Cloud is a metaphor, but it’s appropriate. Clouds in the sky block pilots’ vision and make navigating by instrument necessary. Cloud technology gets in the way of IT management’s view of technology and makes using new tools vital to ensure that cloud systems are operating as expected.
Cloud Makes Managing Technology Complicated
The same aspects of that make cloud a beneficial technology make it challenging to manage both technically and financially.
• Cloud is dynamic. Cloud enables frequent changes to infrastructure and services. Keeping track of these changes is difficult, and means it’s hard to build a monitoring solution.
• Cloud is uncontrolled. Not only does cloud change frequently, it changes in unplanned ways. Unlike data centers where purchases go through a lengthy approvals process, cloud purchases can happen instantaneously. In addition, cloud is largely self-service, meaning anyone can bring up a new service.
• Cloud is ongoing. When in-house equipment is bought, it’s paid for once and then you own it. There aren’t any additional costs related to how often you use it. In cloud, the costs are ongoing, not one-time. Every time a service is used, a new charge accrues. Failing to apply policies like shutting down unneeded development environments can lead to large unneeded charges every month.
• There’s more to manage in cloud. There isn’t a single cloud service that needs to be monitored, managed, and paid for. Businesses often use multiple clouds from multiple cloud providers. Within a single cloud environment, the microservice architecture means there are many more services to be monitored. Businesses lack a single platform that provides a view across all cloud providers and cloud services.
• It’s easy to make the wrong choice. IT teams are used to operating in-house technology, but the old processes for sizing services aren’t appropriate for cloud. Teams need to learn new methods to choose the appropriate technology solution. In addition, teams need to learn not to accept cloud provider default settings that may not provide appropriate security.
• Every cloud is configured separately. Clouds are largely self-contained environments, and every cloud provider has their own tools and processes for implementing configurations and security controls. Ensuring corporate policies are applied consistently across every cloud environment is not easy.
Cloud Management Tools Bring Visibility Back
Overcoming those cloud challenges requires cloud management tools that provide visibility into clouds and across clouds. VAST View goes beyond simply providing data to provide insights and controls to help businesses manage both the technical and financial aspects of cloud. Features include:
• Consolidated financial view. Bring together data from multiple clouds to get a complete picture of cloud spending. Monitor changes and utilization to identify opportunities for consolidation and reduced spending.
• Consistent policies across platforms. Enforce policies such as nightly shutdowns to eliminated unneeded spending.
• Complete deployment support. Ensure changes to configurations and policies are consistently deployed on all cloud platforms.
With those features, VAST View provides complete support for cloud management. Operations, costs, and security are all visible and controlled no matter how many clouds your business uses and no matter whether they’re independent or interconnected. Contact VAST IT Services to learn more about using VAST View to make your IT operations and spending fully visible no matter how cloudy your infrastructure is.
