Cloud Management: A Step-by-Step Guide

What is Cloud Management?

Cloud management is the process of monitoring and optimizing the use of one or more private or public clouds. To manage cloud usage, organizations often use a cloud management platform. Cloud management enables IT managers to transfer workloads via the cloud and operate cloud resource costs. 

Cloud management features

Cloud management tools and technologies offer strategies and processes that allow you to successfully manage cloud-based assets and applications, automate workflows, and make informed decisions to reduce cloud costs and usage.

Automation

Application management can be repetitive, especially if you have a large environment. Cloud management allows programmatic management of resources, offering automated capacity management, continuous integration, and orchestration to reduce operational burden. 

Compliance and governance

Moving to the cloud can mean giving up some control over your core infrastructure and applications, but you’ll still need to monitor access and manage compliance.

Cloud management allows you to guarantee that cloud users and configurations align with legal standards and organizational policies by alerting you to problems so you may fix them as soon as possible. 

Security

Because cloud security is a shared responsibility with your cloud service provider, cloud management takes an active role in protecting your data, apps, and services in cloud environments.

Leading cloud management systems support machine learning for comprehensive threat intelligence and detection, as well as for streamlining security monitoring and workflows. 

=> Watch more: Cloud computing security: Overview and Definition

Monitoring and logging

Cloud management enables cloud observability through event monitoring and logging, allowing you to analyze and understand what’s going on across your environments. The ability to collect, analyze, and correlate log files can aid in detecting errors, automating incident management, and optimizing performance. 

Performance and cost reporting

Cloud computing costs can quickly exceed your budget if you are not paying close attention from the start. Cloud management offers cost management, reporting, and forecasting to help you gain an accurate picture of what and when resources are being used.

This can help you distribute resources more effectively, determine whether you’re getting what you paid for, and cut unnecessary costs. 

How does cloud management work?

Cloud management solutions allow you to manage the deployment and operation of your cloud apps and services across public, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

A good cloud management platform will also assist you in tracking and monitoring usage and performance for each part of your cloud infrastructure, allowing you to make informed decisions about how to operate workloads. Cloud management tools and software have traditionally been deployed as virtual machines with their database and servers. Servers use APIs to communicate with resources interacting in your cloud environments.

You can get activity in cloud-based applications, performance statistics, and other events, which can then be evaluated and integrated into a unified dashboard accessible via a web interface. Administrators, similar to your cloud resources, can use cloud management tools from anywhere as long as they have a secure connection. 

What are the benefits of cloud management?

Cloud management has many benefits including flexibility, security, scalability, and cost savings. Cloud management gives you better control over your cloud resources, enables seamless, secure interaction with other systems, and allows you to scale computing resources up or down based on demand.

Furthermore, many cloud management tools provide reporting dashboards that provide data for the entire cloud environment. These analytics provide business insights to assist IT leaders in making sound decisions. The following are some of the benefits of cloud optimization platforms:

• Security: As organizations transition cloud data, either from private cloud or on-premise, security is a primary priority of mind. Security management monitors and analyzes threats to an organization’s cloud. Security software helps determine what information to store in a private or public cloud based on sensitivity. Cloud managers are responsible for keeping an organization’s information safe and implementing preventative safeguards.
• Flexibility: Dashboard data can be utilized to analyze performance and identify a best-fit resource. This allows organizations to not only scale up or down, but also right-size. Based on important criteria, an organization can right-size its cloud computing infrastructure for optimal efficiency and lower service costs.
• Cost savings: Cloud management services enable businesses to tailor their service offerings. Companies can save money by avoiding paying for services they do not need. A successful cloud management team should save a company time and money.

Cloud management strategies

Effectively managing public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments is not just about the tools and technologies but also a strong cloud management strategy.

Developing a successful strategy will differ depending on the organization, you will need to locate the best processes, technology, and skill sets to meet your company’s demands.

A strong cloud management strategy should:

• Allow for consistent control across environments, enabling you to deploy and integrate services where they are most appropriate. 
• Enable flexible change management while constantly monitoring and analyzing capacity, use, prices, and security. 
• Create security and compliance guardrails that provide security control and automated policy enforcement without impeding velocity. 
• Review cloud resources and services regularly, from charges to changes in users to breaches, to identify concerns before they become future problems and to alter business rules and processes accordingly.

=> Watch more: Top 10 common use of cloud computing

Conclusion

With so much dependency on the cloud, modern businesses require a reliable partner to control and manage cloud resources without exceeding established budgets. SmartOSC, the leader in IT management solutions, offers its expertise to cloud management, a cloud computing service.

We empower users to schedule operations, create personalized service catalogs, and govern discovered and provisioned assets across multiple cloud environments. Contact us today!