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Cost Management Requirements

This guide summarizes the prerequisites for enabling Cloudaware Cost Management. Use it as a checklist when planning onboarding or expanding coverage to new clouds and business units.

Prerequisites​

Before you start using Cost Management, ensure that you have the following:

  • An active Cloudaware account with CMDB and core cloud integrations enabled.
  • A Cloudaware Administrator user with permission to:
    • Configure billing integrations.
    • Manage roles, permissions, and sharing rules for cost objects.

Cloud Billing Prerequisites​

For each in‑scope cloud provider:

  • Billing exports enabled
  • Stable storage destinations
    • AWS: S3 buckets for CUR/Data Exports.
    • Azure: Blob Storage or Cost Management export targets.
    • GCP: BigQuery datasets or Cloud Storage buckets.
  • Least‑privilege access for Cloudaware
    • IAM roles, service principals, or service accounts with read‑only access to billing exports and required metadata.

See also: Cloud Billing Sources

Tagging and Allocation Prerequisites​

To get value from Cost Management beyond raw spend:

  • Define a minimal tagging standard for allocation (for example, Application, Owner, Environment, CostCenter, Customer). See Tagging Strategy.
  • Ensure that:
    • New resources are tagged correctly via templates and pipelines.
    • High‑spend accounts and services have reasonable tag coverage.
  • Plan how you will map accounts, subscriptions, projects, and tags to business dimensions (BUs, products, customers). See Allocation and Business Mapping.

You can start with partial coverage and improve over time using the Tag Cleanup Campaign playbook.

Access, Security, and Governance​

Because Cost Management exposes financial data:

  • Decide which personas (FinOps, finance, platform, engineering, executives) need access to which scopes and levels of detail.
  • Configure RBAC and sharing so that:
    • Detailed billing objects and sensitive fields are limited to appropriate users.
    • Broader audiences see summarized dashboards and statements only.
  • Align data retention and governance for billing data with your organization’s financial and compliance policies.

See Operations, RBAC, and Data Governance.

Networking Considerations​

Most billing exports use cloud‑native storage (S3, Blob, BigQuery) that Cloudaware reaches over standard outbound network paths. Ensure:

  • Cloudaware collectors or integration endpoints can reach:
    • The provider billing APIs.
    • The storage locations where billing exports are written.
  • Any required proxies or firewall rules are configured according to your security standards.

If you use private or on‑premise locations in your billing workflows, coordinate with your Cloudaware representative to design appropriate secure connectivity (for example, via TunHub).

Organizational Readiness​

Finally, confirm that:

  • FinOps, finance, and platform teams have clear owners for:
    • Allocation models and shared‑cost rules.
    • Budgets, forecasts, and anomaly response.
    • Optimization and commitment planning.
  • Stakeholders agree on initial scopes and KPIs to focus on once Cost Management is live.

This alignment will make it easier to turn Cost Management insights into consistent, measurable outcomes.

Next Steps​

IAM/RBAC, CMDB onboarding, Integrations