Glossary#
Definitions for platform-specific and FinOps terms used throughout the Reply CMP documentation. Alphabetically ordered for quick lookup.
Actual Cost
The cost as it appears on your cloud invoice, recorded on the day the charge occurs. For Reserved Instances purchased upfront, the full amount appears on the purchase date. Compare with Amortised Cost.
Allocation Rule
A rule in FinOps → Allocate that assigns cloud resources to a Group, Environment, or Project in the tenant hierarchy. Rules can match resources by tag, resource type, connection, or other criteria. See Allocate — Assign Cost Ownership.
Amortised Cost
A cloud cost view in which upfront reservation purchases are spread evenly over the commitment term. For example, a €12,000 annual Reserved Instance cost appears as €1,000/month in the Amortised view. Useful for consistent budget tracking. Compare with Actual Cost.
Catalog Item
A pre-defined Terraform template in the Reply CMP service catalog, managed by the platform team. Each catalog item describes a deployable resource type with a configuration schema. See Deploy from Catalog.
CMP Agent
The Reply CMP conversational AI assistant. Available via the chat bubble in the top navigation bar. Can answer questions about cloud resources, costs, and recommendations, and generate HTML reports. See CMP Agent.
Committed Use Discount (CUD)
A GCP pricing mechanism where you commit to using a minimum level of resources (vCPUs, memory) for 1 or 3 years in exchange for a discounted rate. Equivalent to Azure Reserved Instances or AWS Savings Plans. Tracked in FinOps → Optimize → Reservations.
Connection
An authenticated link between Reply CMP and a cloud provider account (Azure subscription, AWS account, or GCP project). All platform operations — discovery, cost ingestion, provisioning, monitoring, and automation — run through connections. See Connect a Provider.
Connection Alias
A short name for a connection used in provisioning templates (e.g., default, prod,
dev). The first connection per provider in a tenant is automatically aliased
default.
Deployment
A resource or set of resources provisioned through the Reply CMP catalog wizard. A deployment has a lifecycle (Draft → Valid → Tainted) and a version history. See Manage Deployments.
Drift
When the live configuration of a provisioned resource differs from the desired state recorded in Reply CMP’s Terraform state. Drift is detected automatically and shown as a “Drift Detected” badge on the deployment card. See Manage Deployments.
Environment
A special type of Group node in the FinOps allocation hierarchy, used to represent
deployment environments (e.g., Production, Staging, Dev). Budgets and automation
policies can be scoped to an Environment. See Organisation Model.
Group
A top-level organisational node in the FinOps allocation hierarchy, representing
business units, teams, or departments (e.g., Engineering, Marketing). Groups contain
Environments and Projects. See Organisation Model.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
A standard protocol for connecting AI language models to external data sources and tools. Reply CMP exposes an MCP server with 11 tools that the CMP Agent uses to query cloud data, trigger operations, and generate reports.
Project
A node in the FinOps allocation hierarchy nested under an Environment, representing a
specific initiative or workload (e.g., WebApp, DataPipeline). Projects are the most
granular allocation level. See Organisation Model.
Quota
A per-tenant limit on the number of platform resources (e.g., max connections, max deployments, max dashboards). Current utilisation vs quota limits are visible in Tenant → Quota Drawer. See ../guides/Tenant/manage-connections.
ReAct Pattern
A reasoning approach for AI agents combining Reasoning and Acting in a loop. The agent thinks about the next action to take, performs it (queries data or calls a tool), observes the result, and repeats until it reaches a conclusion. Used by the Reply CMP AI Savings Estimation agent. See AI Savings Estimation.
Reserved Instance (RI)
An Azure or AWS pricing mechanism where you commit to a specific resource (e.g., a VM size in a region) for 1 or 3 years in exchange for a significant discount over pay-as-you-go rates. Costs appear as either Actual (lump charge on purchase date) or Amortised (spread daily over the term). Tracked in FinOps → Optimize → Reservations.
Savings Plan
An AWS (and Azure) pricing model where you commit to a minimum spend level per hour for 1 or 3 years, in exchange for discounted rates across a flexible range of compute resources. More flexible than Reserved Instances. Tracked in FinOps → Optimize → Reservations.
Stream ID
A unique identifier that links all audit log events for a single entity (a deployment, a connection, a policy, etc.) into a continuous chain. Filter by Stream ID in the Audit Logs to see the full lifecycle of any entity. See ../guides/Tenant/audit-logs.
T-1
Shorthand for “yesterday’s data”. Reply CMP ingests cost data from cloud provider billing APIs daily; the most recent data available is always from the previous day. This means today’s spending will not appear until tomorrow.
Tenant
A Reply CMP workspace shared by a team or organisation. One tenant corresponds to one set of cloud connections, users, groups, and settings. All data is isolated per tenant. See Multi-Cloud Overview.
Terraform State (tfstate)
A file that records the last-known-good state of resources provisioned by Terraform (the IaC engine behind Reply CMP provisioning). The state file is used to detect drift and plan changes. See Manage Deployments.