Hi team, a big discussion at my company right now is how to effectively spread the cost of shared services to other cost centers for showback/chargeback activities. We lean heavily into GCP for cloud so as an example we have kubernetes clusters and a data lake that numerous teams leverage for their applications. The problem we run into is that Google doesn't do resource level cost and usage reports like AWS. So we basically get a handful of line items related to the service or SKU for the single project in which the cluster resides. 
So I guess my question is-Can anyone point me to any documentation, best practices, or strategies for shared cloud cost allocation?
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
#CostingStandard(CT-Foundation)

Hi @Jason Jackson, my initial reaction was to see if there were any other data points that showed app usage and use that and if not, maybe look at sending the cost using a percentage of the sum - biggest app/user gets the biggest slice.  But bounced your question off some smarter folks and they suggested checking this out 👉 https://www.finops.org/projects/identifying-shared-costs/.  Hope this helps!

Original Message:
Sent: 11-18-2022 12:57
From: Jason Jackson
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi team, a big discussion at my company right now is how to effectively spread the cost of shared services to other cost centers for showback/chargeback activities. We lean heavily into GCP for cloud so as an example we have kubernetes clusters and a data lake that numerous teams leverage for their applications. The problem we run into is that Google doesn't do resource level cost and usage reports like AWS. So we basically get a handful of line items related to the service or SKU for the single project in which the cluster resides.
So I guess my question is-Can anyone point me to any documentation, best practices, or strategies for shared cloud cost allocation?
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
#CostingStandard(CT-Foundation)

Hi Jenny, thank you for your response!
So, I guess your first point is probably how I should have worded my question. I'm pretty familiar with developing allocation models and if the data is easy to pull I would probably be able to throw it into a shared services model and gain some insights that way. I should have asked more specifically how  and what data is being pulled to generate models/allocations. I was wondering if there are any standard queries/instructions that anyone is aware of to assist with common shared services like logging, clusters, data lakes, security tools, etc.
So delving into the k8s cluster example-we had an excess logging issue and had to manually dig into the containers to determine which namespaces/pods were putting out excessive logs and turn the services down. Stemming from that conversation was "how do we make the individual business units/cost centers accountable for these overages when there are a dozen cost centers with containers in this cluster?" And while I have no doubt I could write a quick query to pull this detail from GCP I would feel much better knowing we were following some sort of standard set out by Apptio/TBM or at least someone who has been through the pain and is willing to share lessons learned :)
Let me know if I need to expand on anything else and hopefully I'm making sense anyways!
Original Message:
Sent: 11-19-2022 10:53
From: Jenny Franklin
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi @Jason Jackson, my initial reaction was to see if there were any other data points that showed app usage and use that and if not, maybe look at sending the cost using a percentage of the sum - biggest app/user gets the biggest slice.  But bounced your question off some smarter folks and they suggested checking this out 👉 https://www.finops.org/projects/identifying-shared-costs/.  Hope this helps!

Original Message:
Sent: 11-18-2022 12:57
From: Jason Jackson
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi team, a big discussion at my company right now is how to effectively spread the cost of shared services to other cost centers for showback/chargeback activities. We lean heavily into GCP for cloud so as an example we have kubernetes clusters and a data lake that numerous teams leverage for their applications. The problem we run into is that Google doesn't do resource level cost and usage reports like AWS. So we basically get a handful of line items related to the service or SKU for the single project in which the cluster resides.
So I guess my question is-Can anyone point me to any documentation, best practices, or strategies for shared cloud cost allocation?
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
#CostingStandard(CT-Foundation)

Hello @Jason Jackson
Our allocation of GCP costs is at the project level. We don't dig into the details or shared services. Ditto for AWS.
We do for Azure, which will become our main CSP. For now, it's based on tags, but we haven't agreed how to identify those shared costs yet. I'll write more when ready, by the looks of it, sometime in 2023.​

------------------------------
Regards, Guillermo
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 16:29
From: Jason Jackson
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi Jenny, thank you for your response!
So, I guess your first point is probably how I should have worded my question. I'm pretty familiar with developing allocation models and if the data is easy to pull I would probably be able to throw it into a shared services model and gain some insights that way. I should have asked more specifically how  and what data is being pulled to generate models/allocations. I was wondering if there are any standard queries/instructions that anyone is aware of to assist with common shared services like logging, clusters, data lakes, security tools, etc.
So delving into the k8s cluster example-we had an excess logging issue and had to manually dig into the containers to determine which namespaces/pods were putting out excessive logs and turn the services down. Stemming from that conversation was "how do we make the individual business units/cost centers accountable for these overages when there are a dozen cost centers with containers in this cluster?" And while I have no doubt I could write a quick query to pull this detail from GCP I would feel much better knowing we were following some sort of standard set out by Apptio/TBM or at least someone who has been through the pain and is willing to share lessons learned :)
Let me know if I need to expand on anything else and hopefully I'm making sense anyways!
Original Message:
Sent: 11-19-2022 10:53
From: Jenny Franklin
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi @Jason Jackson, my initial reaction was to see if there were any other data points that showed app usage and use that and if not, maybe look at sending the cost using a percentage of the sum - biggest app/user gets the biggest slice.  But bounced your question off some smarter folks and they suggested checking this out 👉 https://www.finops.org/projects/identifying-shared-costs/.  Hope this helps!

Original Message:
Sent: 11-18-2022 12:57
From: Jason Jackson
Subject: Shared Services Allocation Strategies for Cloud Costs?

Hi team, a big discussion at my company right now is how to effectively spread the cost of shared services to other cost centers for showback/chargeback activities. We lean heavily into GCP for cloud so as an example we have kubernetes clusters and a data lake that numerous teams leverage for their applications. The problem we run into is that Google doesn't do resource level cost and usage reports like AWS. So we basically get a handful of line items related to the service or SKU for the single project in which the cluster resides.
So I guess my question is-Can anyone point me to any documentation, best practices, or strategies for shared cloud cost allocation?
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
#CostingStandard(CT-Foundation)