7 Glossary

A charge representing a modification to billing data to account for certain events or circumstances not previously captured, or captured incorrectly. Examples include billing errors, service disruptions, or pricing changes.

The charge that was created as the result of an allocation operation. This is used in the context of Data Generator-Calculated Split Cost Allocation to identify the charges that were created from the origin charge resulting from the application of Data Generator-Calculated Split Cost Allocation.

The process or formula by which cost is being allocated from an origin charge to produce allocated charges. This is used in the context of Data Generator-Calculated Split Cost Allocation which requires documentation of the method to be provided for any and all allocated methods used. May also be colloquially referred to as allocation method.

The distribution of upfront costs over time to accurately reflect the consumption or benefit derived from the associated resources or services. Amortization is valuable when the commitment period extends beyond the granularity of the source report.

A collection of geographically separated locations containing a data center or cluster of data centers. Each availability zone (AZ) should have its own power, cooling, and networking, to provide redundancy and fault tolerance.

A charge that serves as the basis for invoicing. It includes the total amount of fees and discounts, signifying a monetary obligation. Valuable when reconciling cash outlay with incurred expenses is required, such as cost allocation, budgeting, and invoice reconciliation.

A container for resources and/or services that are billed together in an invoice. A billing account may have sub accounts, all of whose costs are consolidated and invoiced to the billing account.

An identifier that represents the currency that a charge for resources and/or services was billed in.

The time window that an organization receives an invoice for, inclusive of the start date and exclusive of the end date. It is independent of the time of usage and consumption of resources and services.

A pricing approach where the cost of a particular resource or service is determined based on predefined quantities or tiers of usage. In these scenarios, the Pricing Unit and the corresponding Pricing Quantity can be different from the Consumed Unit and Consumed Quantity.

A capacity reservation is an agreement that secures a dedicated amount of resources or services for a specified period. This ensures the reserved capacity is always available and accessible, even if it's not fully utilized. Customers are typically charged for the reserved capacity, regardless of actual consumption.

A row in a FOCUS-compatible cost and usage dataset.

The time window for which a charge is effective, inclusive of the start date and exclusive of the end date. The charge period for continuous usage should match the time granularity of the dataset (e.g., 1 hour for hourly, 1 day for daily). The charge period for a non-usage charge with time boundaries should match the period of eligibility.

A company or organization that provides remote access to computing resources, infrastructure, or applications for a fee.

A customer's agreement to either spend a defined monetary amount or consume a specific quantity of resources or services over a specified period.

A billing discount model that offers reduced rates on preselected SKUs in exchange for an obligated usage or spend amount over a specified period. Commitment discount purchases, made upfront and/or with recurring monthly payments are amortized evenly across predefined charge periods (i.e., hourly), and unused amounts cannot be carried over to subsequent charge periods. Commitment discounts are publicly available to customers without special contract arrangements.

A feature of commitment discounts that may further transform the predetermined amount of usage purchased or consumed based on additional, service-provider-specific requirements.

A collection of agreed terms between a service provider and a customer.

A specific term within a contract that defines a measurable obligation agreed upon by a provider and a customer, such as a minimum spend or usage over an agreed period of time.

The agreed-upon unit price for a single Pricing Unit of the associated SKU, inclusive of negotiated discounts, if present, and exclusive of any other discounts. This price is denominated in the Billing Currency.

A charge to correct cost or usage data in a previously invoiced billing period.

A financial incentive or allowance granted by a service provider unrelated to other past/current/future charges.

An abbreviated term for dataset instance artifact.

A specific implementation of a FOCUS dataset provided by a data generator. A Data Generator may provide multiple dataset instances of the same FOCUS dataset, each with different properties such as time granularity or differing custom column inclusions. For example, the same 'FOCUS Cost and Usage' FOCUS dataset may be provided at an hourly or daily time granularity by a Data Generator. Each would be a distinct Dataset Instance.

A physical representation of a specific dataset instance delivered by a data generator.

A specification-defined categorical attribute that provides context or categorization to billing data.

The amortized cost of the charge after applying all reduced rates, discounts, and the applicable portion of relevant, prepaid purchases (one-time or recurring) that covered this charge.

