Anderson Oliveira
AXA and Timestamp Portugal
Organizations need timely and accurate data to inform decisions on driving maximum value from cloud investments. Consolidating and normalizing disparate cloud billing data is a universal challenge. FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS™) is an open-source technical specification for cloud cost and usage billing data serving as the unifying format for cloud bills aimed at solving the challenge of normalizing data from multiple sources.
Individual organizations may have different motivators for and approaches to FOCUS™ adoption, yet the journey to FOCUS™ adoption typically consists of these stages: Decide, Design, Build, Test, and Launch (as shown below):
These stages may overlap, reoccur, and take varying amounts of time. For example, an organization may build, test, rebuild, and test several more times before moving on to launch. During each stage, there are key actions likely to occur designating key milestones in the FOCUS™ adoption journey. These milestones may also take place at varying points in the adoption process as it best suits each individual organization.
This paper helps individuals and organizations understand the stages of FOCUS™ adoption, what decisions and considerations are to be made along the way, and provides guidance on the specific steps to take to adopt FOCUS™. This paper is best suited for individuals and organizations with a basic understanding of FOCUS™. For more information on FOCUS™ see the below resources.
- FinOps Foundation Insights FOCUS™ article
- Introduction to FOCUS™ course
- FOCUS™ 1.0 GA Announcement at FinOps X 2024 video
Decide
The Decide stage is about determining when FOCUS™ adoption is right for your organization. During this stage, it is important to deepen your familiarity with FOCUS™, its benefits, and the related current and future needs of your organization. Decisions need to be made about the timing and scope of the adoption to align with available resources to support the effort.
Assess organizational needs against the benefits of FOCUS™
The decision to adopt FOCUS™ is most often driven by the need to solve pre-existing data normalization issues across multiple cloud providers. FOCUS™ adoption reduces the time spent on data collection and normalization and enables organizations to redirect that time and energy toward other capabilities. Yet the decision to adopt FOCUS™ could be driven by any number of factors as a result of a needs-based assessment.
The below table describes the various benefits of adopting FOCUS™. An organization that faces challenges in any of the following areas should consider FOCUS™ adoption as a solution for overcoming the obstacle. Organizations assessing the need for FOCUS™ adoption should consider both present and future needs in combination with timing of and resources to support adoption.
| BENEFIT | DESCRIPTION |
| Multi-cloud data-driven decision making | FOCUS™ enables consistent reporting across vendors through data normalization, enabling Leadership to analyze the whole environment instead of looking at each cloud or vendor in a silo. With better data, better decisions can be made, and goals can be met faster. |
| Reduced complexity of billing files | A single set of columns applies across all of an organization’s cloud billing data, even in a multi-vendor environment. This means FinOps Practitioners have a lot less terminology to learn. |
| Improved reporting consistency and accuracy | Standardizing billing files in a consistent format reduces the chances of inaccurate reporting due to discrepancies in terminology and definitions of columns across external vendors or across internal groups. |
| Easier integration of new vendors | FOCUS™ helps to future proof your organization with changes to vendors. When a new vendor or cloud is added to the organizational ecosystem, the organization already has a defined format to transform the data into. No time is spent figuring out what format to transform the data into for seamless integration with other data sources. |
| Increased innovation | With better understanding of cloud value, the path is cleared for using cloud offerings to drive innovation and business growth. FOCUS™ enables organizations to access normalized data in a timely manner, which in turn provides the opportunity to leverage the time saved for strategic asset innovation. |
| Cheaper to process data | FOCUS™ combines actual billed costs and amortized costs into one dataset, drastically reducing the cost of compute and storage needed to process this data. |
| Transferable knowledge & skills | With FOCUS™, practitioners can learn a single process to perform a FinOps activity. This leads to faster time to value, which pays off for both the practitioner and their organization.
