-arrange infrastructure management and accountability to make sure they get the best Cloud efficiency for the best price.

The ways Maestro is applicable on different stages of FinOps integration are given in a set of blog posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

2. What are the 'Time-to-Value', ROI, and the Guaranteed Savings?

The initial infrastructure cleanup can result in up to 10-15% of costs reduction.

The ROI is further driven by automated cost-containment features:

  • Operational Efficiency: The platform analytics and reporting capabilities are built to enable quick detection of anomalies and trends which allows customers to proactively identify potential extra spending and react before they transform into "budget leaks".
  • Automated Savings: High-impact features like Scheduling allow organizations to cut up to 70% of a virtual machine (VM) cost by simply automating its proper up/downtime lifecycle.
  • Resource Optimization: The platform helps re-arrange infrastructure management and accountability, enabling resource visibility, optimization recommendations and rules compliance to ensure the business achieves the "best Cloud efficiency for the best price".

For the cases when an enterprise is considering a milder or gradual introduction of new features and/or aims to cut the initial cloud management tools spending, specific Maestro functions were distinguished as separate enablers, quick to install and launch, that can be used to cover specific requests and perform request-oriented PoCs. You can find a detailed description of the approach by this link.

3. How will Maestro help us govern the 'Shadow AI' spend and GPU volatility?

In 2026, Maestro focuses on facing the challenges and expectations risen by the newly arrived Neocloud concept which brings the idea of unification via services which are the same across all clouds and rely on Open AI concept (AI-first movement).

To address the 'AI Budget Bleed,' Maestro incorporates deep insights into cost allocation for shared GPU infrastructure. Recognizing that dedicated GPUs often suffer from 30-50% underutilization, Maestro implements fractional GPU allocation using Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) and time-slicing.

One of the goals for Maestro is to ensure effective Neocloud support by ensuring that distributed training jobs only consume GPU time when all required components are ready to execute. Additionally, it provides 'Robot' identities and guardrails that will allow autonomous AI systems to access cloud resources securely without human intervention while AI agents handle the cost-optimization in the background.

You can find more information on Maestro roadmap for 2026 here.

4. Can Maestro act as a 'Single Source of Truth' for our ERP and ESG reporting?

Maestro acts as a single source of truth by providing a centralized Cloud Resource Inventory that allows you to manage all resources across multiple clouds in "one tab," ensuring data consistency for enterprise systems.

For financial and operational alignment, the Maestro Dashboard and Enterprise Reporting engine provide insights transforming raw utilization data into audit-ready reports and "Unit Economics" views that can be synchronized with financial ledgers. You can find more detail in Maestro reports for cost analytics and optimization article.

   The platform is developed with an API-first approach, featuring a Java/Python/Golang SDK built atop a unified API and a CLI for scripting, which allows for the seamless export of clean, normalized data into ERP systems.

For ESG reporting, in 2026, Maestro integrates EPAM's Emissions Digital Platform to provide a real-time carbon footprint tracker that assigns a "Green Score" to cloud projects and compares CO₂ impact between public clouds and on-prem workloads. The platform provides one-click ESG compliance reports aligned with EU CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) requirements, ensuring that IT transforms from a "carbon cost" into a "sustainability asset."

5. How Maestro can be used to optimize operational expenses?

Beyond direct cost cutting, the platform provides operational leverage by minimizing the need for expensive, specialized cloud experts.

One of its goals was to help with managing hybrid cloud infrastructure for users who had limited experience with one or several clouds these infrastructures used. To help this goal, Maestro uses unification approaches, convenient UI, and detailed help system.

However, effective cloud management is still complicated without a relevant skillset. Thus, we also created a whole education program focused on effective cloud usage which evolved into a complex and effective Syndicate Education Platform. It is included into Maestro pack and intended to build modern highly requested cloud skills needed for effective modernization.

Furthermore, for customer-focused customization, integrations, and automation, Maestro enables a NoCode approach and a unified Terraform provider, for an "Admin" user to create cloud-agnostic templates and centralized services without any development knowledge, effectively turning the platform into a NoCode/NoOps CMP that scales with the business.

For more information on Terraform Provider, see the following Maestro blog posts:
- Maestro Integration With Terraform
- Terraform Enterprise VS Maestro (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Do not hesitate to investigate the mentioned subjects by following the included links and tags. Also, keep track of the updates, as a set of new TOP 5 Questions articles are coming soon.

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