A Date/Time Format value that is not contained within the ending bound of a time period.

A tag with one tag value chosen from a set of possible tag values after being processed by a set of service-provider-defined or user-defined rules.

An open-source specification that defines requirements for billing data.

A structured collection of columns that conforms to the BCP14 criteria established by FOCUS. All columns included must be defined in the FOCUS Columns section of the specification.

In addition to these standardized columns, data generators may include custom columns (prefixed with x_) where additional context is needed beyond what is captured in the defined FOCUS columns. If custom columns introduce record-splitting (i.e., a single original charge results in multiple rows), the data generator is responsible for ensuring that all cost and quantity metrics still meet the aggregation and consistency rules required by the specification.

The collection of datasets are designed to provide billing insight, additional context, metadata, mapping, or enrichment information that enhances the interpretability or completeness.

A Date/Time Format value that is contained within the beginning bound of a time period.

A category of compute resources that can be paused or terminated by the CSP within certain criteria, often advertised at reduced unit pricing when compared to the equivalent non-interruptible resource.

A common acronym for JavaScript Object Notation, a data format codified in ECMA-404 as a standard for human-readable, serializable data objects. This data format is used in FOCUS to communicate multiple pieces of information about a charge (tags, properties, etc.) in a single column.

The suggested service-provider-published unit price for a single Pricing Unit of the associated SKU, exclusive of any discounts. This price is denominated in the Billing Currency.

A company or organization that provides outsourced management and support of a range of IT services, such as network infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and more.

A FOCUS-defined column that provides numeric values, allowing for aggregation operations such as arithmetic operations (sum, multiplication, averaging etc.) and statistical operations.

A government-issued currency (e.g., US dollars, Euros).

A contractual agreement where a customer commits to specific spend or usage goals over a specified period in exchange for discounted rates across varying SKUs. Unlike commitment discounts, negotiated discounts are typically more customized to customer's accounts, can be utilized at varying frequencies, and may overlap with commitment discounts.

A service that is available and provided immediately or as needed, without requiring a pre-scheduled appointment or prior arrangement. In cloud computing, virtual machines can be created and terminated as needed, i.e., on demand.

The charge that existed prior to an operation. This is used in the context of Data Generator-Calculated Split Cost Allocation to identify the charge that existed prior to the application of Data Generator-Calculated Split Cost Allocation to produce allocated charges.

Pascal Case (PascalCase, also known as UpperCamelCase) is a format for identifiers which contain one or more words meaning the words are concatenated together with no delimiter and the first letter of each word is capitalized.

A time window, with a specifically defined start and end date/time.

A long and often painful conversation had by the FOCUS contributors. Sometimes the name of a thing that we could not yet name. No starchy root vegetables were harmed during the production of this specification. We thank potato for its contribution in the creation of this specification.

An individual who performs FinOps within an organization to maximize the business value of using cloud and cloud-like services.

A comprehensive list of prices offered by a service provider.

A return of funds that have previously been charged.

A unique component that incurs a charge.

A row in a FOCUS-compatible cost and usage dataset.

An offering that can be purchased from a service provider, and can include many types of usage or other charges; eg., a cloud database service may include compute, storage, and networking charges.

A construct composed of the common properties of a product offering associated with one or many SKU Prices.

A pricing construct that encompasses SKU properties (e.g., functionality and technical specifications), along with core stable pricing details for a particular SKU, while excluding dynamic or negotiable pricing elements such as unit price amounts, currency (and related exchange rates), temporal validity (e.g., effective dates), and contract- or negotiation-specific factors (e.g., contract or account identifiers, and negotiable discounts).

A sub account is an optional service-provider-supported construct for organizing resources and/or services connected to a billing account. Sub accounts must be associated with a billing account as they do not receive invoices.

A metadata label assigned to a resource to provide information about it or to categorize it for organizational and management purposes.

A Resource or Service-Provider-defined construct for grouping resources and/or other Service-Provider-defined construct that a Tag can be assigned to.

An agreement specified on a contract.

A proprietary currency (e.g., credits, tokens) issued by service providers and independent of government regulation.