What Is CloudOps?

CloudOps?(cloud operations)?is the provisioning,?management, optimization and securing of?cloud-based applications and services so they meet the needs of the business most efficiently and effectively.??

The functions of?CloudOps?overlap with areas such as ITSM (IT service management) and?AIOps?(the?use of artificial intelligence in managing IT infrastructure). It differs from them in the cloud-specific skills it requires, and its focus is not on technical metrics but on the business benefits of cloud spending.??

Unlike traditional data center support staff,?CloudOps?teams get direct pressure from the business if applications or services aren’t working right, says?Roy Illsley, chief?analyst, IT?ecosystem?and operations, at market researcher?Omdia.?For example, if response time drops from microseconds to milliseconds, “you’re losing 10%?of your audience or you’re losing X millions of dollars,” he says. “In the?CloudOps?space,?you’re the face of the business.”??

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How?Does?CloudOps?Work??

CloudOps?encompasses a wide range?of functions—from identifying and inventorying cloud assets to application and service provisioning, cost tracking, automated remediation of performance and security issues, help choosing which cloud platforms are best for various applications and?services, and?migrating workloads to the cloud.??

These functions are enabled by tools that provide a single or several capabilities as well as broad platforms claiming to enable comprehensive?CloudOps. Many can be deployed in-house or provided as software as a service (SaaS)?and?provide varying levels of integration with existing system management solutions. In addition to third-party tools, major?hyperscalers?such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google offer their own cloud management tools.?

What?Are the?Benefits of?CloudOps??

If done well,?CloudOps?optimizes?performance and capacity,?manages resources?regardless of the platform or location, ensures?service-level agreements or high availability needs are met, enhances? recovery point objectives?(RPOs) and recovery time objectives?(RTOs), maintains?compliance and configuration rules, automates?service for easy self-service provisioning, ensures?change management,??provides?chargeback so that the right users are charged for their cloud spend, and?provides?proper disaster recovery plan and mitigation, says?Forrester Research Senior Analyst Tracy Woo.?

When used to automate functions such as the release of code into production and the provisioning of test environments,?CloudOps?can ease the implementation of?DevOps, which speeds the delivery of software to market by combining work formerly split between development and operations?staffs.??

The infrastructure inventory and tracking that some?CloudOps?tools provide can also aid in?DevSecOps, which combines development, security and operations functions to automatically find and remediate misconfigured assets that can pose security risks.??

What?Are the?Drawbacks of?CloudOps??

Because?CloudOps?changes the work IT?staffs?do and how they do it, it can raise organizational and staffing challenges.?

CloudOps?teams need close relationships with, and understand the offerings of, various cloud providers?in areas such as backup and recovery?and how to mitigate problems with their service, as well as skills in?newer technologies such as containers and Kubernetes, says?Illsley.?Acquiring such skills may require retraining,?paying external?providers?for help or?hiring additional staff, says Woo.???

If businesses try to manage?cost and security—typically two of the highest?CloudOps?priorities—manually with spreadsheets or with flawed processes, they can experience cost overruns?and/or?be?exposed to security vulnerabilities, says Woo.???

Both Woo and?Illsley?warn of the dangers of sidelining the support staff still dedicated to managing legacy, on-premises environments. “[I]f?you’re not careful,?you’ll have two teams working in the same department, with the?CloudOps?team getting all the plaudits?and?getting paid more” while the?team managing older systems is seen as mere?“plumbers”?for the IT infrastructure,?says?Illsley. This can?cause contention and?the loss of experienced employees who are hard to replace.???

CloudOps?also changes the role of operations staff from being the provider of deployment environments to “a policeman” ensuring the cloud environments into which developers release their code are available, scalable, cost-effective and secure, says?Illsley. Navigating this shift may require education, training and change management to prevent dissension, delays in code release, or cost and security risks.???

Above are nine benefits and three drawbacks to employing CloudOps, according to Forrester Research Senior Analyst Tracy Woo.

CloudOps?Strategy Tips?

Here are nine benefits and three drawbacks to employing CloudOps, according to Forrester Research Senior Analyst Tracy Woo. When implementing?CloudOps, Woo recommends:?

Creating?processes for continuous learning and improvement, with fast feedback from the user experience to?the?CloudOps?strategy.?
Breaking?down functional siloes and treating?platforms and services like products, focusing on?their?outcomes and user experiences?with them.?
Continuously improving?services for users with comprehensive and contextual measurements.??
Sharing?best practices across agile teams and shared services.?
Including?all stakeholders in the creation and implementation of?the?CloudOps?strategy?to?ensure buy-in and that no business-critical processes are ignored.?
Putting?an added focus on security?through?zero-trust strategy, end-to-end encryption and automated?security monitoring.?

When creating?CloudOps?teams in addition to legacy IT management teams, “be sure to explain the?role?of each team, how it will evolve and what the future is for its members,” says Illsley. Give members of the legacy team the option of being retrained in cloud technologies, he suggests, to avoid losing their skills and knowledge of the business and its?regulatory, security and other needs.??

Examples of?CloudOps ?

VMware?scored very high in a September 2020?Omdia?report for its effectiveness in managing storage and network assets; cost and capacity management; and the optimization, governance and securing of public clouds. Its?Tanzu?solution for cloud-native environments ships with more than 220?out-of-the-box integrations with commonly used cloud-native technologies.?Omdia?also cited VMware’s automation capabilities.??

Micro Focus?is strongest because of its?unified self-service catalog,?provisioning of?working environments, orchestration and governance capabilities, according to a November 2020 Forrester report. The report says customers praise?Micro Focus for its discovery and aggregation methods, service?orchestration, administrator and user dashboards, and template and workflow designers, as well as its customer support.?

Omdia?rates?IBM?high?for monitoring,?lifecycle management,?automation,?and backup and resiliency, as well as its?ability to manage cloud-native environments such as the?Kubernetes?orchestration environment. It praised IBM’s comprehensive monitoring of metrics such as?CPU, memory, storage, network and I/O?as well as hypervisors,?operating systems and the container orchestration layer.??

Google’s cloud management tools are strongest in?operational management and lifecycle management?but less so in public cloud management, says?Omdia.?Google?uses artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)?to?provide natural language integration with?ITSM?platforms. Google’s DevOps capabilities make it easier to find and remediate deployment issues such as runtime dependencies earlier in the deployment process.?

Oracle’s greatest strengths lie in?lifecycle and automation,?marketplace and applications,?and security management. AI/ML automation is a?“key strength,” says?Omdia, including its use in “tuning databases to ensure optimum performance, patching and updating databases.”?Omdia?also cited Oracle’s security solutions tailored for areas such as database, configuration, and compliance, identity and access management.???

Microsoft is strongest, says Illsley, in financial management and public and private cloud management.? Its Cost Management module “provides a view of organizational cost and usage patterns by using inbuilt analytics”?for?Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform as well as third parties. It also provides predictive analytics and recommendations?for, among other areas, cost reduction,?says the report.?

Cisco?Systems’?AppDynamics?serves?enterprises?monitoring large, distributed and complex application and infrastructure environments, according to an April 2021 Gartner report, and plans to expand?support for Kubernetes,?OpenTelemetry?and cloud providers beyond Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as?for?monitoring platform as a service (PaaS) and database as a service (DBaaS).?Among its strengths, according to Gartner, are its ability to map the user experience to infrastructure issues and to link?technology metrics to business KPIs?using machine learning.??