The FinOps Foundation, a part of the Linux Foundation's nonprofit technology consortium focused on advancing the people and practice of FinOps, announced the launch of FOCUS 1.3 (FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification) adding solutions to three persistent problems: splitting shared resource costs, tracking contract commitments accurately, and verifying data freshness.
With FOCUS 1.3 – the fifth major release since the FOCUS specification launched in 2023 – the specification includes transparency for provider-defined services that allocate shared costs for containers and databases, introduces a new external dataset for contract or negotiated agreements, and includes metadata signals for dataset completeness and recency – all of which allow practitioners to more accurately and securely manage their multi-provider reporting workflows.
All major clouds have been contributors to the ongoing FOCUS 1.3 specification development. Further, FOCUS is already supported by cloud and technology providers worldwide including Alibaba, AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Grafana, Huawei, Microsoft, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OVH Cloud, and Tencent. In addition, many enterprises are using FOCUS language in their internal reporting systems, and generating FOCUS datasets for their data center and private cloud spending.
The overarching aim of FOCUS is to reduce complexity across cloud, SaaS, data center, and other technology vendors to reduce complexity for FinOps practitioners who are managing the value of these technologies. The list of FOCUS dataset generators originally included major cloud providers, and now has grown to encompass SaaS, software, data and platform providers.
"With over a dozen providers already supporting FOCUS and AWS announcing generally available FOCUS 1.2 support, FOCUS is hitting yet another big milestone in terms of a rapidly maturing data structure with the new 1.3 release. The common definitions that FOCUS provides for billing data generators enable FinOps practitioners to spend less time on data normalization and more time finding valuable business insights," said J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation. "FOCUS 1.3 goes deeper to unpack shared cost allocations, enables a broader swath of providers to support the specification, adds a new contract dataset that can be permissioned separately from cost and usage data, and helps shine light on the freshness of data."
New enhancements include:
- Split Shared Costs and Understanding of Data Generators' Allocation Method. Today, shared resources, such as Kubernetes pods and database instances, force practitioners to build custom allocation logic or accept non-granular cost allocations. That changes with FOCUS 1.3. New allocation-specific columns let data generators expose how they split costs across workloads. Practitioners see the methodology—not just the result. This will especially benefit platform engineering teams, FinOps analysts allocating shared infrastructure, and DevOps leaders managing multi-tenant clusters.
- Track Contract Commitments in a Dedicated Dataset. Practitioners can make more informed decisions if they understand how much their existing cost and usage is applicable to terms spelled out in service provider contracts. But those details are difficult to tie back to data presented in cost and usage datasets. In FOCUS 1.3, a new, "Contract Commitment" dataset isolates contract terms, including such things as start/end dates, remaining units, and descriptions, from cost/usage rows. One query shows all active commitments. This enhancement marks the first instance of extending FOCUS language to an adjacent dataset, giving practitioners a structured method to understand contract commitments.
- Verify Data Recency and Completeness. Processing stale or incomplete cost and usage data can break automated reconciliation workflows. Practitioners might only discover missing rows after month-end close. With FOCUS 1.3, providers must timestamp datasets and flag completeness status so users know if data is subject to revision. This will result in less processing of incomplete data and more confidence in making decisions knowing that data is complete and relevant.
- Service Provider and Host Provider Columns. Definitions will be more delineated between service and host providers so that practitioners will more easily see who they should engage for support and billing inquiries.
In addition to the launch of the FOCUS 1.3 specification, the FinOps Foundation is announcing a forthcoming update to the FinOps Certified FOCUS Analyst course to include features from FOCUS 1.2. The updated course will allow for more detailed, unified reporting across cloud, SaaS, and PaaS services.
The FOCUS project always welcomes feature requests for future releases and contributors The FOCUS 1.4 specification is already under development, given a backlog of member feedback and requests. Future FOCUS versions will deepen support for cloud and SaaS billing while expanding to additional spending scopes, including data center and AI - join the FOCUS Project to help develop the next release.
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