Businesses are increasingly choosing cloud environments to deploy their applications as well as store data. It provides numerous benefits including agility, speed, cost savings, reliability, and scalability to name a few. But managing different resources, applications and data can be challenging. This is where Cloud Management solutions come in, allowing IT teams to have complete control over diverse cloud environments.
Cloud environments can be classified into three models. Public clouds are managed by a service provider and the resources are publicly available to multiple organizations. Resources such as virtual machines, applications, and storage are shared by users, mostly on a pay-per-use basis making it cheaper. Private clouds have single-occupant architecture and are not publicly available, making them exclusive. The infrastructure is maintained by the organization, or a dedicated vendor, and the resources are not shared among multiple users. The third model is the hybrid cloud, which combines parts of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises IT infrastructure, allowing organizations to have a flexible environment catering to specific needs.
While all three cloud computing models provide the necessary information to help businesses make sense of data, it is often not adequate. Basic reporting tools offered by vendors simply provide alerts and numbers that are not much help by themselves. Administrators must work with several tools and programs which are not unified and require a lot of effort in acquiring, comparing, and distilling data from various sources to produce actionable insights and informed decisions. Furthermore, cloud service vendors provide cloud management but on their own platforms, which can be challenging when working in a hybrid cloud environment or when different cloud platforms are used simultaneously.
To overcome these challenges, businesses can deploy cloud management software in their cloud environment. Cloud management software has its own server and database and functions as a virtual machine with a central dashboard. Connected cloud applications provide insights through a web-based interface. When needed, changes can be made to cloud apps through virtual machines, providing IT directors with control over their cloud environment. This not only reduces the effort required to manage cloud applications but also increases visibility into their performances.
Most cloud service providers take security seriously and have security mechanisms in place to protect the infrastructure from attacks but at the same time, they advise organizations to take additional measures to protect their own cloud resources. Cloud management solutions provide an extra layer of security and even protect against unauthorized team members from fully accessing these resources since the admin can authorize or deny access.
Improving cloud strategy is also made possible by the sophisticated monitoring and analytics capabilities of cloud management software. Since cloud management offers clearer insights into user behavior and how workloads are handled in the cloud, IT and other decision-makers can balance workloads and utilize the available cloud capacity efficiently. Furthermore, moving workloads from a private cloud to a public cloud dynamically at peak times with automation can help businesses avoid provisioning large private cloud infrastructures.
Businesses can save money and increase the return on their cloud expenditures with the help of cloud management. Administrators can more accurately decide on different cloud deployment options depending on the situation. By removing unused cloud resources and allocating resources when required, stakeholders can cut down the cost of the operation.
Managing complex and numerous cloud resources can overwhelm IT teams, especially with evolving business requirements. With cloud management software, IT teams can easily determine which apps are best suited for off-premises use, effectively reducing the number of workloads and data delegated to the cloud. It also helps IT keep track of cloud applications and their relevant datasets.
Along with security, organizations must ensure that cloud-usage policies and guidelines are adhered to by users across the organization. Administrators can analyze cloud usage with the help of cloud management tools to identify non-compliant usage. Furthermore, this knowledge assists with training and policy assessments.
ServiceNow Cloud Management is built on top of the robust Now Platform and is available with IT Operations Management (ITOM). The various tools offered in an ITOM instance help organizations manage cloud resources in a cost-effective manner while enhancing security, reducing manual work, increasing agility, and optimized cloud governance.