Many IT teams are still struggling to operate their public cloud environments. Although most have been operating cloud platforms for years, they face an ever-increasing number of applications and services. This complexity makes it difficult to optimize resource utilization, control costs and deliver the highest levels of performance.
Furthermore, each cloud service has its own tools and processes. Many organizations find it difficult to hire and retain skilled cloud professionals, much less specialists with expertise in specific cloud services.
In the 2023 State of CloudOps survey conducted by Dimensional Research, just 33 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in the cloud operations capabilities. That’s up from just 21 percent in 2022 but remains dismally low. Security and compliance (64 percent) and cost management (60 percent) were cited as the top challenges. Almost half (45 percent) said they still use spreadsheets and other manual methods to manage cloud costs.
Survey respondents agreed that automation is the key to optimizing cloud operations and maximizing ROI. Although just 15 percent have a “significant” level of cloud automation, 82 percent said that automation is “critical” or “very valuable.”
Common Cloud Automation Tasks
Before deploying workloads in the cloud, IT teams must size and provision cloud instances, configure resources, set up load balancers, and more. They must then deploy the workload and monitor and manage it to ensure performance and availability. Doing all this manually is time-consuming and inefficient. It also introduces errors that can delay deployment and create security risks.
Cloud automation tools eliminate this manual, repetitive work. IT teams can use templates and Infrastructure-as-Code to provision and configure cloud infrastructure automatically. Automated security controls can scan for anomalies and known vulnerabilities and restrict access to resources based on policies.
Autoscaling increases or decreases resources to support usage patterns and traffic spikes. Cloud instances and processes can also be shut down automatically. These are critical features in any cloud environment, allowing organizations to meet demand while controlling costs.
Cloud orchestration is a related concept. IT teams can coordinate multiple automated tasks in specific sequences at certain times. The orchestrated process can look for conditions such as error codes and take corrective action or alert the administrator.
Benefits of Cloud Automation
Cloud automation saves IT teams untold hours of work, enabling them to focus on more strategic tasks. It also minimizes human error and creates a more reliable, consistent and predictable cloud environment. Workloads can be deployed faster and scaled easily. In addition, cloud automation improves regulatory compliance and corporate governance.
Automation is particularly valuable in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. With multi-cloud, automation masks some of the complexity that makes the environment so difficult to operate. With hybrid cloud, automation brings some of the benefits of the cloud into the on-premises environment. This allows IT teams to seamlessly deploy workloads in the best location according to their requirements.
However, cloud automation and orchestration can be challenging to implement. IT teams need to ensure that their processes are consistent and streamlined so they can be automated. They must consider the requirements of their cloud platforms and services to minimize complexity. Automated processes must be tested thoroughly to ensure that vulnerabilities aren’t introduced. They must also be monitored to ensure that they achieve the desired results.
How Technologent Can Help
Automation is a focal point of Technologent’s solutions and services. We also have proven expertise in cloud solutions and services. Together, these capabilities enable us to deliver automated tools and strategies that help you use the cloud to your best advantage. Let us help you implement cloud automation to reduce your IT team’s workload and allow them to concentrate on driving your business forward.
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