As cloud adoption accelerates, most modern enterprises find themselves running workloads across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). While this multi-cloud strategy unlocks flexibility, it creates a significant operational burden when it comes to cost visibility.
Each cloud provider has historically delivered billing data in its own proprietary format — making it hard to track, compare, and optimize spend across environments. Earlier also Virtana used to provide cloud cost management dashboard for above 3 clouds by processing legacy cost templates in common billing records now extending support to FOCUS enabled templates.
The Problem: Fragmented Billing, Frustrated Teams
Before FOCUS, here’s what most organizations had to deal with:
This inconsistency meant every cross-cloud FinOps report required:
- Custom ETL pipelines
- Complex field mappings
- Manual normalizationData reconciliation headaches
Enter FOCUS: One Common Billing Format
FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification) is an open-source, vendor-neutral billing schema created by the FinOps Foundation. Its mission is to make cloud cost and usage data:
- Standardized
- Interoperable
- Machine-readable and analytics-ready
FOCUS defines:
- Field names (e.g., usageAmount, serviceName, accountId, pricingUnit)
- Data types and formats
- Required and optional fields
- Time granularity and billing scope
- Resource metadata and tagging structure
This provides a consistent schema across clouds — no matter where the data comes from.
How FOCUS is Integrated in Each Cloud
Here’s how each cloud provider is implementing and supporting the FOCUS template format:
AWS + FOCUS Integration
What AWS Did:
- AWS now supports FOCUS-aligned CUR exports.
- You can configure this directly through the Billing and Cost Management console.
Technical Setup:
- Enable Cost and Usage Reports in AWS.
- Choose Parquet or CSV format.
- Configure schema version to match FOCUS or use a transform job (via AWS Glue or Athena) to convert to FOCUS. Ensure to include Tag keys and values for filtering in Virtana dashboard.
- Export to an S3 bucket.
- Our platform automatically ingests this report via secure S3 access.
What You Get:
- Normalized CUR with FOCUS-aligned field names.
- Compatible tags and dimensions.
Azure + FOCUS Integration
What Azure Did:
- Azure now allows Cost Management exports to align with FOCUS through schema mapping.
Technical Setup:
- In Azure Cost Management, set up scheduled exports.
- Export to an Azure Storage Account in CSV format.
- Use supported export schema version that also includes Tag keys and values for filtering in Virtana dashboard.
- Map these fields to FOCUS specification (via Azure Data Factory or a light ETL step).
- Our platform ingests the export and performs FOCUS normalization.
What You Get:
- Consistent field alignment in Virtana dashboard.
- Unified cost and usage metadata from Azure subscriptions.
GCP + FOCUS Integration
What GCP Did:
- GCP supports Billing Export to BigQuery or Cloud Storage, and FOCUS mapping is possible with minimal transformation.
Technical Setup:
- Enable GCP Billing Export to a BigQuery dataset or GCS bucket.
- Ensure export includes optional labels and custom tags for filtering in Virtana dashboard.
- Use a BigQuery view or Dataform job to map to FOCUS schema.
- Our platform reads directly from BigQuery or GCS and ingests into the unified pipeline.
What You Get:
- GCP billing in FOCUS-aligned structure
- No need to wrangle Google’s native schema manually
Our Platform: Purpose-Built for FOCUS
We are extending our support in ingestion engine to natively understand and process FOCUS-aligned data from all three clouds. Once enabled:
- No custom integration is needed on your end.
- CURs are ingested securely and automatically.
- Costs are normalized across cloud providers.
- A unified dashboard shows your full multi-cloud spend.
- Reporting, budgeting, and forecasting become easy.
We are also extending our support for On-prem cost calculation where user can create FOCUS enabled cost meter cards to generate cost.
One Dashboard. All Clouds. No Guesswork.
With the FOCUS standard in place — and with our platform as the ingestion and visualization layer — you get:
- Granular insights into AWS, Azure, and GCP usage.
- On-prem cost generation based on Focus enabled Meter cards.
- Trend analysis, anomaly detection, and optimization tips.
- Accurate chargeback/showback models.
- Project/team-level drilldowns with full tag support across clouds using Virtana Resource Group.
All without writing a single script or wrangling a single CSV.
The Future is FOCUS-Aligned
FOCUS isn’t just a technical improvement — it’s a strategic enabler. It allows teams to:
- Speak a common language around cost
- Operate with transparency and control
- Drive accountability across departments
- Optimize cloud spend without guesswork
Ready to see how FOCUS can transform your cloud cost visibility.
Whether you’re already exporting CURs or just getting started with FinOps — we make it easy to adopt FOCUS and unify your cloud billing in minutes.
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About the Author
Abhishek Mehta is a Senior Engineering Manager at Virtana, driving innovation in cloud and on-premises cost optimization for SaaS platforms. A technologist at heart, he’s deeply passionate about building great software, exploring data science, and advancing AI and machine learning solutions.
