We’ve talked about the problem (broken tagging). We’ve talked about the solution (Magic Allocation). Now it’s time to talk about why it matters.
Because tagging is just a means to an end. The goal isn’t perfect metadata. The goal is clarity.
Clarity about what’s driving your cloud spend. Clarity about which teams and products create value. Clarity about where to invest, where to optimize, and how to scale with confidence.
And that’s where COGS comes in.
Why COGS Is the Lens That Makes Magic Allocation Work
COGS - Cost of Goods Sold - is the financial line item that represents what it costs to deliver your product or service. And in a world where software is the product, cloud infrastructure is front and center.
If you want to align engineering and finance, this is your common ground. Not budgeting. Not variance reports. COGS.
Because once you can say, "Here’s exactly what it costs us to serve our customers," you unlock a different kind of conversation:
- Engineering gets visibility into what’s driving margin
- Finance gets data they can trust for forecasting and planning
- Leadership gets a clearer picture of how cost scales with growth
And Magic Allocation becomes the engine that makes that alignment possible.
It’s Not Just About Tags. It’s About Trust.
Most teams don’t reject FinOps because they don’t care about cost.
They reject it because they don’t trust the data.
They’ve seen one too many dashboards with mystery spend. One too many “shared” line items that don’t add up. One too many reports that look great in slides but fall apart under questioning.
When engineers tune out, and finance tunes up, everyone loses.
COGS gives us the framework to restore that trust. It connects the dots between infrastructure and revenue. It brings logic to cost attribution. It turns vague questions into quantifiable decisions.
And when you pair that with AI-powered tagging and allocation that’s explainable and consistent, that’s when teams start believing the numbers again.
Why This Isn’t Just About Optimization
Too often, cloud cost conversations get stuck in savings mode. “Cut 10%.” “Reduce waste.” “Rightsize the VM.”
That’s fine. But it’s reactive. And short-sighted.
COGS reframes the conversation. It lets you ask:
- What does it cost us to deliver Feature A versus Feature B?
- Which customer segments are the most expensive to serve?
- How do we price and package in a way that aligns with infrastructure realities?
Those aren’t optimization questions. Those are strategy questions.
And they require tagging and allocation systems that you can trust to reflect reality.
That’s what Magic Allocation is built for.
Where This Goes Next
We didn’t build Magic Allocation to be a tool.
We built it to be a turning point.
Because the truth is, no one wants to manage cloud costs through brittle tagging rules and spreadsheets. What people want is to understand where their money is going, why, and what they can do about it.
That means:
- Richer conversations between engineers and finance
- Deeper visibility into product-level economics
- Smarter decisions at every level of the business
It means putting AI to work where it actually adds value: translating infrastructure reality into financial insight.
And it means anchoring everything in a shared financial foundation - COGS - that turns your cloud cost data into something teams can act on.
You Can Help Build What Comes Next
We’re opening up early access to the teams that see the potential here - the engineers, FinOps leads, and platform owners who are ready to move past reactive cost cutting and toward something more powerful.
If Magic Allocation sounds like the future you’ve been waiting for, we’d love to build it with you.
