Cloud Management: Benefits, Challenges, and Meeting Business Goals

The majority of businesses now use multi-cloud environments — 75% of US-based enterprises, according to research firm 451 Research. This means that IT departments need to upgrade or even overhaul their cloud management platforms to increase speed and efficiency and reduce VM sprawl. With the increase of hybrid clouds, it is now necessary that management technologies have automation, consolidation, orchestration, and virtualization.

Benefits

A cloud management platform has many benefits, including:

• Ease of use

• Easing the move from virtualization to automation and orchestration

• Improvement in user satisfaction via automation

• Reduction in issues surrounding complex contracts and vendor management

• Support for both old and new IT services

• Support for dynamic and fixed-term sourcing

• The ability to make data-driven decisions

Challenges

While benefits abound, there are also challenges in implementing a platform of this kind. As with all dealings with providers, businesses need to ensure they have service level agreements (SLAs) in place that guarantee they will receive what’s requested and needed. These needs can vary depending on the different people involved in the organization — including IT and developers — and businesses should also be aware of the technical skills of the employees who will be using the system. Finally, businesses need to ensure that the platform is adopted by everyone in the organization.

Cloud Applications and Services

With the growing number of businesses adopting the cloud comes an increase in demand for cloud management platforms that can handle the load. A good management system will aid business decision makers in locating, accessing, and employing cloud applications and services by factoring in criteria such as:

• Auditability

• Compliance

• Cost

• Governance

• Utility

Easing compliance issues is an especially important factor in the adoption of this sort of management platform. It allows businesses to concentrate on federated services — and a strategic assessment of their risks – instead of spending all their time troubleshooting compliance issues with individual services.

The cloud is here to stay, and businesses seeking to meet their goals should be looking at cloud management platforms to ensure security, cost efficiency, optimal performance, and the ability to meet the needs of all users. These platforms will ease some of the complexity in the use of the cloud, ensure the automation and orchestration of processes, and even help to reduce the amount of VM sprawl.