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.
Bring Your Own Runner (BYOR)
The Provisioning model where Terraform executes in a tenant-owned Azure DevOps pipeline or GitHub Actions workflow. Reply CMP governs immutable operation input, policy and evidence while the tenant owns execution identities and state. See Configure runners and Terraform state.
Catalog Item (legacy term)
The older name for a Terraform resource template. New Provisioning uses registered Modules with immutable, approved Module Versions. See Module registry.
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 within a specific Deployment (e.g., default, prod,
dev). The first Connection of a given provider type added to a Deployment is
automatically aliased default; additional Connections of the same type require a
custom alias. Aliases map directly to Terraform provider aliases.
Deployment
A named Reply CMP workspace that groups Resources, cloud Connections and aliases, one
tenant runner and one protected Terraform state location. It is not a cloud resource.
Statuses are Valid, Error, NeedsAttention and Tainted. See
Manage Deployments and operations.
Draft (Resource status)
A Resource status indicating that metadata has been saved or modified but not yet
applied. The live cloud resource is unchanged until the next Apply on the Deployment.
Draft is a Resource-level status — Deployments do not have a Draft status.
latestAppliedMetadata
A snapshot of a Resource’s configuration properties (metadata) captured at the last
successful Deployment apply. Used to detect drift: if metadata differs from
latestAppliedMetadata, the Resource has been edited since the last apply. On apply
failure, neither field changes.
Drift
When live cloud configuration differs from the desired configuration and state used by Terraform. A fresh Plan exposes the differences. Review them before deciding whether to restore desired configuration or perform a controlled state reconciliation.
Resource (Provisioning)
A single cloud service instance — for example, an Azure Virtual Network, an AWS S3
bucket, or a GCP Cloud SQL database — defined by typed metadata within a Deployment.
Resources are created from approved module versions and have their own status (Draft,
Latest, Error or Deleted) independent of the Deployment status. See
Add Resources from approved modules.
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.
Exact Saved Plan
The immutable Terraform binary plan whose SHA-256, JSON digest, source manifest and policy fingerprint are recorded by Reply CMP. Apply executes this same plan and cannot replace it with a hidden re-plan. See Manage Deployments and operations.
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.
Module (Provisioning)
A stable record for one Terraform module at one repository path. It includes provider, source and credential metadata but does not change when another version is approved. See Module registry.
Module Version
An immutable semantic version bound to an exact source commit, input schema, provider locks and content digests. Only approved versions are available for new Resource pins.
Policy Fingerprint
A deterministic digest identifying the exact guardrail versions evaluated for one Terraform plan. It prevents a policy decision from being reused for a different plan.
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 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 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 recording Terraform’s managed-object state. New Deployments keep it in a tenant-owned Azure Blob container under a deterministic per-Deployment key. Reply CMP does not proxy or return the raw file. See Configure runners and Terraform state.