Travelling to San Diego from Europe for my third FinOpsX took nearly 24 hours of flights and airports. As soon as I landed at San Diego International Airport and turned on my mobile phone, messages started coming in. The FOCUS crew was sorting out where to meet for our first get-together in over a year. Oh yes, it felt like coming back home!

The next morning, I was amped up for a special event on my schedule, happening before the official start of X (short for FinOpsX, as the FinOps Foundation members refer to it) – the first FOCUS in-person workshop.

While more insights into FOCUS and the workshop will be shared in an upcoming blog, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on FinOps X 2024 in general. Recordings of the keynote and breakout sessions have already started appearing on the FinOps Foundation YouTube channel. I look forward to watching the sessions I missed and those that I managed to attend but consider worth listening to again, and I recommend you check them out as well and derive your own key takeaways. Here are some of mine.

“There are no runners”

Continuously evolving technology and trends, new demands, shifts in the organization’s needs and strategies, and various other factors significantly impact how we implement and perform FinOps practices. Over the past few years, these changes have been substantial to the extent that the 2024 revision of the FinOps Framework resembles a major makeover, aimed at better reflecting and aligning with additional demands and current best practices. Consequently, we are all constantly reassessing, adapting, and facing numerous challenges in our efforts to become or remain ‘runners’ in supporting individual FinOps capabilities.

On that note, seeing the ‘There are no runners!’ sticker and hearing J.R. Storment deliver that same message during the Day 1 keynote was a huge relief. The notion that we are not expected to be highly proficient in all categories at all times allows us to take a deep breath and focus on the lanes that are most critical for our respective organizations.

In light of those constant changes and challenges they might bring, I advise you to check out both the keynote and the breakout session by Elly Rauch from Disney, not just for tips on forecasting but also for inspiration if you ever find yourself in a position to consider ‘Burning Down the Past.’ If that’s the case, bring her energy to the table.

FOCUS Version 1.0

Standardization of cost and usage data has been a long time coming, and about 14 months ago, FinOps Practitioners, Providers, and FinOps vendors officially joined forces to create a vendor-neutral, standardized cost and usage dataset, resulting in FOCUS – FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification.

FOCUS was one of the key topics last year during FinOps X 2023, and this year, at day 1 keynote J.R. Storment announced the General Availability (GA) of the FOCUS Version 1.0, and that was just the beginning. Several keynote and breakout sessions showcasing that FOCUS Version 1.0 is already in action followed.

The very next day, one after another, Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure announced their native support for FOCUS v1.0, while Oracle OCI had announced native support a few weeks earlier. To stay informed about all the FinOps-related news and updates provided by Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, check out the Cloud Feature Announcements in the day 2 keynote.

Thanks to Amber Gregorio, Udam Dewaraja, and Mike Fuller from the FinOps Foundation, we had the opportunity to take a peek under the hood, where they highlighted the various advantages that FOCUS provides to all parties involved – Practitioners, Providers, and FinOps Vendors. Kudos to Clément Leroux from GitLab and Pavan Tallapragada and Nick Konstantinou from Zoom for embarking on FOCUS adoption adventure and sharing their experience with the community. To see it for yourself, look for the recording of their breakout sessions “FOCUS & Gitlab” and “FOCUS & Zoom”, respectively.

And for those looking to gain practical hands-on experience in using the FOCUS dataset, Mike Fuller, Vasilio Markanastasakis, and Rob Martin from the FinOps Foundation facilitated FOCUS Workshop chalk talk sessions. Since, unfortunately, recordings of the chalk talk sessions will not be available, I suggest you check out the FOCUS Column Library and FinOps Use Cases available at focus.finops.org. In my next blog dedicated to FOCUS, I plan to delve into this in a bit more detail.

AI for FinOps and FinOps for AI

As expected, AI, traditional ML and Generative AI were among the main topics. Talking about AI for FinOps, most of us are already relaying on ML for Forecasting and Anomaly Detection, major CSPs and some other major players have also integrated Generative AI into their products and there is an air of excitement to seeing how that improves their offerings.

As you explore how your organization and FinOps practices could benefit from leveraging emerging AI technologies, remember that it comes with associated costs.  Make sure to look for sessions addressing FinOps for AI aspect as well, and do not underestimate the effort and attention it will require

What comes next

I anticipate that AI, Generative AI, and ML will continue to be hot topics, with Forecasting, Anomaly Detection, and predictable costs remaining primary concerns. This means that efforts are oriented toward making costs predictable, so it ultimately leads to optimization.

As we approach FinOps X Europe 2024 in Barcelona, I foresee Sustainability gaining more momentum, particularly as more companies, especially European, opt for Carbon-aware FinOps. Lastly, while FOCUS members continue developing FOCUS Version 1.1, I look forward to seeing a rapid increase in the adoption and support of FOCUS v.1.0.