Summary:

The 5.1 (2502) release introduces BillOps, a new billing operations module offering flexible configurations, multi-cloud support (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI), and advanced cost visibility. Key enhancements include Billing Plans for dynamic pricing rules, Contracted Cost integration across dashboards, and Margin Analysis for profit insights.

The release also debuts Dimensions, enabling granular cost allocation via logical groupings (e.g., teams, projects).
SecOps and CloudOps updates include compliance widgets, GPT-based tagging, and Jira Service Management integration.

Performance improvements, bug fixes, and deprecated legacy features (e.g., Markup/Discounts) round out the update.

FinOps

BillOps – New Module Summary

• This release introduces a new module called BillOps -- a comprehensive billing operations module designed to provide flexible billing configurations for partners, deep cost visibility, advanced billing reports and data analysis capabilities.
• BillOps is unified and seamless for Multi-Cloud and Multi-Account Types:
  • AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI
  • AWS Management Account, AWS Individual
  • Azure EA, Azure Direct CSP, Azure Indirect CSP customer subscriptions, Azure MCASubscriptions, Azure PayG
  • GCP Parent Billing Accounts, GCP Billing Accounts, GCP Organizations, GCP Projects
  • OCI Tenancies

BillOps – Billing Plans

Billing Plans can be created in the platform to manage common rules for multiple partners, allowing users to more easily scale their billing and cost allocation service. The addition of Billing Plans also includes a new cost metric called Contracted Cost.

• Flexible Pricing Rules: Users can use Billing Plans to define and apply dynamic pricing transformations tailored to business needs.
• Scope Rules Across 20+ Filters: Target pricing rules based on tenant, cloud account, service, region, charge type, and more.
• Cost Metric Targeting: Choose which cost metric to apply adjustments to—List Cost, Unblended Cost, or others.
• Adjustments Supported:
  • Markup: Add a fixed percentage increase.
  • Discount: Apply a reduction to the base rate.
  • Margin: Set pricing based on desired margin over cost.
• Execution Priority: Order multiple rules to control which takes precedence during processing.
• Temporal Flexibility: Rules can be defined for any timeframe up to 37 months in the past or 3 years into the future based on the data.
• Billing Plans for Multi-Partner Scalability: Billing plans enable configuration reuse and streamlined partner-specific logic:
• Manage Shared and VIP Rules: Apply common rules across multiple partners and define exceptions for VIP partners via dependencies.
• Rule Inheritance & Override: Use parent-child constructs to apply base pricing rules and allow for partner/customer-level overrides.

⚠️

Note:

Billing Plans with pricing rule support are available in this release in UI and API. Charge allocation in billing plans is available only via API. The UI will be made available in an upcoming release.

BillOps - FinOps Visibility Enhancements

BillOps introduces enhanced cost insights with more detailed visibility into True/Contracted Costs across hierarchical levels, integrated into key FinOps Visibility features.

• Support for Contracted Cost is now included in:
  • Cost Posture widgets
  • All out of the box dashboards (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI Cost Explorer)
  • User Created Dashboards
• Support for Contracted Cost is also now included in:
  • Billing Inventory
  • Margin Analysis Dashboard
  • Consolidated Charge Markup Report
  • Power BI Analytics

BillOps - Margin Analysis Dashboard

BillOps introduces new Margin metrics for Margin Value and Profit Margin, enabling partners and distributors to analyze and compare their buy price vs sell price, along with applicable margins on a month-over-month/day-over-day/year-over-year basis.

• Margin analysis is now supported through various configured dashboards and widgets, including the following:
  • Trend Widget
  • Cost Summary Widgets
  • Billing Inventory
  • Variation by Dimension Widget
  • Measure by Dimension Widget
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is also now supported for margin visibility in this release. Essentially, if the logged in user does not have access to either of Billed Cost or Contracted Cost, they will not see this option.

BillOps - Cost Optimization with True Cost

• Users can now view potential savings from Cost Optimization Recommendations based on their relevant cost metric (e.g. Contracted Cost). In this release, this applies to both Idle and Orphaned resource recommendations generated by the platform.

⚠️

Note:

The default Contracted Cost metric varies by cloud and account type. For AWS it is Unblended Cost, for Azure CSP it is List Cost, and for all other account types it is Billed Cost. If pricing rules are configured, the Contracted Cost will reflect those rules.

Budget Management Support for Contracted Cost

• Users can now create budgets using different cost metrics — Billed Cost, True Cost (Contracted Cost), and Amortized/Effective Cost.
• Visibility of cost metrics in budgets is governed by RBAC permissions, ensuring users can manage budgets with authorized metrics
• All budget rules and calculations will be based on the selected cost metric.
  Budget detail views will clearly display the chosen cost metric used for calculations.

