12-10-20 | Blog Post

Cloud Management and Human Error

Blog Posts

There was a dramatic shift in IT requirements starting in the early 2000s; the initial iterations of cloud services began to appear with the promise of improved networking economics and reductions in IT complexity.  Two decades of experience prove the cloud has helped with many IT challenges including scale, provisioning, security, and workload management. Now an entirely new set of challenges has arisen when considering the management of public or private cloud, multi and hybrid cloud, disaster recovery/business continuity or even administering cloud services on a per workload basis. Performance, migration, pervasive security, cost management and compliance are just a few of the areas where IT has been tasked to deliver results for cloud at the same or better levels as they did with private data center and proprietary network models.  With cloud usage growing every day, and experienced cloud IT resources in high demand, IT faces a significant potential for error which can drive failures that have increased consequences.  So, what’s the math behind that statement? The Uptime Institute estimates that 70-75% of data center failures are caused by human error and up to 75% of significant downtime incidents could have been prevented with better management/processes or configuration. How does IT continue to stay within its resource budget, grow their proficiency and skills in cloud management and reduce the potential for error? A focus on automation is key.

 

The Evolution of Cloud Management

There has been much information published around emerging network automation technologies like Self-Driving Networks and IBN, Intent Based Networking. IBN benefits are defined in a simplified way by SDX Central: IBN is about telling the software what the business intent is with the software automatically applying the intent across the network.” In the same article, Gartner defines the automation benefits of IBN as “can reduce network infrastructure delivery times to the business leaders by 50% to 90%, while simultaneously reducing the number and duration of outages by at least 50%.”  Automation in most forms can truly make a difference in the big scheme of IT management, especially when considering a complex mix of proprietary and cloud-based networks and the efforts to simplify and reduce errors. Today, IT can find the benefits and error correcting capabilities of automation and cloud management simplification with the Otava Gen3 Cloud, built on VMWare’s Cloud Director, and featuring the ability to integrate public cloud environments for multi-cloud support.

 

A Look Under the Covers

It’s time to take a more granular look at the specific areas of automation and management available from the Otava Gen3 Cloud that can make a positive contribution to reducing IT workload and reduce the potential for error:

  • Users/Identity Federation and rights management
  • Automated Service Catalogs
    • vApps
    • VMs
    • Support of traditional and modern applications on the same infrastructure
  • Application-level infrastructure consumption
  • Service-Defined Security up to and Including Zero Trust implementation
    • Create network segments or virtual security zones in software
    • Achieve compliance with regulatory requirements like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, etc.
  • Policies
  • API and CLI automation
  • Health and Operations
  • Developer ready
  • Integrated Continuity and Disaster Recovery Status

Automation of these cloud management elements can dramatically lower error rates, reduce IT workloads for traditionally manual IT tasks, assure adherence to global security policies and help the business to finally achieve the full economic benefits of their move to cloud.

 

This is Where Automation Benefits Get Real

Otava Gen3 Cloud, built upon VMware Cloud Director, delivers the automated, customer driven, end-to-end management capabilities that address platform and policy challenges from a single pane of glass. Integrating other essential services into the Otava Gen3 Cloud from top providers including Veeam, Zerto and Cisco provides an end to end portfolio that answers all secure and compliant cloud requirements.

 

Delivering the Solution

If you’re looking for solutions that drive the complexity out of cloud management, Otava can help. Otava Gen3 Cloud offers simple-to-use cloud services that put you in control. That’s it. Consider our secure, compliant Gen3 Cloud Solutions managed by a team of experts trained in the latest security best practices. Call 877-740-5028 or contact us to learn more.

 

More information

Think you know cloud? Think again. Learn more about Otava Gen3 Cloud by downloading our data sheet

 

Related Articles

 

How to Optimize Your Cloud Usage: When a business doesn’t have an optimized plan for cloud usage, there are many potential side effects.

Tools to Assist Security, Compliance, and Improved Cloud Economics: With the rapid implementation of advanced networking environments, new tools and automation can provide assurances that the appropriate levels of security and compliance are resident end to end.

Disaster Recovery lessons we all can learn: Disaster recovery may be simplified these days, but there are still important lessons to learn when it comes to managing your DR strategy.

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