As organizations continue their mass migration to cloud services, the need for a robust, comprehensive cloud management suite becomes all the more important.
Making the move can potentially lead to more complexity for an organization, which is often the exact thing those organizations are looking to avoid. A cloud management suite can help cut down on those issues around complexity and allow one place where IT can provision and orchestrate those resources.
Without proper cloud management platforms and policies in place, organizations run the risk of runaway spending on resources and security risks around access and deployment. Similarly, running disparate hybrid cloud computing resources within the same IT environment without automation and extensibility capabilities can cause headaches for all stakeholders involved.
Here are four essentials organizations should seek when looking for a cloud management suite:
A Single Pane of Glass for Multi-Cloud Environments
Your cloud management suite should be connected to all of your organization’s multi-cloud and on-premises resources. This cuts down on a complex work environment for your end users and provides a user experience that’s easy to navigate. Provisioning and orchestration of needed resources is made simple because backend configuration for the cloud management suite is set beforehand based on the needs of the organization.
Keeps Multi-Cloud Resource Spending in Check
Any cloud management suite should provide safeguards preventing overspending on IT cloud resources. This way, all spending is centralized in one location and IT can govern how much is spent and on which specific set of resources. A cloud management suite will then allow organizations to keep IT spending in check and prevent the over-provisioning of cloud resources. For instance, this could include adding power schedules or enforcing hours of the day that resources can be consumed.
Role-Based Access Control for Cloud Security
In many instances, organizations will only want their users to have access to their needed resources. This is where a cloud management suite needs capabilities around secure role-based access (RBAC). This can help ensure that only authorized users have access to the resources they’re supposed to have, or that divisions within an enterprise don’t exceed their quota limits. In addition, RBAC keeps resources protected from potential bad actors looking to disrupt an organization. Configuration and provisioning under RBAC can also be established on existing user profiles, which also simplifies the process.
Standardized Cloud Automation and Extensibility Templates
DevOps processes can get messy quickly without the right process or controls in place. As such, a hybrid cloud management suite should provide the ability to create standardized templates for automation of DevOps processes. For instance, this includes integrating with Terraform and Ansible for provisioning and configuration, or monitoring the CPU and memory of virtual machines through solutions such as SolarWinds and DataDog.
This improves efficiency of continuous integration/continuous delivery workflows in standardized environments. A hybrid cloud management suite with this capability allows for extensible, automated processes that provide greater value for DevOps teams.
With these capabilities in place, any organization can find success with a cloud management suite designed to oversee growing, complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