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| Beyond Cloud | Over time, FOCUS™ is expected to include SaaS, PaaS, Licensing & Software, and on-premises costs in combination with public cloud spend. This further increases the power of having a normalized, single source of truth data set from which to drive value-based decisions. |
| Common language with external peers | With FOCUS™, organizations are able to discuss FinOps with other organizations which have adopted FOCUS™ using common terms with a common understanding across different cloud and tooling vendors each organization may be using. |
Determine Scope & Approach to Organizational Adoption
Organizations must determine the scope of FOCUS™ adoption. There are generally three approaches:
- Small-Scale Adoption: Adopting FOCUS™ for a single unit or few units of the business and/or adopting FOCUS™ for a single report or a few reporting initiatives. With this approach much of the organization nor the majority of the organization’s reporting initiatives utilize FOCUS™.
- Large-Scale Adoption: Adopting FOCUS™ across all (or nearly all) business units and/or adopting FOCUS™ for all or nearly all related reporting initiatives at use in the organization. With this approach much of the organization uses FOCUS™.
- Blended-Scale Adoption: combining the above approaches by starting small for all business units or starting big for a small portion of the organization.
Organizations should give careful consideration to each approach. Small scale adoption serves as a strong starting point for expanding organizational adoption at a later time. Large scale adoption allows for a swift transition for the whole organization yet requires a smooth delivery of the new solution as many people will be scrutinizing the changes. Blended scale adoption provides a great degree of flexibility to suit the needs of an organization and also lends itself to additional scope creep risk.
Get Approval
Some organizations, particularly larger organizations, will require formal approval for FOCUS™ adoption. Such processes may require business cases, ticket submission, executive signoff, etc. Individuals driving FOCUS™ adoption for organizations need to be aware of such procedural protocols. Furthermore, some organizations will have similar procedural hoops to jump through for the execution of FOCUS™ adoption as it pertains to IAM permissions and accessing FOCUS™ data after the decision to adopt has been made.
When seeking approval to adopt FOCUS™ it is important to clarify:
- What FOCUS™ is and how it will benefit the organization
- Tip: Many early FOCUS™ adoptions found it helpful to tie FOCUS™ adoption to a KPI. For example, with FOCUS™ we will be able to increase our direct cost allocation from 25% to +80% in three months time.
- The scope and approach to FOCUS™ adoption
- introduce/overview the resources needed to support adoption
- Discuss the timing of adoption
If the decision is made to not proceed with formal FOCUS™ adoption it may just mean that the FOCUS™ adoption journey continues informally as a grassroots effort or is delayed until a later time. FOCUS™ may still be accessible and used by some members of the organization but not all/widespread.
Key ActionsIn addition to the major activities of the Decide stage, the below are key actions often taken during this stage.
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Design
Assemble a team
Adopting FOCUS™ is an effort that requires the involvement of many people. During the Decide stage, a FOCUS™ adoption team may have already started to form, but with the official decision to adopt it is best practice to form a team of individuals to drive the FOCUS™ adoption effort. Those a part of the team should have a strong understanding of FOCUS™ (see FOCUS™ informational resources for more info), represent a wide variety of organizational members with an interest in accessing and using FOCUS™ data. Listed below are role types of individuals you may consider to join the project team and a short description of their interest in FOCUS™ adoption.
- FinOps Practitioners – Regularly utilizes cost and usage data for forecasting, optimization, reporting efforts and more.
- Data and Information Architects – Resident experts for designing the architecture to seamlessly integrate and manage consistent billing data within the organization’s systems.
- Product and Project Managers – Consumers of cost and usage data to inform decision making to ensure alignment with project goals and timelines.
- Cloud Engineers – Generate cloud consumption in support of the organization and its salable products and services and consume related cost and usage data to inform decision making.
- Procurement and Finance teams – Leverage billing data for forecasting, budgeting, and accounting purposes and for management of contractual relationships with CSPs.
- Business Intelligence Developers and Analysts – Resident exports in creating insightful analytics and reports, driving data-informed decision-making from FOCUS™ datasets.
- Security – Ensure that the adoption of FOCUS™ complies with security standards and protects sensitive financial data.
Members of the assembled team will then drive all subsequent steps in the FOCUS™ adoption journey from the technical solution to the process of organizational adoption and beyond.
