As your business embraces cloud computing, the benefits of scalability, flexibility and efficiency are clear, but they come with significant complexities. Effectively managing your cloud environments requires balancing costs, ensuring security and staying agile — all while keeping up with evolving trends.
This blog can help you get your arms around modern cloud management. It explores current trends, compares a self-managed approach against outsourced options, and highlights the value of working with a technology advisor to help your business make informed decisions.
What is Cloud Management?
Cloud management is the framework for optimizing business cloud resources for performance, cost and risk.
- Optimizing performance — Cloud management platforms monitor resource utilization and adjust performance dynamically to meet changing demand. Automating workload distribution and scaling enables your business to achieve optimal performance without manual intervention. Workload monitoring and performance tuning are critical to maintaining high service levels and ensuring that resources align with business objectives.
- Controlling costs — Cloud management tools provide real-time insights into spending, which helps your business monitor resource usage and avoid overprovisioning. Additionally, the ability to adjust cloud resources based on demand ensures your business only pays for what it needs. Consider financial operations (FinOps) tools to track and forecast cloud spending, helping you align financial objectives with cloud resource allocation to prevent unexpected costs and improve cost efficiency.
- Mitigating risks — Governance and cybersecurity protocols, such as automated patching and encryption, help to mitigate risks associated with data breaches or compliance failures while real-time threat detection empowers proactive responses to potential vulnerabilities and cyberthreats. Tools that monitor access and usage provide additional security and operational oversight layers. Proper governance also ensures your business follows established compliance standards, reducing the risk of regulatory penalties.
Managing public, private & hybrid cloud infrastructures
Cloud infrastructure can be public, private or hybrid, with each deployment offering unique benefits and considerations. Here’s a rundown on each:
- Public cloud services — Public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, offer excellent scalability and flexibility, but they come with significant cybersecurity concerns. Since public cloud data is stored alongside other clients in a shared infrastructure, managing security and compliance can become challenging. Additionally, costs must be closely monitored and controlled since public clouds operate on a pay-as-you-go model, which can lead to unforeseen expenses via underutilized resources and poorly managed scaling.
- Private cloud services — Private clouds provide complete control over your cloud environment, making them ideal for businesses with strict security, compliance and performance requirements. However, this enhanced level of control comes with a higher upfront investment in cloud infrastructure management and requires a dedicated team to handle the solution effectively. Further, managing a private cloud can be more resource-intensive, as your business is ultimately responsible for the maintenance, upgrades and security of the entire environment.
- Hybrid cloud services — Hybrid clouds offer the flexibility of both public and private clouds, allowing your business to store sensitive data on private servers while leveraging public clouds for less critical workloads. However, managing a hybrid environment requires careful integration between the two, ensuring seamless data flow and compatibility. Moreover, monitoring and governance become more complex in hybrid setups since your team must enforce consistent security policies while optimizing performance and costs.
Trends in cloud management
Cloud management is a hot-ticket item, with businesses consistently innovating and exploring new ways to optimize cloud operations. Some of the latest trends to consider include:
- FinOps for cost optimization — As mentioned earlier, FinOps tools help your business optimize cloud spending by providing real-time insights, tracking costs, allocating resources, and automating policies that prevent waste and avoid overspending. Plus, FinOps aligns your IT, finance and operations teams for improved operational efficiencies.
- Observability tools for hybrid environments — As hybrid cloud use increases, observability tools become essential for monitoring both on-premises and cloud-based systems, delivering complete visibility into performance, security and resource usage. Observability tools give comprehensive insights into all cloud operations – from application performance to network traffic – to optimize security, enhance efficiency, pinpoint operational bottlenecks and improve overall system performance.
- Increased focus on automation — Automation drives efficiency in managing cloud infrastructure by handling tasks like resource provisioning, scaling and load balancing. By reducing manual effort, your business minimizes errors and increases operational efficiency. AI-driven automation can identify security vulnerabilities, predict resource needs, proactively manage cloud environments and optimize costs by scaling resources based on demand and eliminating unnecessary services.
Benefits of cloud management
Cloud-based service management offers compelling benefits, driving businesses of all sizes and industries to adopt cloud frameworks. Unsurprisingly, many of the benefits of cloud management align with cloud management trends. Cloud optimization objectives are delivering greater benefits in visibility, costs and performance. These include:
- Enhanced visibility & control — As discussed, enhanced visibility and control help you tackle core objectives like streamlining operations, identifying underperforming resource allocations and verifying compliance.
- Improved security posture — Cloud management secures critical business data through encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other stringent cybersecurity measures. It can automate security tasks like patch management and access control to reduce the risk of human error and maintain compliance with industry standards like HIPAA and GDPR.
