# What is CLOUDflex?

CLOUDflex Studio gives production teams one place to operate cloud and software-based production resources. It does not replace the production tools your crew already knows. It provides the controls around them: access, compute, signal flows, monitoring feeds, deployments, and usage.

**Your Tools. Your Workflow. Your Cloud.**

![CLOUDflex Studio dashboard](../../../assets/img/user-guide-screenshots/dashboard.png)

## How Studio Is Organized

- **Organizations** contain members and environments.
- **Environments** separate cloud providers, regions, credentials, applications, and resources. Use the environment switcher before making changes.
- **Studios** group instances and feeds for a production, client, or control room. Administrators can use studios to limit application access.
- **Applications** provide the operating tools enabled in the active environment.

## Applications

- **Instance Manager** starts, stops, connects to, and maintains virtual production machines.
- **Flow Manager** configures signal inputs and outputs through a flow engine.
- **Feed Manager** opens and shares browser-viewable monitoring feeds.
- **Deploy Manager** launches approved deployment templates when enabled.
- **Usage** reports environment compute time and estimated cost to administrators.

What you see depends on the active environment, enabled applications, and permissions assigned by an administrator.

## Before a Show

1. Confirm the correct organization and environment in the navigation.
2. Open the Dashboard and check instance, flow, and studio status.
3. Start only the resources required for the production.
4. Confirm remote access, signal paths, and monitoring feeds.
5. Stop unused resources after the production and verify their state.

:::note
Cloud resources can take time to change state. Wait for Studio to report the new state before repeating an action.
:::