From Chaos to Clarity: Why FOCUS Is Critical for FinOps Maturity and AI Readiness

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As organisations look to unlock value from the cloud two forces are reshaping the landscape: the rise in AI driven innovation and the growing need for financial accountability in the cloud. Understanding and optimising cloud spend is no longer an option, it is a necessary component of a broader business strategy. But inconsistent cost data, fragmented reporting, and vendor specific billing attributes stagnate development efforts and limit teams abilities to achieve these goals.

The solution? The FinOps Foundations recently introduced FOCUS specification. FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification) looks to establish a standardised way of representing cloud cost and usage data across various providers and platforms. And with the v1.2 specification now available (newly announced at FinOps X) the standard now includes SaaS and PaaS platforms, introducing 20+ vendors into the mix. This brings prominent names like IBM Cloudability alongside the cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud, all of whom have already aligned to the specification.

But what does this all mean? And who benefits from this newly introduced specification? To answer that, let’s break down what FOCUS is, why it matters, and how it’s set to transform the way organisations manage cloud costs in an increasingly data-driven world.

What is FOCUS?

To make truly informed decisions, data is at the centre. Whether you are trying to optimise usage, enforce tagging strategies, reduce rates or forecast spend the ability to act depends on having access to reliable cost and usage data. But for most organisations data arrives fragmented or in a vendor specific format, with unique attributes spread across cloud providers, SaaS vendors and internal systems. Before this data can be used, it must be normalised, interpreted and ingested. All of which comes at a cost of time and effort.

Enter FOCUS

FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification) is an open standards initiative supported by the FinOps Foundation, designed to bring consistency to the growing landscape which is cloud billing data. FOCUS provides a standardised schema for cloud cost, usage and billing information, and allows organisations to unify data sources into a single, coherent format.

Whilst the immediate value of FOCUS may be clear for teams adopting FinOps practices, who depend on clean, structured data for reporting, show back and decision making, its potential goes even further. Engineering teams and AI developers can now build automation, analytics and models on top of standardised datasets, rather than spending time and resources building brittle data normalisation pipelines. This opens the door to AI for FinOps, where intelligent systems can deliver faster and smarter insights and recommendations at scale.

And FOCUS isn't limited to public cloud. It is designed to accommodate hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, SaaS billing (courtesy of specification v1.2) and even internal chargeback models, making it a universal layer for financial data.

In essence, FOCUS transforms billing data from a barrier into an enabler - for those adopting FinOps, to engineers, and for anyone building intelligent systems to manage cloud cost and usage more effectively.

Why is FOCUS needed?

Cloud environments are expansive, fast paced and for many organisations multi-provider. One team may rely on AWS, another Azure whilst another adopts a hybrid strategy, adopting services across GCP, on-prem and multiple SaaS providers. Each of these providers issues billing data in its own unique format, defining its own terminology and structure. What's considered 'Billed Cost' with one provider could differ entirely (or not exist) with another.

Without FOCUS, organisations are left trying to aggregate all this variability themselves. Typically this will mean implementing custom data pipelines, investing in third party tooling (which could introduce another billing standard) and maintaining separate reporting layers for each provider. Despite all the effort to mitigate this, inconsistencies arise and the overhead is compounded as the environment grows.

FOCUS tackles this challenge by providing the shared language and structure for billing data. By mobilising providers to adopt these common terms and data formats, FOCUS removes ambiguity and simplifies the ingestion, normalisation and analysis of cost and usage data, allowing teams to spend less time transforming data and more time on the value driven activities, such as optimisations, insights and enabling business decisions. And in a world where data is growing in both volume and strategic importance, standardisation isn't just useful - it's essential.

Who benefits from FOCUS?

Whether you are running a single cloud setup, or managing complex multi-cloud and SaaS environments, FOCUS delivers value by simplifying cloud cost data and making it usable out of the box.

Single Cloud Organisations

• Eliminates the need for custom data transformation required to get started with FinOps
• Enables faster delivery of KPIs, reporting and cost metrics using standardised inputs
• Reduces time required for new team members to familiarise themselves with complex data structures
• Future proofs your environments by aligning with an industry standard, making it easier to adopt new cloud providers and tools down the line

Multi Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Organisations

• Removes the need for provider specific reporting
• Replaces costly third party normalisation tools by providing a unified schema across all adopted providers
• Simplifies integration of new services without the need to reengineer existing pipelines

Enterprise Organisations

• Adopt consistency across internal chargebacks, SaaS billing and cloud native spend by implementing a single standard
• Enables procurement, finance, and engineering teams to adopt common terminology around cloud costs
• Reduces 'tool sprawl' and dependencies on billing translators or one off reporting tools
• Sets a common foundation for cross-org insights and cost accountability

FinOps, Engineering & AI Teams

• FinOps Practitioners gain reliable, ready to use data without the steep learning curve of understanding different billing formats
• Engineering and Platform teams can build tooling and automations on a unified shared schema, reducing anomalies and accelerating time to market
• AI/ML teams benefit from clean, structured inputs ideal for training models, identifying patterns or powering intelligent AI applications, such as Generative AI Digital Colleagues that can assist in analysing spend, surfacing insights or even making recommendations in real time.

Ready to take advantage of FOCUS?

As more and more organisations implement a wider range of cloud technologies, and the acceleration of AI driven technologies become the standard, the need for consistent, reliable cost and usage data is no longer optional, it's integral to a wider organisational strategy.

FOCUS isn't just a technical standard, it's a shift in how organisations can align cloud financial data. It simplifies the complexity, it accelerates FinOps maturity, and unlocks new opportunities for automation and intelligent systems.

But adopting FOCUS and truly realising its potential goes beyond just downloading a schema. It means knowing how to optimally integrate into your existing processes and strategies, how to align your teams and build the correct foundations for future initiatives.

That's where Cortex Reply comes in.

If your organisation is ready to:

• Accelerate your FinOps journey
• Align costs to your business strategies
• Explore AI driven Digital Colleagues using FOCUS aligned data

Then now is the time to act.

Whether you're just starting to explore the world of FinOps, or looking to implement FOCUS embedded data into your cloud and AI strategy, our consultants can help you achieve your business goals. Contact us today to see how we can help you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving world.