Many organizations have adopted a multi-cloud approach when constructing their IT environment. Deploying solutions from multiple cloud vendors offers flexibility that is impossible to achieve when working with a single provider. A multi-cloud environment enables companies to select the products or services that best align with their business objectives and requirements.
The significant benefits of employing a multi-cloud approach can be mitigated by the complexity involved in efficiently managing the environment. Companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), may not have the manpower or technical expertise required to provide effective management for a complex, multi-cloud infrastructure. It’s very easy to overlook an issue that degrades performance and reduces the advantages of a multi-cloud environment.
We are going to look at how business intelligence can help an organization manage its multi-cloud environment and get the most value for its cloud spending. The focus will be on using VAST View, a comprehensive platform that provides business intelligence suitable for managing the most complex multi-cloud environment.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is a strategy that employs technology to analyze business information and synthesize it into actionable insights that enable IT leaders to make informed decisions. Data is collected from multiple sources and presented in various formats that provide decision-makers with detailed information with which to make effective strategic and operational decisions.
The use of BI offers an organization significant benefits that contribute to the efficient management of its business. Following are some of the most impactful advantages of deploying a BI platform.
- Enhanced business decisions – Companies using BI can make business decisions using accurate data obtained from the platform. Information is made available to business users so they can make the correct choices and run the company effectively.
- Improved operational efficiency – BI offers a comprehensive and holistic perspective of business operations. This information can be used to develop benchmarks and identify areas that need improvement or new opportunities that can lead to growth.
- Effective reporting – BI helps organizations consolidate the enormous amount of information required to manage a multi-cloud infrastructure. The use of dashboards and visualizations enables non-technical users to understand the data and use it to inform their business decisions.
- Improved employee productivity and satisfaction – Allowing employees to access information from BI dashboards directly improves productivity and streamlines operations. Employees will feel more empowered by making data-driven decisions as they perform their jobs.
- Providing a competitive advantage – Enhanced decision-making helps an organization become more competitive and can give it a significant edge over market rivals.
- Presenting accurate and governed data – Advanced BI platforms can combine information from multiple internal and external sources in a single data warehouse that can be accessed across the organization. Having everyone on the same page leads to better business decisions.
How Business Intelligence Applies to a Multi-Cloud Environment
The information available from a targeted BI platform can be crucial in managing a multi-cloud environment efficiently. The insights provided by BI can help an organization control costs, optimize performance, and ensure regulatory compliance across its complete infrastructure. Let’s take a close look at an effective BI solution for organizations with complex IT environments.
VAST View is an offering from VAST IT Services built on the trusted cloud service management platform CloudHealth. The tool provides organizations with BI across their multi-cloud environments. It offers accurate data appropriate for diverse user groups such as a company’s finance, engineering, and IT operations departments.
VAST View provides multiple benefits to companies struggling with efficiently managing multi-cloud environments. The benefits include:
- Improving ROI, saving an average of 20-30% on cloud spending and optimizing the environment;
- Managing and understanding cloud usage and returning hundreds of management hours to the organization;
- Controlling shadow IT by providing visibility into the complete environment;
- Reducing risk by identifying vulnerabilities before they become problems;
- Promoting data governance and compliance by creating rules to manage infrastructure.
Use Cases for VAST View in Multi-Cloud Environments
The platform operates as a single pane of glass that consolidates the management and optimization of your IT infrastructure. Following are some specific use cases where VAST View provides advantages to your organization.
- Automation – Policies can be set to automate daily operations to reduce risk and facilitate decision-making.
- Managing costs – Generate reports on the environment by department or cost center to simplify budgeting and identify ways to save on cloud spending.
- Rightsizing – Under or over-utilized infrastructure components can be identified so modifications can be made to align with business requirements.
- Managing reserved instances – VAST View manages the full reserved instance lifecycle to ensure your purchases are optimized.
- Migration planning – Model workloads for migration to cloud platforms and understand the total cost of ownership before commencing a migration.
- Improving security – You can generate alerts for non-compliant accounts and assets to proactively address vulnerabilities.
VAST View Supported Cloud Platforms
VAST View is designed to help you efficiently manage your multi-cloud IT environment. The platform supports cloud services from the following major providers.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Customers gain visibility into allocation, reallocation, budgeting, and amortization for enhanced accountability. Utilization recommendations assist in rightsizing EC2 Instances and EBS Volumes. Reserved Instance management enables further cost savings. VAST View’s automated policies in conjunction with AWS Security Best Practices govern and protect your environment.
Microsoft Azure – VAST View helps you optimize your Azure environment with rightsizing recommendations for boosting virtual machine and SQL database efficiency. The platform offers burndown reporting that tracks Enterprise Agreement spend versus commit with resource-based groupings to deliver more focused insights. VAST is a Microsoft Cloud Silver Partner supporting Azure cloud and enterprise on-premises environments.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – VAST View addresses visibility challenges that affect your GCP environment. The tool offers high-level and detailed views into all project costs and usage. You can control cloud spending by employing VAST View’s governance policies.
VAST View also supports on-premises data centers and containers. The tool provides capabilities to enhance the management of any kind of IT infrastructure.
Talk to the multi-cloud experts at VAST and see how the VAST View platform can help you obtain the necessary BI to optimize your multi-cloud environment.
