Being a payments geek, when I think about the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS™), I’m reminded of the early days of electronic payments. 

Back then, the world of credit card transactions was fragmented, with each payment network and provider operating on its own proprietary messaging protocols. This lack of interoperability created inefficiencies, delayed transaction approvals, and hindered the global scalability of electronic payments. To solve these issues, the payments industry came together to develop ISO 8583—a universal messaging protocol that standardized how transaction data flowed across networks. This innovation not only enabled seamless interoperability but also elevated the customer experience by making transactions faster, more reliable, and more consistent—laying the groundwork for the modern payment systems we depend on today.

For you FinOps practitioners, this disconnect happens all too frequently—but why? 

The fragmented terminologies, data formats, and reporting methods across cloud platforms create significant barriers to efficiency, especially in multi-cloud environments. Without a common language or standard, the complexity of translating between platforms often slows down decision-making and increases the likelihood of costly errors.

To help alleviate this challenge, FOCUS™ was created. 

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What is FOCUS? 

In a world where multi-cloud environments are seemingly the norm in organizations, FOCUS, supported by the FinOps Foundation, helps reduce complexities by standardizing a FinOps language. It defines requirements for cloud vendors to produce consistent cost and usage datasets.

In short, FOCUS gives you more time to make data-driven decisions and maximize the business value of your cloud environments. It also allows you to work more effectively across clouds and tools, giving you greater job security and the ability to work better with engineering teams.

The main benefits of FOCUS include: 

• Unified Cost Visibility: FOCUS data exports unified cost visibility from multiple cloud providers and data centers into a single location. This unified view helps you analyze costs at various levels of granularity, providing valuable insights for cost optimization and resource allocation. 
• Standardized Terminology: FOCUS standardizes terminology across cloud providers, allowing for easy knowledge transfer between platforms. This ensures you have time to prioritize delivering value to your business rather than learning new cloud languages. 
• Easier Data Pipeline Engineering: FOCUS provides you with the opportunity to create a data pipeline that integrates and transforms cloud billing data from multiple cloud providers into the FOCUS format. This provides you with a unified view of your cloud costs, making data ingestion and analysis much easier.

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PointFive’s FOCUS Support

We are a big supporter of unifying cloud costs through a universal language. That’s why we embarked on our own FOCUS journey, starting with implementing FOCUS 1.0 into two of our Analytics dashboards.

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The Analytics Overview Dashboard  

Our Analytics Overview dashboard includes FOCUS data and display terms as well as cost calculations. This includes day-to-day cost visibility metrics, such as Total Billed Cost, Total Effective Cost, Total Contracted Cost, and Total List Cost. 

Additionally, it includes Cost by Service Category metrics, Name, and Cost per Project ID.

The Analytics Cost Analysis Dashboard

With our FOCUS-supported Cost Analysis dashboard, users can attribute cost and usage data to various cost drivers by using advanced group-by capabilities, cross-filtering, deep dives to the resource level, and more cost investigation capabilities. 

Just the Beginning for FinOps Practitioners

This is the first of many steps our team will take to ensure FinOps practitioners who use our platform can effectively communicate with various engineering and finance teams. 

As with all new languages, we know it will take time to learn and implement across cloud platforms, but we also know it will greatly improve the daily experience that you and other FinOps practitioners face. Quite frankly, we’re excited for this change.