With businesses adopting public, private, and hybrid cloud storage at an unprecedented speed, the question of how to manage your cloud infrastructure has become one of urgent importance.
Effective cloud management is at the heart of maintaining security and scalability, and mitigating bottlenecks, outages, and cyberattacks. For companies that want to create a cloud environment that is resilient, agile, and can grow out alongside the business itself, a cost-effective CloudOps strategy is essential.
But what is CloudOps and how can it improve cloud security and performance? What is the best strategy for delivering reliable cloud solutions? What is the most cost-effective way to manage a hybrid cloud environment?
What is CloudOps?
CloudOps is short for cloud operations, the system of managerial activities and practices that helps companies deliver and optimize IT services that run through a cloud. As such, CloudOps covers things like:
- Delivering cloud service and infrastructure
- Maintaining compliance and configuration
- Ensuring proper resource management
- Disaster recovery and mitigation
Once you have migrated your system to the cloud, figuring out CloudOps is the next key step: if you want to securely use IaaS and PaaS services and scale your operations seamlessly, you need to actively manage cloud performance and respond proactively to challenges and threats.
CloudOps is an ongoing process. Its purpose is to refine and modify the way a cloud operates to ensure maximum functionality at all times, and without strong CloudOps, it can be challenging to have a truly agile cloud environment.
For example, if your business incorporates a new operating system or development tool that will be hosted in the cloud, then your cloud environment will need to adapt by changing security and accessibility requirements. If a new cybersecurity threat emerges, cloud managers need to get ahead of it. A cloud that isn’t evolving will never offer superior performance.
Effective CloudOps requires monitoring your cloud environment, creating a significant challenge for your IT department.
Credit: ThisIsEngineering RAEng Via Unsplashed
The Benefits of Outsourcing CloudOps
Cloud computing is based on the idea that something once thought of as essential to data storage and management — physical server infrastructure — can be outsourced to cloud solution providers who rent out space as needed, or through an individual private cloud.
This process makes the cloud so appealing to businesses. Instead of having to maintain servers on-site and running the risk that damage to those servers could permanently destroy information, companies can choose private, public, and hybrid cloud environments that can be accessed from any geographic location, and which can automatically back up information and keep it safe.
Since this basic model was introduced, it has been expanded considerably: in addition to IaaS solutions that provide basic cloud infrastructure, it is now possible to explore PaaS solutions and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions where a third-party provider like Microsoft Azure will store all the software and middleware for apps via the cloud.
It is only natural that CloudOps would also be outsourced to cloud solution providers who can manage your cloud, or co-manage it alongside you, as outsourcing gives you access to options like Cloud Security Operations Centre as a Service (SOCaaS) that will ensure optimal cloud performance.
While some companies choose to take care of CloudOps in-house, there are drawbacks to relying exclusively on your IT department to handle cloud management. These include:
- Security: Cloud management is a specialized area, and your in-house IT team may not have the experience or tools to deliver effective cloud management. This can lead to problems when it comes to ensuring your cloud environment remains secure and up-to-date.
- Performance: Getting the most out of the cloud means working with cloud experts with an intimate understanding of IaaS and PaaS solutions. Your IT department may not have the resources to optimize performance.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Maintaining the staff and infrastructure to deliver CloudOps 24/7/365 can be prohibitively expensive, so outsourcing to the experts can reduce costs and provide more reliable billing.
- Continuous Operations: The ideal for any cloud management system is continuous operations, a cloud that can be continually updated and placed into production without any downtime or outages that disrupt service. This is very difficult to do without specialized external support from an IT solutions provider with expertise in cloud management.
If you’ve recently migrated to the cloud, choosing to work with a cloud solutions provider who can give you extensive CloudOps support for public, private, and hybrid clouds guarantees is the next logical step: not only will it give you access to industry-leading cloud expertise without having to expand your permanent workforce, it will also ensure full scalability.
Over the past year, it has become clearer than ever that cloud computing is the future. If you want to ensure that your company has the expert support it needs to embrace this future fully, outsourcing your CloudOps is the perfect solution.