Design/Plan the technical solution
Leverage the collective expertise of the project team to map out the technical solution for adopting FOCUS™. This will include conducting research and making decisions about:
- Where to source the FOCUS™ data from
- How much historical data you want to transform to align with FOCUS™ (and whether not the selected source of FOCUS™ data can accommodate doing so)
- How to solve for any additional custom data enrichment requirements, if present
- Where this data will be stored
- How this data will be accessed & used by the organization
The below image depicts a generic FOCUS™ adoption architecture plan.
Where are you sourcing your FOCUS™ data from?
FOCUS™ data can be sourced directly from cloud service providers (CSPs). Information on how to get started with the top CSPs can be found at Getting Started with FOCUS™ Datasets. Some third party tooling providers also deliver FOCUS™ formatted data. The FinOps Landscape indicates which tools claim FOCUS™ adoption and organizations can check directly with tooling partners for more information. Additionally, organizations may opt to build a custom solution for FOCUS™ transformation or leverage open source options such as the FOCUS™ converters. Custom data enrichment and going beyond public cloud are two major considerations in the decision of where to source FOCUS™ data from.
Custom Data Enrichment
Many organizations require custom data enrichment on top of custom tagging information delivered in public cloud billing data. Such data enrichment activities include tagging corrections, or additional label and grouping as defined by FinOps, product, finance, and engineering teams.Some third party tools offer solutions for this customization which results in the tool being the source of truth for such information while other organizations keep such custom data enrichment information in other locations and sources, spreadsheets for example. The current and desired source of such information will influence an organization’s decision on where to source FOCUS™ data from.
If there is no need for additional data enrichment the organization may opt to source FOCUS™ data directly from the CSP. If there is a desire to continue to leverage third party tooling as the home for custom data enrichment, the third party tool may be selected as the source of FOCUS™ formatted data if available.In cases where the custom data needs to be layered in from a variety of different sources, organizations may opt to source FOCUS™-formatted data directly from the CSP and then add in the custom enrichments or start from scratch building or using a pre-built conversion tool.
Scope of Data
Organizations seeking to unify additional data beyond public cloud (such as SaaS, PaaS, Licensing & Software and on-premises costs) will need to examine the possibility of those invoice issuers delivering billing and usage data in FOCUS™ format or if the organization must convert the provided data to FOCUS™ format using a pre-built or self-built solution. If the inclusion of beyond public cloud data necessitates an organization to build a custom solution for FOCUS™ transformation or leverage open source options, the organization may opt to use the same approach for any public cloud data for which it is to be consolidated with.
Note: As of September 2024, FOCUS™ formatted data is not available directly from CSPs for Azure China nor AWS China. Additionally, there is no direct support for AWS GovCloud although GovCloud usage does show up in the CUR file of the related payer account AWS Global as applicable.
Support
The ability to support data accuracy, completeness and integrity is a key consideration in the decision of where to source FOCUS™ data. Organizations must have the confidence that the CSP, third party, or the organization itself can easily and reliably deliver data conforming to the FOCUS™ specification in support of this product offering. Organizations looking to convert source data to FOCUS™ format (versus sourcing from a CSP or third party) will need to ensure the propers resources are available to support this effort during the adoption process and beyond into normal business use of FOCUS™ data.
Many organizations adopting FOCUS™ are seeking to have a single source of truth data lake to pull data from to feed routine and ad-hoc reporting, invoicing & chargeback efforts, benchmarking, and more activities. Oftentimes, this means connecting the data lake with one or more preferred business systems to output the information in the desired locations in specified formats to meet reporting & analytics requirements.
Design/Plan the adoption process
While the organization is still defining technical processes FOCUS™ adoption, parallel planning can begin for training and educating the organization how to access & use the new dataset. Consider the following when planning the rollout of FOCUS™ for the organization:
- Which geographies, business divisions, departments are first, second (and so on) to receive education and training
- What education and training is required for each business role? Will it be readily available training or is there a need to create customized training materials?
- What information needs to be shared and through which communication channels?
- Notification of FOCUS™ adoption
- What stays the same, what’s different?
- What data intricacies should one be aware of as it pertains to dates, metrics, rounding?
- How do I access the new data?
- How do I understand the new data?
- Notification of FOCUS™ adoption
FOCUS™ informational resources
The resources listed below are intended for FOCUS™ educational purposes and are available for organizations to leverage as needed during the journey to adopt FOCUS™.
