Cloudability Business mapping

Edit online

What are Business Mappings?

Business Mapping is a rule-based engine that categorizes cloud spending to the specific taxonomy of the business, enabling you to optimize the unit economics of a given application, services or business unit.

The inability to automatically overlay business structures on top of cloud spend creates a disconnect between IT, finance and line of business teams. This difference in cloud language leads to project delays, slower migrations and less organizational confidence in cloud. Often, cloud infrastructure tags or labels are tied to engineering requirements, not business or finance measurement or chargeback needs.

Why do you use Business Mappings?

With Business Mapping feature, you can create a special type of synthetic dimension that once configured. Then, you can utilize this throughout Cloudability. Custom dimensions created using Business Mapping statements are called Business Dimensions. You can use these dimensions to map to concepts within your business, instead of being direct cloud or billing concepts.

These business dimensions have similar properties to vendor tags but with far more flexibility. There's a good chance that some of your mappings will partially rely on vendor tags.

Business Mapping has inbuilt dexterity. You can use them to overlay on top of your cloud spend, to work out a strategy to map them, and then to implement within Cloudability.

Use cases

Here are some example use cases:
  • Compliance - For example, identify each cost item as compliant or not based on attributes like tags, location, or type.
  • Classify work status as Project or Business As Usual to deliver visibility to project managers.
  • Separating cloud cost that is COGS versus operating expenses for our accounting needs.
  • Providing a dimension that delivers a complete and accurate chargeback for the entire business.
  • Improving allocation for show back by having rules that allocate costs that aren't or can't be tagged.

The rules engine that drives this feature is equipped with sophisticated logic capabilities, and individual rules can be based on pretty much all of the important attributes that vendors supply with the billing and usage data. These attributes include obvious vendor-supplied things like tags, account names, region, service names, but we also allow you to include attributes like usage family and lease type which are enhanced dimensions provided by Cloudability.

How does a Business Dimension work?

Evaluated at ingestion

When Cloudability ingests the detailed billing data from cloud vendors, Apptio evaluates each cost line item against the Business Mapping statements for your configured Business Dimensions. If you have a programming background, you can think of the list of statements as similar to a case statement. As soon as there's a match, then the name of the statement itself is evaluated and the resultant value used to populate the Business Dimension for that item.

This dimension name can be a string that you provide or can also be dynamically set to an attribute of the cost item itself (such as a tag value).
Note: When a fresh billing dataset is delivered by your cloud vendor (a regular event), Cloudability will automatically pick up any changes or additions you make to your Business Mapping statements. To have historic months reflect the updated rules, reach out to support or your TAM.

Think of a good name

Every business dimension you set up requires a name. Think deeply about what the business concept is that you're trying to share and a name that people will quickly make sense of. You're giving a name to the dimension as it will appear in reports and throughout the rest of Cloudability.

Default value

You need to set a default value. This is the value the Business Dimension will inherit if none of the statements you declare a match. Some obvious options would be Unallocated , Unknown , Non Compliant , or Not Set . As you build out your Business Dimensions, you'll likely find some patterns emerge that help you with knowing a good default value.

It's about matching with statements

Every statement has two components:
  1. What is the name for the statement, i.e. the value for the Business Dimension if the cost items happen to match.
  2. An expression for what to match against with the cost line item. This expression can involve complex boolean logic, has a very comprehensive list of operators, and can be applied against all the important attributes of the cost items.

How to set up Business Mappings?

To create a new business mapping:

  1. Select New Business Dimension .

  2. On the Business Mapping page, select the Settings icon next to the newly created dimension > Select Edit Business Mapping .

  3. Click Add a statement .
  4. Put a name of the statement > Select the Dimension as Account ID and Operator as equals . Choose a value from the Select Value drop down > Click Save .

Listing and reviewing business dimensions

From the Business Mappings home page, you can see a list of all the business dimensions you have set up and there are a variety of actions you can take. You can set up a maximum of 10 business dimensions.

Editing or creating a business dimension

Most of your interactions on this page will be with managing business metric statements for your business dimensions. That is adding, editing, or deleting statements that form the backbone of any mapping. We’ll cover the key elements of any statement in the following sections.

Options for the Name

As mentioned earlier, the name you supply when crafting any statement will become the value for the Business Dimension if the match component returns true. You have two options for the name itself. You could just enter a static string.

You can also create a Dynamic Dimension Name by selecting the Pencil icon next to the name.

Then, you'll receive a list of dimensions to choose from which includes tags and many other familiar items. The point of this capability is that on a match, the Business Dimension can take the value of any attribute of the cost item itself. A good example of how to use this dynamic aspect would be something like If Tag A exists, then the Business Dimension should assume Tag A's value . The next statement would then likely involve what to do given Tag A doesn't exist.

Operators

Using the Business Mapping UI, you'll have a vast array of operators to test the logic of your statement. Below shows some of the examples which include operators like greater than which can be handy for testing against things like dates. Choose an operator that makes your statement as straightforward as possible. Using our API, you'll have some additional options including regular expressions.

Boolean Logic

Within an individual statement, you can group expressions together using OR operators and combine with AND operators to get the exact logical outcome to match your business rules. Below is a very basic example:

How can I use API to extract data / Update BMs?

You can use Cloudability APIs to extract and update Business Mappings (BMs). API documentations to extract or update the Business Mappings is available on the Business Mappings Endpoint topic.

How Can I Create Business mapping rule with multiple statements and expressions?

Cloudability allows you to create your own custom dimensions using Business Mappings which is a rule-based engine, where a rule can have more than one statement. Within an individual statement, you can group expressions together using OR operators and combine with AND operators to get the exact logical outcome to match your business rules.

Values of more than one expression in the statement can return True, the final evaluated value would depend on AND/OR operator. e.g. There are two expressions: Exp1 and Exp2

If Exp1 = True and Exp2 = True then Exp1 AND Exp2 would return True and Exp1 OR Exp2 would return True

If Exp1 = True and Exp2 = False or vice-versa then Exp1 AND Exp2 would return False and Exp1 OR Exp2 would return True

If Exp1 = False and Exp2 = False then Exp1 AND Exp2 would return False and Exp1 OR Exp2 would return False

How can I read /access the logic of BMs

Navigate to Organize > Business Mappings. Business mappings list will be is displayed. Click the gear icon to edit business mappings. This displays the statements used in the logic of Business Mappings. Further, you can use the down arrow icon to see the statement rule expression.

Dimensions and Metrics FAQ

How do various cost metrics align to different use cases?

Cloudability supports the following fivecommon Cost Metrics:

Cost(List), Cost(Total), Cost(Adjusted), Cost(Amortized) and Cost(Adjusted Amortized).

The most appropriate use case for each cost metric depends on the specific requirements of the business. It is important to carefully consider the business needs and goals when selecting the appropriate metric.

Can we prevent users from seeing certain dimensions or metrics within Cloudability?

Currently, users cannot be prevented from seeing a certain dimensions or metrics within the Cloudability. By default, all the users would be able to see all the dimensions or metrics in Cloudability.