What are the key IT operations best practices for cloud computing?

1 Automate and orchestrate

Cloud computing enables you to automate and orchestrate various IT tasks, such as provisioning, configuration, scaling, backup, recovery, and patching. Automation and orchestration can help you improve efficiency, consistency, reliability, and security of your cloud operations. You can use tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, and AWS CloudFormation to automate and orchestrate your cloud infrastructure and applications. Automation and orchestration can also help you implement continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, which can accelerate your software development and deployment cycles.

2 Monitor and manage

Cloud computing requires you to monitor and manage your cloud resources and services, such as servers, storage, network, databases, and APIs. Monitoring and managing can help you detect and resolve issues, optimize performance, ensure availability, and control costs. You can use tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic, and Splunk to monitor and manage your cloud operations. Monitoring and managing can also help you collect and analyze data, such as metrics, logs, traces, and events, which can provide you with insights and feedback on your cloud operations.

3 Secure and comply

Cloud computing exposes you to various security and compliance risks, such as data breaches, cyberattacks, unauthorized access, and regulatory violations. Security and compliance can help you protect your cloud assets, data, and users, as well as meet your legal and ethical obligations. You can use tools such as AWS Security Hub, Azure Security Center, Google Cloud Security Command Center, and Cloudflare to secure and comply your cloud operations. Security and compliance can also help you implement best practices, such as encryption, authentication, authorization, firewall, audit, and backup.

4 Align and optimize

Cloud computing offers you a lot of flexibility and scalability, but it also requires you to align and optimize your cloud operations with your business objectives and strategies. Alignment and optimization can help you maximize the value and return on investment (ROI) of your cloud operations. You can use tools such as CloudHealth, Cloudability, AWS Cost Explorer, and Azure Cost Management to align and optimize your cloud operations. Alignment and optimization can also help you implement best practices, such as governance, budgeting, reporting, and forecasting.

Cloud computing can transform your IT operations, but it also requires you to adopt and follow ITOM best practices. By automating and orchestrating, monitoring and managing, securing and complying, and aligning and optimizing your cloud operations, you can achieve better outcomes and results for your IT services and your business.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?