Getting Started with CerteroX Cloud Management

This article explains how the product is organized and what you can do in each area. It is not an implementation plan. Use it to understand the workspace and where to find the capabilities you need.

Navigation at a Glance

CerteroX Cloud Management is arranged around the FinOps lifecycle: Inform, Optimize, and Operate, with a central Settings area. The left navigation reflects these areas and their key pages.

Inform

Build a reliable view of cloud cost and usage that everyone can trust.

Cost Explorer

• Analyze spend and usage by account, subscription, project, service, region, and tag.

• Switch between daily, monthly, and custom time ranges.

• Save and share filtered views for consistent reporting.

Cost Pools & Allocation

• Group spend by products, teams, or environments.

• Use assignment rules to apportion shared or unattributed costs.

• Review allocation completeness and address gaps.

Tag Health

• See coverage for required keys and value formats.

• Identify non‑compliant resources and owners.

Exports & Dashboards

• Publish executive summaries and schedule data extracts for Finance and BI.

Result A single source of truth for showback and variance analysis.

Optimize

Turn information into cost‑efficient choices.

Resource Optimization

• Find idle, orphaned, or over‑sized resources with quantified impact.

• Compare right‑size options and apply changes through your cloud tools.

Rate Optimization

• Evaluate Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and committed‑use discounts.

• Model coverage, term lengths, and expected break‑even.

Schedules

• Reduce non‑production costs with start/stop calendars.

• Apply schedules to groups of resources and monitor savings.

Anomalies

• Detect unusual spend patterns early.

• Route alerts to owners for rapid triage.

Result Lower ongoing spend while maintaining service quality.

Operate

Embed governance so improvements persist.

Budgets

• Set thresholds by pool, team, or application.

• Track progress and trigger notifications at defined levels.

Policies

• Enforce required tag keys and value rules.

• Monitor new resource compliance from day one.

Roles & Access

• Use role‑based permissions for Finance, Engineering, and Admins.

• Support multi‑tenant scenarios for MSPs and large enterprises.

Runbooks & Auditability

• Standardize month‑end reconciliations and exports.

• Maintain an audit trail of configuration and data loads.

Result Predictable, transparent financial operations across clouds.

Settings

Centralized configuration for data, identity, and policy.

• Identity & Access: SSO and role assignments.

• Cloud Connectors: Status and data freshness for AWS, Azure, and GCP.

• Tag & Allocation Policies: Required keys, formats, and assignment rules.

• Budgets & Alerts: Thresholds, anomaly sensitivity, and recipients.

• Data & Exports: Currency, retention, and scheduled destinations.

Key Terms

• Cost Pool: A logical grouping used for allocation and reporting (e.g., product, team).

• Allocation Rule: Logic that assigns shared or unattributed costs.

• Tag Policy: A rule that defines required keys and value formats.