The FinOps Foundation has made available a preview of version 1.0 of a FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) that promises to normalize cost and usage data to make it simpler to optimize cloud computing costs.
Udam Dewaraja, chairperson for the FOCUS project, said normalizing schema and terminology for cost and usage data in a vendor-neutral way will make it simpler for IT teams to understand the true cost of cloud computing services and enable them to make comparisons based on value more easily.
The most recent release of the specification adds support for both software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications along with open source data converter implementations and data validators. It also enables use cases for discount analysis, unit pricing, allowing rate transparency and detailed usage analysis while enabling the overlying business context information using tags and resource metadata.
FOCUS 1.0 will also include a SQL-compatible library, with more than forty commonly performed FinOps use case examples tied to FOCUS data outputs curated by experienced FinOps practitioners.
The FOCUS project has the support of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and Oracle along with organizations such as CapitalOne, Walmart, Workday and Goldman Sachs that consume cloud services.
Today, many organizations find it challenging to assess the true cost of cloud computing services. That lack of transparency often results in fewer workloads being moved to the cloud simply because no one is certain what their monthly billing cost might be, noted Dewaraja.
Many organizations today engage consultants to analyze existing and potential cloud computing costs that can vary widely from one month to the next. FOCUS should make it simpler for IT leaders to make informed cost decisions as application workloads are being deployed in highly dynamic IT environments, noted Dewaraja. Ultimately, the goal is to bake cost analysis capabilities directly into DevOps workflows, he added.
It’s not clear how quickly organizations are embracing FinOps as a best practice for containing cloud computing costs, but in the face of ongoing economic headwinds, pressure on IT teams to reduce the total cost of IT is rising. In many cases, developers have been allowed to provision cloud resources on demand with minimal supervision, resulting in spiraling costs as more workloads are deployed in cloud computing environments.
As IT organizations increasingly employ multiple cloud platforms to run different classes of workloads, understanding the true cost of choosing to use one cloud over another is becoming more important. At the same time, IT organizations have a greater appreciation for the need to move workloads between platforms that might enable them to reduce costs. Just because an application workload was created in the cloud doesn’t mean that workload should be deployed there. The challenge IT organizations arguably face going forward will be integrating streams of financial data into DevOps processes to make more economically informed decisions about how to allocate their cloud resources in real-time.
