FOCUS column
ServiceCategory
The FOCUS-normalized top-level category of the service, from a fixed list shared across providers: Compute, Storage, Databases, Networking, Analytics, AI and Machine Learning, Security and so on. It is what makes a cross-provider view possible, because each provider’s hundreds of service names fold into a few dozen categories.
Example
AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines and Google Compute Engine all carry ServiceCategory “Compute”, so compute spend can be compared across the three.
Where it comes from, per export
The export column that feeds ServiceCategory in each format the platform ingests, and the transform applied. A format with no row does not carry the column; the value is then absent rather than guessed.
| Export | Source column | Transform |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Data Exports, FOCUS | ServiceCategory | as is |
| Azure Cost Management, FOCUS export | ServiceCategory | as is |
| Azure Cost Details (actual cost) | Not carried | — |
| Azure Cost Details (amortized cost) | Not carried | — |
| Google Cloud detailed billing export | Not carried | — |
How Runcost uses it
Runcost’s multi-cloud statements group by service category first, and it derives the category by a crosswalk when an export does not supply one.
Related columns
About this reference
Generated from the column contract and provider rules that Runcost runs, and written by Faisal Saleem, Founder. The normative definitions are in the FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS specification at focus.finops.org.