FOCUS FAQs

FOCUS is a separate Project supported by the FinOps Foundation (which is itself a Project of the Linux Foundation). The FOCUS Project manages the intellectual property and licensing rights associated with contributions to and use of the FOCUS Specification.

The FinOps Foundation financially supports FOCUS for its operational needs, and provides program management, contractor, and staff support. Many FOCUS Contributing Members and Steering Committee Members are involved in both Projects.

The FinOps Foundation also develops content such as FOCUS Validators, FOCUS Converters, training courses, certification courses, and other content related to the Specification. These resources benefit the FinOps Foundation community and assist with the adoption of FOCUS by the FinOps Foundation community.

FOCUS is led by its own Steering Committee and follows these Operating Procedures.

The Specification is driven by open governance to ensure not only neutrality, but also to protect it from IP infringement claims and make it safe for broad adoption. Each release must pass through a rigorous process of community contribution, review, approvals, ratification, and IP review. This is all done in the open via Github.

FOCUS is a Joint Development Foundation (JDF) Project. JDF is part of the Linux Foundation network and handles the formation and governance of open Projects. Using JDF allows open Projects with multiple types of technical deliverables (source code, technical reports, specifications, and data) like FOCUS to form quickly and collaborate under a standard set of guidelines and legal frameworks.

Being a Member of the FOCUS Project means you have signed the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and established a relationship with the Project, its goals, and the Specification. Members of the Project are companies or organizations who allow their employees to participate as Contributors under the terms of the CLA. You do not need to be a FinOps Foundation member in order to be a FOCUS Member, and there is no cost to contribute to FOCUS.

Your organization should first sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). The CLA is a legal agreement between the Contributor and FOCUS allowing FOCUS to use and license the contribution as part of its work products. If you’re an employee of a company, your company may need to provide you with permission to sign such an agreement, or may need to sign the CLA on your behalf by becoming a Member of FOCUS.

Yes, every contributor to FOCUS outputs must be a Member, and sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA). This can be done by accessing the FOCUS GitHub repository. Any Member organization that has signed the CLA may contribute issues, content, or pull requests to the Project work products.

FOCUS will store and disseminate its work products via GitHub. We are generally planning to use a “hybrid contribution” model, meaning that while changes may be made by contributors’ direction in GitHub, input may also be provided via participation in FOCUS Groups. This input will be entered into GitHub, which will remain the official record of the Specification.

No, membership in FOCUS does not require FinOps Foundation membership. Companies and organizations that sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can designate Contributors to the FOCUS Project.

No, there is no requirement that the representative of a Member Organization be a FinOps Certified Practitioner to contribute to FOCUS, but, in our opinion, it always helps.

Please join the FOCUS User Group.

The FOCUS User Group is a moderated group formed to:

• Create and update Use Cases with SQL queries for Practitioners to use with FOCUS datasets


• Answer questions from FOCUS Project Members about requirements and real-world experience


• Provide feedback on the Specification, and your use of FOCUS datasets including issues, requests for changes, and conformance questions

This practitioner-led, vendor-neutral, interactive, one-hour, virtual discussion forum is for you to get into deep conversations about the FOCUS Project, the FOCUS Specification, FOCUS datasets, and implementing FinOps using FOCUS.

FinOps Practitioners should visit the FOCUS Column Library and the FinOps Use Case Library to get familiar with the columns in the Specification, their definitions, and the data in the columns.

Read more here about how Vendors and FinOps Practitioners can get started with FOCUS.

For vendors, adoption of the FOCUS Specification means:

• Ingesting FOCUS-formatted datasets


• Using FOCUS terms and concepts in your platform’s user interface and reports


• Delivering FOCUS-formatted billing data as an output to your customers


• Demonstrating features and functionality that solve FinOps Use Cases


• Providing clear and transparent documentation of data content and any FOCUS conformance gaps

After the release of an updated version of the FOCUS Specification, it is up to each cloud vendor to determine how and when they will adopt it.

To comply with antitrust laws (see #13 under Project Charter), the FOCUS Project Members cannot know the details of any vendor's implementation plans, including when that vendor expects to support any version of the Specification.

We encourage FinOps Practitioners to communicate your need for FOCUS datasets to your cloud service providers and other cloud vendors by:

1. Downloading the data from cloud service providers who are making it available today. Downloading this data signals to the vendor that customers want this data, and so the vendor should invest in delivering it.

2. Telling vendors directly that you need billing data from them to be delivered in the FOCUS format.