- Formal training courses
- Informational reads
- Getting familiar with the FOCUS™ dataset
| Key Actions
In addition to the major activities of the design stage, the below are key actions often taken during this stage.
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Build
In collaboration with the team driving FOCUS™ adoption and other key organizational stakeholders the next stage in FOCUS™ adoption is to start building the technical solution formed in the prior stage. As organizations design different technical solutions for FOCUS™ adoption these exact activities during this stage will be unique.
However, in general terms, this stage is about putting your plans into action by creating the data ingestion pipelines, turning on FOCUS™ data, establishing data storage, connecting systems, and preparing for effective reporting & analytics.
Many organizations find it helpful to break down the large body of work into smaller chapters of effort to tackle the work gradually. Activities during this stage include:
- Working with individual CSP or tooling vendors to set up the needed connections
- Working with internal teams to connect systems which house custom data enrichments
- Creating a space to store all complete, transformed data
- Connecting the new data source to visualization and reporting systems
- Building reports and dashboards using the new data
| Key Actions
In addition to the major activities of the build stage, the below are key actions often taken during this stage.
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Test
Check solution for accuracy & consistency
As with any new development, it’s vital to ensure that the FOCUS™ solution works as expected. The solution should work, not only once but repeatedly. Furthermore, beyond the surface level appearance of a working solution, it is critically important to ensure accuracy of all data points. Double checking individual metrics, qualitative data, and sums prior to the official launch will help to avoid future issues arising with regards to trust and data accuracy. Validation of results can be done manually, with the help of tooling, or a combination of both. The FOCUS™ Converter project has a validation component.
Conduct a Pilot
Identify a pilot team or trusted group of individuals to help make the solution better before launch. This group can help in the effort to ensure the consistency & accuracy of the new solution and provide insights on important features & aspects of the solution. The early engagement with a pilot group sets the foundation for strong communication & collaboration with key stakeholders for launch stage and beyond.
Improve from Feedback
Leverage the feedback provided by the pilot group to improve the solution. Make note of any flaws, bugs, etc. and address each as a means to fine tune the solution for maximum value and ease of use for the end users. Doing so will help to maximize the chance of repeat use from the end user. Additionally, incorporating early feedback will mitigate the amount of changes required post-launch when the solution is scrutinized by a larger array of application teams, cloud engineers, heads of finance, and other business stakeholders.
| Key Actions
In addition to the major activities of the test & improve stage, the below are key actions often taken during this stage.
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Launch
The launch stage is when an organization officially starts the rollout of FOCUS™. This is when teams (besides the project team and pilot group) start to learn about FOCUS™ as is outlined by the adoption process defined in stage 2, get access to FOCUS™ data as is appropriate for their role, and start using the related data & tools. At launch there are a variety of activities that you may opt to deploy either as a part of the initial launch or as a part of an ongoing program such as:
- Announcing FOCUS™ adoption
- Conduct education & training on FOCUS™ and access and use of new tool/datasets
- Collect feedback from end users for continuous improvement
- Measure benefits of FOCUS™ adoption/use
Any FOCUS™ solution that’s implemented will need effective product management to ensure long term success. Inevitably, fixes will be required down the line and new feature requests will come in from stakeholders. Ensure the mechanisms are in place to support the delivery and use of FOCUS™ data long term at your organization and iterate for continuous improvement post launch.
| Key Actions
In addition to the major activities of the launch stage, the below are key actions often taken during this stage.
Post launch, organizations interested in getting more involved in FOCUS™ could consider the below actions.
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Related FinOps Resources and Framework Capabilities
- How GitLab uses FOCUS™ (via FinOps X 2024)
- How Zoom uses FOCUS™ (via FinOps X 2024)
- FOCUS™ Use Case, Dhara Kansagara of BetaNXT (via FinOps Foundation August ‘24 Summit)
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank the following people for their hard work on this Paper:
We’d also like to thank our Supporters, Bruno Henriques, Matt Walls, Samir Bhol, and the FinOps Foundation Staff Amber Gregorio, Andrew Nhem, and Samantha White.