- Cost efficiency & resource optimization — An overarching objective of cloud management is to optimize resources, reduce costs and deliver the right-sized scale to real-time demand. FinOps tools augment these objectives through improved monitoring, forecasts and budgeting.
- Faster issue resolution — Proactive monitoring and machine-learning-powered prediction can alert your IT team to potential issues before they disrupt operations. Automated workflows can quickly resolve those and other common problems – like resource scaling and load balancing – without manual intervention.
Self-managed cloud vs. outsourced managed cloud
Managing your cloud environment in-house or outsourcing management to a managed services provider (MSP) is a crucial business decision. Here’s an overview of each option:
Self-managed cloud: Pros & cons
- Pros: Full control & customization — Self-managing your cloud environment gives you complete control, allowing deep customization for security, compliance and performance. Additionally, you retain direct oversight of configurations without relying on external providers.
- Cons: Resource-intensive & requires expertise — Maintaining a self-managed cloud requires significant internal resources, including skilled staff, advanced tools and continuous updates for cloud innovations and security practices. While self-management may seem cost-effective upfront, long-term expenses add up due to the costs of hiring hard-to-source, highly-skilled staff, maintaining infrastructure and investing in ongoing training.
Managed cloud: Pros & cons
- Pros: Access to expertise & scalability — Managed cloud solutions provide access to specialized experts who manage updates, security and performance, freeing your IT team to focus on strategic objectives.Additionally, cloud managed services offer 24/7 support, pain-free scalability and optimized costs through predictable, tiered pricing models that align with usage.
- Cons: Less control & potential supplier dependency — Managed services can limit direct control over cloud infrastructure, resulting in fewer customization options. Additionally, overdependence on a single supplier can make switching suppliers more difficult in the future.
What to look for in a managed cloud provider
Your MSP (Managed Service Provider) can make or break the success of your cloud environment. Here’s what to look for in a managed cloud service provider:
- Proven expertise & certifications
Look for MSPs with AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure certifications or other credentials validating they have the necessary knowledge to manage complex environments like yours.
Ensure that your MSP has a strong track record with clients in your industry and is experienced in handling your compliance needs.Look for client testimonials or case studies that can provide insights into the MSP’s reputation for reliability, security and Service Level Agreement (SLA) delivery.
- Service Level Agreements (SLA) & uptime guarantees
Speaking of SLAs, they should specify uptime guarantees, response times and recourse in case of downtime. Ensure your supplier offers at least 99.9% uptime and has a clear, easily navigated support structure.
Choosing a supplier with comprehensive 24/7 support also is vital, especially if your business operates globally or across time zones. Review their SLAs for planned maintenance windows and downtime transparency, ensuring that any impact on your operations is predictable, manageable and, above all, minimal.
- Customization & integration capabilities
Your MSP should offer flexible solutions that align with your specific business needs. Look for providers that can customize resource allocation, security policies and governance tools. And be sure you can achieve seamless integration with your existing infrastructure, including on-premises systems, to ensure smooth operations.
Look for flexibility in how the supplier works with you, whether that means adjusting to your unique compliance needs or providing customized or dedicated resources you need for your specific use cases.
How UPSTACK tech advisors can help navigate cloud decisions
You can trust UPSTACK to procure top-shelf cloud solutions that solve your unique business needs. Here’s how we help:
- Expert guidance on cloud models — UPSTACK advisors offer expertise in evaluating private, public and hybrid cloud management platforms, helping you choose the best infrastructure to meet your unique business needs for performance, security and flexibility.
- Sourcing & optimizing cloud solutions — UPSTACK helps you source and optimize managed IT cloud solutions, eliminating the need for large upfront investments and ensuring scalability. Our team guides you through complex decisions and helps you avoid overpaying to future-proof your infrastructure.
- Access to cutting-edge technologies — UPSTACK has partnered with hundreds of technology suppliers to ensure our customers can access advanced solutions like direct connections to cloud, managed backup, cloud migration and next-generation security solutions.
- Comprehensive support throughout your cloud journey — From sourcing to contract negotiations, migration and ongoing optimization, UPSTACK provides end-to-end support to ensure your cloud environment maximizes performance now and as your business evolves.
Making cloud work for you with the right support
Feeling overwhelmed finding the perfect MSP for your midsize enterprise business? UPSTACK can help. Our team of experts simplifies the process by guiding you through the selection process, negotiating the best pricing, and ensure seamless integration with existing infrastructure.
Cloud computing can deliver significant benefits, but managing it effectively requires extensive expertise and careful planning.With the right cloud management strategy, your business can optimize resources, improve security and reduce costs. By partnering with UPSTACK, you can gain all those benefits without diverting your IT resources from high-value objectives.
