Update Your FOCUS

One of the most valuable initiatives from the FinOps ecosystem just got an update. All detailed in here.

Author

Victor Garcia
November 10, 2024

In partnership with

Just before the FinOps XE happening in Barcelona (Looking forward to seeing you there!), FOCUS got an update that is extremely important

What also happened this week:

  • AWS, GCP & Azure Q3 Results

  • Optimize with Governance

  • AWS to Cloudflare Migration saves +80%

  • Mention of Honour: FinOps XE Barcelona

  • Quick Wins with tons of updates from the community and providers

  • Professional Spotlight with Spanish GreenOps touch.

Everyone is preparing for what’s going to come on FinOps XE.

FOCUS
What 1.1 Means for FOCUS

The FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) version 1.1 has been released. This update brings new features to help companies better manage their cloud costs. FOCUS allows companies to combine billing data from different cloud providers into one standard format. This makes it easier to analyze spending across multiple cloud services.

Key changes in version 1.1:

  1. New data fields for tracking capacity reservations and commitment discounts

  2. More detailed service categories to break down costs

  3. Additional information about pricing and usage of cloud resources

  4. Better support for processing billing data

Many major cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft now offer FOCUS-formatted billing data. Software companies are also starting to support FOCUS in their tools. The FOCUS team plans to release updates about twice a year. The next version will add support for analyzing costs from software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.

One of the most valuable assets we have in the FinOps ecosystem. Start learning it now and get use to it. It’s not going anywhere ;)

In partnership with FinOut
Cloud Cost Chaos: How Savings Turn Into Showback Nightmares

As cloud environments expand, managing costs becomes even more challenging, with savings both a solution and a problem.

AWS’s Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, and Savings Plans aim to simplify optimization but often complicate cost control.

One major hurdle? Showback. It’s about allocating costs transparently to the right teams, but with AWS applying discounts inconsistently, costs get misaligned, savings are missed, and billing becomes unpredictable.

In my latest article, we'll dive into the key issues FinOps teams face with AWS showback—misaligned discounts, manual adjustments, and more.

Cloud Providers
Cloud Race Q3 Update: Google Grows Fastest, AWS Tops Revenue

Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud shared their financial results for the third quarter of 2024. These three companies make up 64% of the $84 billion cloud computing market. Let's look at how they performed:

Revenue and Growth:

  • AWS made $27.5 billion

  • Microsoft's cloud division made $24.1 billion

  • Google Cloud made $11.4 billion

  • Google Cloud grew the fastest at 35%

  • Microsoft grew by 20%

  • AWS grew by 19%

Market Share:

  • AWS leads with 31%

  • Microsoft has 20%

  • Google Cloud has 12%

Profits:

  • Microsoft's cloud division made $10.5 billion

  • AWS made $10.4 billion

  • Google Cloud made $1.9 billion

These results show that the cloud computing market is still growing. Each company has its strengths, but they're all doing well in this important tech area.

Cloud Governance
Optimize with Governance

Cloud cost optimization can become a never-ending cycle. Many companies keep fixing cost issues after each monthly bill, but the problems keep coming back.

This happens because they're only fixing the symptoms, not the real cause. Instead of constantly trying to reduce costs, it's better to set up rules for using the cloud. This is called cloud governance.

Cloud governance means creating processes and policies that guide how people use cloud resources. These policies are usually set up using code and run automatically. The main goal is to make sure cloud use matches what the business actually needs. This helps avoid waste without limiting creativity. To set up good cloud governance:

  1. Get input from different teams about their needs and requirements.

  2. Have the FinOps team gather all this information.

  3. Create cloud policies based on these requirements.

  4. Have the technical team put these policies into code.

  5. Apply these policies to the cloud infrastructure.

By setting up smart cloud governance, companies can better control their cloud costs and align cloud use with business value

Cost Optimization
Baselime moves to Cloudflare, saving 80% in Cloud Costs

Baselime, an observability platform, recently moved from AWS to Cloudflare. This change led to big improvements in how they work and how much they spend.Before the move, Baselime used many different AWS services.

After moving to Cloudflare, Baselime's daily costs dropped from $1,940 to $325. This means they now save 83% on their yearly cloud costs. The new setup uses Cloudflare Workers, which run code all over the world. Moving to Cloudflare took less than three months. The team did this step by step, making sure nothing broke along the way.

Together with Turbo360
Overcoming ACM Limitations: Smarter Cloud Cost Management (Whitepaper)

Managing cloud costs can be unpredictable, challenging, and expensive, making traditional methods fall short.

Azure Cost Management (ACM) offers tools like calculators and Azure Advisor but lacks the user-friendliness and flexibility needed for true cost optimization.

But wait, this whitepaper has all the answers you need:

  • The limitations of ACM in managing cloud costs

  • Why a third-party solution is essential for better visibility

  • How Turbo360’s user-centric approach simplifies cost management

  • Key areas where Turbo360 drives the most value, empowering teams to reduce expenses effectively

🎖️ Mention of Honour
FinOps XE Barcelona 2024

The event is coming next week!

Looking forward to seeing everyone there for those that could make. Let’s enjoy these 4 days, and everything the ecosystem has for us.

Here’s a list of recommended talks by Attribute, with great stuff. But please download the FinOps XE Agenda app and make your schedule.

Join our Telegram and ping us to meet over there!

🏆 Quick Wins

Announcements

AWS has updated its Well-Architected Framework.The update includes 14 new best practices. The Reliability Pillar has been improved for the first time since 2022.

Articles & Podcasts

Beyond Million Dollar Lines of Code: Practical Strategies for Engineering Cost-Effective Cloud Systems

Carlsberg Group increases cloud efficiency with FinOps and Azure solutions

Professional Spotlight
Ferran Grau

GreenOps with Spanish Quality

It was great to meet Ferran at AWS Summit and listen to his talk. He’s also giving one at FinOps XE next week so please save it to your agenda if you are interested in GreenOps related topics!

That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday!

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