RBAC on Cost Metrics

• RBAC-based access to cost metrics ensures that users only view authorized data, including True Cost and margin details for account-type dashboards.
• The platform allows all metrics by default. Users can explicitly deny specific cost metrics by cloud provider account types for roles (System or Custom roles) or user groups from a central configuration page under Settings > Identity and access management > Cost metrics.

⚠️

Note:

Users logging in with a role will NOT see denied cost metrics in any of the FinOps Pages. However, please note that Analytics and Reports (old) do not support this yet, but support will be made available in an upcoming release.

Cost Dimensions

This release, the platform is introducing Dimensions – a powerful capability that enables granular organization of cloud cost data using logical groupings such as Teams, Projects, Applications, Business Units, and more.

Dimensions empower both MSP partners and enterprises to apply meaningful business context to their cloud usage and billing data, supporting advanced showback, chargeback, and analytics.

Key features of dimensions are summarized in the points below:

Dimension Creation & Management

• YAML-Based Creation: Define dimensions using Hybrid UI + YAML for automation and version control.
• Time-Bound Versions: Support for defining start and end dates for each version of a dimension.
• Attribute-Driven Grouping: Assign custom attributes (e.g. Owner, AppID, Location) to dimension groups for enriched querying.

Flexible Grouping Rules

• Granular Filters: Grouping rules support over 30+ filter types, enabling precise cost allocation.
• Parent-Child Hierarchies: Define dependencies across dimensions for nested cost mapping (e.g. Application → Team → Department).
• Dynamic Evaluations: No reprocessing of data is needed when groups or versions are updated.

RBAC & Access Control

• Dimension-Level RBAC: Grant or restrict access to entire dimensions.
• Group-Level RBAC: Fine-grained access control at the individual group level using roles or user groups.
• Multi-Tenant Support: Tailored access across tenants for MSP partners and enterprises.

FinOps Dashboard Integration

• Filter & Group By: Leverage dimensions as filters or group-by fields in reports and dashboards.
• Attribute Filtering: Enable filtering by meta attributes like "Owner" or "Environment".
• Drill-Down Support: Navigate from top-level dimensions to individual resources and cost items.

Billing Inventory and Charge Allocation

• Resource-Level Cost Attribution: Assign costs down to the resource level based on dimension logic.
• Split Charging: Allocate shared charges across multiple groups using fixed, equal, or proportional splits. (Only available via APIs in this release).
• Cost Center Enablement: Cost centers will be created for dimensions groups so that charges can be allocated to these logical entities.

Cost Anomaly Enhancements

• This release introduces a new algorithm that identifies anomalies at the resource level for an identified resource category, which enhances the existing functionality of understanding potential resources (simple cost change calculation) that may have caused anomalies at the resource category.
• Users can now drill down from Resource Category level anomalies to Resource anomalies, which helps to better understand resource level trends and impacts.

More Flexibility in Dashboards & other visibility pages

• Filter scoping has been extended for all filters. Users can hide certain filters or specific filter values from the dashboard (this applies to both Filters and Group By’s). This allows users to more easily create simplified dashboards for various customer needs.
• Improved tooltips have been added for all charts. Users can view contextual tool tips on chart widgets to get meaningful insights.
• Added support for Shift+Click to select specific legends within chart widgets. This allows users to quickly focus on one aspect of a chart. For example, if there is a specific service that a user needs to focus on for analysis among a busy chart full of other information, they can now Shift+Click to select only that service. Users can Shift+Click again to revert to their previous view.
• Data label support has been added to charts, which makes analysis easier by giving users the ability to quickly see the total cost. This will also show up in subscribed reports.
• Enhancements have been made to the Cloud Account filter to provide Account IDs in addition to the Names of an account type.
• Multi-cloud support has been added to the Budget creation process.

SecOps

Newly added Compliance Widgets

• Tenant Compliance Summary: provides compliance status (success, violated and error controls) for every compliance standard aggregated at tenant level for the current month and previous month.
• Tenant Compliance Trend: provides trend analysis of the compliance status for compliance standards aggregated at the tenant level.
• Compliance By Account: provides compliance status (success, violated and error controls) for every compliance standard at cloud account level for the current month and previous month.

CloudOps

Tagging Governance – GPT-based Tagging Baseline Generation and Correction

• Added functionality for users to use GPT/AI to generate a list of baseline tags based on a prompt they provide. Users can edit the suggested tags and save them accordingly after generation.
• During baseline editing, the AI tool can also suggest or correct tags, which users may then choose to accept or ignore.

