Welcome to this week’s edition of the Learning FOCUS blog series, where we delve into the intricacies of the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS). This time, we’re exploring the columns that identify and categorize services, a feature unique to FOCUS data sets compared to your average Cost Management datasets. FOCUS is not just a tracker for cloud resource usage and billing but an insightful framework that supports any cost type, whether cloud, on-premises, or SaaS, allowing for broader application. The series highlights how services are central to FOCUS, bringing into the spotlight the ServiceName, ServiceCategory, and ServiceSubcategory columns, which streamline cost tracking across diverse providers and resources.
Specifically, the ServiceName column offers a straightforward representation of the overarching service being used or purchased—bridging the gap between complex meter categories and actual resource types. Meanwhile, ServiceCategory and ServiceSubcategory provide a high-level, provider-agnostic categorization, essential for large organizations juggling multiple providers and transitioning between solutions. Additionally, Microsoft has open-sourced a valuable mapping of ConsumedService and ResourceType to ServiceCategory and ServiceSubcategory, further underscoring its commitment to facilitating easy data preparation and cleanup. Microsoft also anticipates that as organizations continue to onboard these new classifications, they will improve their understanding and management of costs.
There’s a strong emphasis on the transition to FOCUS, which allows organizations to update reports, transform data, and explore unique queries through FinOps hubs. These capabilities help forecast usage patterns across services and analyze costs at scale. Whether refining your organization’s reporting or evaluating specific resource types, the transition to this new, comprehensive view makes the understanding of cloud and other IT costs clearer. As excitement builds for the next topic on SKUs in the series, those interested in the service mappings can explore more detailed guides through Microsoft’s documentation. So, continue to explore this fascinating world of FOCUS and discover how it can transform your resource management strategies.
News: Learning FOCUS: Service columns
Documentation: FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification
