As cloud computing gains even more popularity, more businesses are starting to recognise its value and benefits. Companies are beginning to adopt multi-cloud architectures, combining public cloud services, community clouds, hosted services, and private clouds. The pay-as-you-go nature of the public cloud offers the promise to set it and let it all do the work. The problem is, if you’re not making an active effort to manage how your business is utilising public cloud services, you’re going to get in trouble at some point.
Public cloud services need to be managed in a similar fashion to the management of on-premise infrastructure and business IT solutions. To do this, you need to take charge of this complex environment and focus on these five key areas:
Cost and Optimisation
For many companies, managing cloud costs isn’t as easy as it looks, especially if they’re new to cloud computing. In most cases, buying and setting up equipment is carried out as and when needed, but it’s not that simple with cloud services.
Cloud services don’t work like, let’s say, a Netflix subscription where you pay a monthly fee and watch all the shows you want. You need to track your cloud service consumption if you’re going to effectively manage the costs. It’s crucial to manage this with the utmost care and attention, or you might end up burning through an entire month’s budget allocation because you left an application running all weekend.
Resource Planning
Think of cloud services as a limited resource that needs to be used only when it’s needed. To do this, you need to identify just how much of a service is needed. This allows you to achieve operational efficiency and minimise costs.
Security
Of course, in any cloud computing environment, security is always of high importance. It’s important to conduct a review of your current security systems and consult with a specialist for the implementation of appropriate, up-to-date and robust security systems. This needs to be tailored to your specific needs as every business has its own security requirements. Some critical security functionalities you should consider for your cloud environment include, but are not limited to:
- Risk management
- Appropriate Segmentation of Duties
- Single Sign-On
- Key Management
Governance
When adopting new business IT solutions such as cloud computing, new policies need to be created and enforced so users and employees can effectively implement and utilise this new resource. New policies should specify which staff or departments require access to cloud computing as well as how and when they can gain access to them and for how long.
Orchestration and Provisioning
When managing complex cloud environments, especially those that are composed of multiple platforms, it is important to leverage automation, orchestration, and provisioning. Creating a map of the connections all related information involved in the cloud and on-premise systems is also vital.
The rising complexity of today’s cloud environments can catch any business off guard, especially if they’re not yet used to adopting cloud services for their operations. Cloud-based computing offers a lot of benefits, but mishandling them can come at a great cost. These focus points should help you keep your cloud management in order to avoid all the trouble.
Our team is committed to working with you to make your business IT more powerful, reliable, and easy to use. If you need advice around cloud computing, or any other IT support services, contact IQPC to help.
