# Product Overview Archera is an **AWS, Azure and GCP cloud cost optimization platform** focused on commitment and rate management. The core platform is free for multi-cloud cost observability, modeling/forecasting, management of native commitment options and architecture reviews. Our goal at Archera is to enable Engineering and Finance to make smarter decisions around infrastructure planning and commitment purchases. To help teams we have core tools around Segment Views (for Infrastructure and Team Planning) and FinOps views (for purchasing and financial analysis). ## What Makes Archera Unique The unique selling proposition is that through the free platform Archera offers (and automatically underwrites) its unique **"Guaranteed Commitments"** with an insurance-backed guarantee, specifically: * **Guaranteed Reserved Instances (GRIs)** — for AWS and Azure * **Guaranteed Savings Plans (GSPs)** — for AWS and Azure * **Guaranteed Committed Use Discounts (GCUDs)** — for GCP only These are shorter-term, flexible-term commitments for customers of AWS, Azure, and GCP to utilize and avoid paying list pricing for their cloud usage or entering into the standard 1- and 3-year, fixed-term commitments offered by the three cloud providers. ### How Guaranteed Commitments Work Mechanically, these Guaranteed or Insured Commitments are created by Archera purchasing one or three year commitments (RIs, SPs or CUDs), typically with no-upfront payment in the customer account, and then overlaying an **insurance-backed "moneyback guarantee"** on these commitments. This guarantees to the customer that Archera will bear the cost of any unused committed spend via a rebate or buy-back of the commitment (depending on the commitment type) after a specified term that is less than the term of the underlying commitment (typically 30 days or 1 year). Customers typically get insured commitment term lengths of **30 days and 1-year** of locked-in spend with 35 and 24 months of flexible coverage after that respectively, while charging a "risk premium" based on the term (and consequently risk that Archera takes on). **Archera does not impact any infrastructure by design** and only operates at the rate/commitment/contract "layer." ### When to Use Archera Archera is an excellent tool that customers use typically in one of two scenarios: 1. **When they are unsure that workloads will be up long enough to justify a 1-year commitment.** Archera's 30-day Insured Commitments are a perfect fit because they only need to be locked in for 30 days. 2. **When they are unsure that workloads will be up long enough to justify a 3-year commitment.** Archera's 1-year commitments are a perfect fit because they offer more savings than standard 1-year commitments offered by cloud providers. Archera offers a **"moneyback guarantee"** so if, after the Archera Insured Commitment term length (30 days or one year), the commitment goes underutilized and results in no savings for the customer, Archera will guarantee to buy that commitment back from the customer or rebate them the cost of that commitment. ## Getting Started To get started, connect your systems to Archera through the [Integrations Page](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/settings-integrations). Once that is complete you can start to build out Segments in the [Segment Dashboard](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/segment-dashboard) and [Invite Users](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/invite-users). ## Core Application Flows The Archera application is broken out into two core flows: 1. **Segment Views** — represent Infrastructure and Team Planning 2. **Commitment & Renewal Planning** — used for DevOps and FinOps users who are making commitment purchasing ## Segment Page Walk Throughs ### Segment Dashboard See [Segment Dashboard Overview](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/segment-dashboard). ### Explorer Segment Explorer connects directly to your cloud provider and pulls costs and other details out of the system. In addition to unique queries for that provider, you can overlay custom KPIs and other metrics to see how you compare. We also have standardized alerting and anomalies to help keep your team on track. ### Planner Our Segment Planner tool allows Teams to do monthly and quarterly planning. Using your actual cloud spend as a baseline, our tools help your teams create budgets and forecasts for specific scenarios — so you can plan for changes in the business such as increase or decrease of customers or a shift in technology. ### Infrastructure History [Infrastructure History](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/infrastructure-history) allows you to explore your infrastructure at a granular level such as EC2 and Lambda. It also allows you to search on tag information. ### Resource Recommendations Engineering and FinOps teams can also track the entire lifecycle of infrastructure recommendations — from rightsizing actions being recommended to executed, you have visibility into the goal and stage of the recommendation. ### Settings Controls Anomaly Detection, Alerts, and Coverage goals for the Segment. ## Related Resources * [Billing and GRIs (Guaranteed Reserved Instances)](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/billing/billing-and-gris) * [Azure Billing - How Archera is Billed Through Azure](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/billing/azure-billing) * [AWS Billing - How Archera is Billed Through AWS](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/billing/aws-billing) * [What is the lookback period inside commitment planner and when to use it?](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/lookback-period) * [How Does Archera Calculate Commitment Coverage](https://docs.archera.ai/help-center/user-guide/commitment-coverage)