Metric Integration for Cache Clusters

The following metrics have been integrated for cache clusters:

1. BytesReadIntoMemcached
2. BytesUsedForHash
3. BytesWrittenOutFromMemcached
4. CurrConfig
5. NetworkBytesIn

Integrated Metrics for Azure OpenAI Deployments

The following metric has been integrated for Azure OpenAI Deployments:

• AzureOpenAIRequests

AWS Services Resource Integrations

Support for Inventory and Tagging integrations (Operation Not Included) has been added for the below resources:

Policies

Webhook integration (Slack) with Policy Schedule

• Users can now configure Slack notifications through a Webhook for Policy Schedule.
• Policy Violation alerts will be sent to Slack chat:
  • The ‘Schedule Create’ API now accepts a Webhook URL (Slack) for sending notifications.
  • Violation data will be sent in a simple CSV format.
  • If the message exceeds size limits, it will be split into multiple Slack messages.

List of Policies with Changed Descriptions

• Refer to this link to know about the list of policies with changed description:
  • https://docs.corestack.io/docs/policy-changes-as-per-release#policies-with-changed-descriptions

List of Policies that are Deprecated

• Refer to this link to know about the list of deprecated policies:
  • https://docs.corestack.io/docs/policy-changes-as-per-release#deprecated-policies

Platform

New Integration: Jira Service Management Support

We are excited to announce that the platform now integrates with Jira Service Management, enhancing your ITSM capabilities directly within the platform.

This integration streamlines your IT operations, providing a cohesive experience for managing incidents and changes across platforms.

Key Features:

Jira Account Onboarding:

• Seamlessly connect your Jira Service Management accounts to the platform, enabling integrated incident and change management workflows.

Incident Management Enhancements:

• Supported areas:
  • FinOps: Budget Alerts
  • CloudOps: Operational Alerts
  • SecOps: Policy Violations and Security Alerts
• Attribute Mapping: Configure mappings between the platform and Jira fields to ensure accurate data synchronization.
• Customizable Incident Descriptions: Tailor incident details by selecting relevant fields.

Change Management Integration:

• Cost Recommendation Approvals: Implement a structured approval process for cost optimization recommendations.
• Attribute Mapping for Change Requests: Define how the platform's cost recommendations translate into Jira change requests, facilitating automated execution upon approval.

Reports

New Reports:

The following reports have been added to the platform in this release.

New Report Framework: FinOps Consolidated Reports

1. Modernized printable reports by adopting the OSCAR design system and transitioned to the next-gen, platform-native reporting framework.
2. Ensures alignment between dashboards, posture pages, and reports, maintaining consistent and fast data views across the entire FinOps module.
3. The new Consolidated Charges Report enables users to generate FinOps charge reports across multiple cloud accounts, with support for various custom Group-By options and the ability to download the report as a PDF.

Bugs Fixed

• Assessments: While creating custom frameworks through file upload, Recommendations were limited to 2,048 characters – but now support up to 5,000 characters. Similarly, Questions are now supporting up to 512 characters.
• Fixed functional bugs in the following policies:
  • AWS Audit Add SSL TLS Server Certificates to App Tier ELBs CS Policy
  • AWS Audit VPC Flow Logs Enabled CS Policy
  • AWS Audit Check for Untrusted Cross Account IAM Roles CS Policy
  • AWS Audit Cross Account Access Lacks External ID and MFA CS Policy
  • AWS Audit Volume Snapshot CS Policy

Decommissioned Items

• The Markup and Discounts feature has been decommissioned and is being replaced by Billing Plans. The Billing Plans feature provides an enhanced experience, and all existing markup and discount rules will automatically be migrated to the new Billing Plans experience.

Known Issues

The below issues have been observed in the platform and are actively being worked on, with the intention of fixing them before the next release:

JIRA Integration:

1. When a JIRA tool account is offboarded, the system sometimes incorrectly sends a separate notification email for each associated project, rather than a single, comprehensive email detailing the offboarding of the entire account.
2. When a tool account user accesses the Jira project listing page, changing the pagination before the initial data load is complete sometimes causes the data table to become unresponsive and display incomplete information, preventing proper navigation of project listing.

SecOps Compliance Widgets and Assessments

1. There is an alignment issue in the display of Cloud Accounts in the Assessment Detailed Report that sometimes occurs when there are more than 5 cloud accounts.
2. Compliance Widgets: 'Compliance Standard' filter sometimes shows standards which have not yet been assessed.
3. Compliance Widgets: Standards are sometimes not being filtered correctly based on the selected tenant.

BillOps:

1. Billing Plan: Creation of Fixed Rules is not currently supported; coming in a future release.

Platform:

1. Incomplete Relationship Details in AWS Kubernetes Cluster Service:
   The current release does not provide full details for the "Relationship" information in the AWS Kubernetes cluster service. This enhancement is planned for a future release.
2. Partial Terminology Alignment:
   Terminology updates have been implemented in some areas; however, some inconsistencies remain (e.g. in the report section).

External APIs

• To see the external APIs which have been added, modified, and removed in this release, refer to: https://docs.corestack.io/docs/external-apis-2502
• To see all the available external APIs, refer to: https://docs.corestack.io/reference/authtoken