Organizations looking to use the power of hybrid cloud environments are faced with a significant task: picking the right cloud management system. Without one in place, IT and DevOps teams will face the consequences related to unorganized and ad-hoc deployment of cloud resources.
The foundation of any worthwhile cloud management system is the right set of capabilities to accomplish business and technological objectives. In this post, we’ll explore the top cloud management tools necessary for any system and why they’re critical to your success.
Provisioning and Orchestration
The correct capabilities for provisioning and orchestration allow teams to create new resources as requested by those who need it, or modify or delete those resources based on priorities.
In addition, a cloud management system should have tools enabling orchestration for provisioning workflows and management operations for hybrid cloud resources.
These cloud management tools are critical because without them in place, organizations may be faced with significant backlogs for resource request and no centralized way to fulfill them. With robust provisioning and orchestration tools, the headaches associated with ensuring resources get to where they need when needed become a thing of the past.
Cost Management
There’s no question that utilizing cloud resources from both public and private sources can get costly. These cost issues can get even worse without the right capabilities to manage them.
As such, a cloud management system needs features that allow organizations to keep track of what’s being spent on cloud resources and ensure that spending is being utilized effectively. These tools allow unused or little-used resources to be reapportioned as needs of the business evolve.
Any of the cloud management tools in the market should also provide the ability to keep resource capacity in line with the demand that is actually being placed on the specific workloads being tracked.
Inventory Management and Monitoring
Cloud management systems need inventory capabilities that allow for the discovery and maintenance of all the cloud resources that exist within a specific enterprise. Without that holistic view, managing those resources can get hectic fast.
Inventory management capabilities should also allow for monitoring changes to those resources and management of new configurations.
In addition to keeping track of inventory, one of the most important cloud management tools available includes monitoring of that inventory.
These should provide metrics on availability and performance of resources as well as intelligence for incident prevention and resolution.
This intelligence gives stakeholders the ability to report the performance of the cloud asset management system back to the business and prove its effectiveness.
Self-Service IT
Lastly, any strong cloud management system has to afford users the ability to make their requests for resources in an easy-to-use and understand portal that’s managed by a central IT function. That’s where self-service IT comes into the picture.
Self-service IT cuts down on unnecessary and wasteful back-and-forths between IT and users regarding provisioning of resources. That makes both parties more productive at the end of the day and helps drive greater business value.
Your organization may have different needs when it comes to provisioning and innovating on hybrid cloud resources. But for an effective hybrid cloud management system, tools around provisioning, orchestration, cost, inventory, monitoring and self-service IT cannot be discounted.
