[Proposal] Add support for describing different types of usage of a single product.

[AWS-ZachErdman]

Type

Type of issue: Dimension Normalized? No

Description

Cloud providers often charge customers for multiple types of operations for the same service (e.g., data transfer and data storage fees for an Object Storage service). It’s important for cloud customers to be able to clearly understand when they are being charged for each type of service operation.

Currently, the FOCUS spec provides the SKU ID column for cloud providers which can be used to differentiate between different types of operations for the same Service. However, a SKU is not human-interpretable, so customers will need additional information in order to understand a given line item charge. Instead of having each cloud provider create their own column to describe the type of usage in a line item (linked with the SKU), the FOCUS specification should standardize on a Column that provides the human-interpretable language describing the type of usage.

We suggest adding a column named “UsageType” to address this use case. A draft proposal of the column is provided below:

Column Proposal

Explanation
 The UsageType column describes what type of operation is being charged for in the given line item. For a given time interval, a single cloud resource may be charged for multiple types of usage. This column enables cloud customers to understand what usage is being charged for in a format that is more human-interpretable than the SKU.



The Usage Type column has the following requirements: 1.     UsageType SHOULD be present in the billing data 2.     Line items with the same SkuId MUST NOT have different usage type values

Sample data for Amazon S3 USE1-APS5-AWS-In-Bytes, Requests-Tier1

Description The type of usage being charged for in a given line item.

Column Constraints Column type : dimension Column required: FALSE Allows nulls: TRUE Data type: string Value format: not specified

Definition of done

• [ ] Rationalize vendor-neutral, cross-cloud naming
• [ ] Complete spec template and include naming (code name, display name), constraints, guidelines, compatibility with major providers etc.