By: Kyle Newton
FinOps is both a framework and a culture that aims to maximize the value of the public cloud. As the practice has matured, it has expanded to include most technology spend, from SaaS and AI to data centers and licensing. It teaches a common language for everyone to speak, defines roles with different levels of responsibility, and ultimately creates a way for engineering, finance, executives, and others to collaborate. The goal is to make informed, data-driven decisions. To help achieve this, the FinOps Foundation introduced a pivotal project: the FOCUS FinOps Framework.
This article will explore the FOCUS FinOps Framework, explaining what it is, why it’s essential for modern businesses, and how you can integrate it into your organization.
What is the FOCUS FinOps Framework and Why Does It Matter?
In any organization, cloud cost data is relevant to more than just the finance department. Engineers, product managers, and leadership all share a role and responsibility in managing and optimizing cloud spend. However, these teams often look at different data sets in different formats. This siloed decision-making approach leads to misalignment, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities for savings.
The FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) is a project designed to solve this long-standing challenge. The FOCUS FinOps Framework provides a standardized, open-source specification for cloud billing data, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Understanding the Specification
Developed by the FinOps Foundation in collaboration with cloud providers, vendors, and practitioners, FOCUS aims to standardize cloud billing data across all platforms and tools. It establishes a unified, well-defined schema that simplifies data analysis and fosters collaboration. While it initially targeted major cloud providers like AWS, GCP, Azure, and OCI, the specification has grown to include SaaS platforms and even internal infrastructure billing systems.
The Problem Without a Unified Framework
Without a standard like the FOCUS FinOps Framework, organizations face significant challenges. Different cloud providers and monitoring tools use unique terminology and data formats, making it difficult to align and trust the information. When multiple data sources present information differently, teams struggle to create a single source of truth. This misalignment leads to conflicting strategies and overlooked optimization opportunities. Teams end up spending more time trying to make sense of the data than using it to drive value.
The Key Benefits of Adopting the FOCUS FinOps Framework
Adopting the FOCUS FinOps Framework provides a common language for cost and usage data, ensuring all teams have a consistent view. It achieves this by standardizing the columns in a billing dataset and creating strict rules for the data within them.
This approach delivers several key advantages:
- Improved Collaboration: With standardized data, cross-functional teams can collaborate more effectively. Consistent reporting across clouds and tools reduces complexity, which in turn boosts productivity and supports informed, unified decisions.
- Increased Efficiency: By reducing the need for manual data normalization and reconciliation, teams can redirect their energy toward strategic initiatives and optimization efforts. This also helps lower the computational cost of processing large billing files.
- Future-Proof Design: The extensible design of the FOCUS FinOps Framework accommodates evolving business needs. It can support diverse billing models and new provider types as your technology stack grows.
How FOCUS Benefits Everyone in the Ecosystem
The advantages of the FOCUS FinOps Framework extend beyond FinOps practitioners. Cloud vendors who provide FOCUS-formatted data make it easier for customers to adopt their services. Their products can integrate seamlessly with existing billing data, allowing customers to use familiar metrics to evaluate if a new service is the right fit. This transparency can help reduce customer churn.
FinOps tool vendors also benefit, as they often consume and provide data. By working with a standardized format, their engineers can spend less time on data normalization and more time on tool development and innovation.
A Real-World Example: GitLab
GitLab is an excellent example of an organization that has successfully leveraged the FOCUS FinOps Framework. By adopting FOCUS, GitLab improved its cloud cost visibility, increasing its cost allocation from just 30% to over 80%.
This significant improvement provided more accurate insights into their cloud spending and enhanced decision-making across teams. The standardized data made it easier to track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as cost per user and cost per request, eliminating the need for extensive manual data mapping. This data-driven approach allowed GitLab to make more efficient and informed cloud cost decisions. The full video on this topic is found here: FOCUS & GitLab.
Integrating the FOCUS FinOps Framework into Your Culture
Successfully integrating the FOCUS FinOps Framework requires a cultural shift that starts with ensuring teams understand its purpose and benefits.
Here are a few steps to help drive strong adoption:
- Leadership Buy-in: Secure support from leadership teams to champion the adoption of FOCUS across all relevant departments.
- Train Key Personnel: Identify a few individuals to become experts in the FOCUS specification. They can then train others in the organization, creating a cost-effective way to upskill your teams. The FinOps Foundation offers educational resources to support this.
- Integrate Your Tooling: Adopt tools and platforms that support or align with the FOCUS specification. Many major vendors already offer FOCUS-aligned datasets, and growing adoption ensures ongoing support as the framework evolves.
- Establish Feedback Loops: Create processes for gathering feedback to refine your adoption strategy as organizational needs change. The KPIs and queries you use on FOCUS datasets may need to be adjusted over time.
Conclusion
For any organization practicing FinOps, having clear and consistent billing data is essential. The FOCUS FinOps Framework empowers organizations by standardizing cost and usage information, enabling them to make informed, data-driven decisions. Adopting this framework fosters a culture of collaboration and efficiency, unlocking the full value of your cloud investment.
We encourage you to explore the FOCUS specification and consider how its adoption can enhance your organization’s FinOps practices. If you’d like a free consultation with Pellera’s Cloud FinOps Advisor team to see how FOCUS and the wider idea of FinOps can benefit your organization, please feel free to contact us at FinOpsSales@Pellera.com.
