12-27-21 | Blog Post
A shift to the cloud is the best way to ensure that your business stays current and competitive. Over the last decade, 90% of businesses have chosen cloud-based solutions over traditional computing and data storage methods for benefits like better insights, easier collaboration, and reduced costs.
As confidence in cloud-based solutions increases, businesses are moving more advanced workloads to the cloud. Increased cloud usage means that businesses also need to manage their cloud infrastructure more efficiently. Cloud automation makes it easier for businesses to optimize and manage IT infrastructure, leading to improved operational efficiency and reduced complexity.
In this article, we look at 5 ways cloud automation services can benefit organizations.
Cloud automation refers to the use of software and processes to automate the provisioning and management of cloud computing workloads and services such as virtual network creation, virtual machine deployment, load balancing, and performance monitoring. Using cloud automation, IT administrators can reduce or eliminate manual processes to lower administrative overhead and speed up the delivery of resources.
Before we consider the benefits of cloud automation services, let’s look at some common ways to use them.
Cloud automation allows you to oversee, manage and optimize all the cloud resources in your environment including operating systems, applications, networks, and databases. This greater visibility allows you to use resources more efficiently.
Using cloud automation you can automatically set resource usage limits based on specific business rules like time of day or maximum capacity, configure user access controls, generate compliance reports and increase or adjust resources to handle unexpected situations.
Cloud automation frees IT teams from repetitive manual administrative tasks, letting them focus on higher-level tasks targeted toward the organization’s business goals.
A virtual network is similar to a traditional computer network in that it allows communication between two or more virtual machines (VM), virtual servers, and other components of a virtualized environment.
Cloud automation uses software to simplify the creation, deployment, and delivery of components in a virtual network. It helps to prevent human error in network management and operations and reduces the time it takes to provision services and resolves network and security issues.
Deploying and operating enterprise workloads in a traditional network is a manual time-consuming process involving repetitive tasks. It is an inefficient process that can lead to errors that create security vulnerabilities resulting in network downtime and loss of productivity.
Cloud automation eliminates the repetitive and manual processes involved in deploying and managing workloads and helps administrators monitor their network environment to adjust workloads as needed.
A correctly implemented cloud automation solution is faster, more secure, and more scalable than a manual solution leading to fewer errors and more predictable and reliable workflows.
Cloud solutions offer built-in monitoring mechanisms that allow you to configure alerts to monitor the network environment for issues and incidents that might affect resource availability and performance.
With cloud automation, you can set pre-defined thresholds to handle incidents such as out-of-memory errors and unresponsive databases and set up pre-defined workflows for automatically remediating issues. Metrics collected from the cloud environment can also help refine configurations for optimal performance.
Virtual machine clustering is a technique used to ensure the high availability of a network and servers. Virtual machine clusters use virtual machines as nodes to enable multiple functionalities on the same server and optimize server utilization.
Cloud automation eliminates much of the overhead associated with manually setting up a virtual machine cluster. Virtual machines can be provisioned and clusters scaled and updated on-demand to adapt to the changing needs of an organization. Cloud automation improves the availability, security, and maintenance of virtual machine clusters.
Cloud automation reduces errors and increases productivity, which translates to lower operational costs. Automating time-consuming and error-prone tasks reduces the time IT staff spend putting out fires and allows them to focus on revenue-generating tasks that target the company’s goals.
Automation also helps you to reduce or eliminate the costs associated with training IT personnel to install, troubleshoot, and maintain resources in the cloud environment.
Manually maintaining a large modern IT system can be resource-intensive, leading to increased risks due to errors. Configuration management ensures that the configuration of your systems and software are current and correct.
Cloud automation improves efficiency by replacing manual configuration processes with automated processes, making it possible to manage more cloud resources with less human oversight. With automated configuration management, you can ensure that cloud resources are always in a known, consistent state.
Visibility into your cloud environment enables better cloud resource management and enhances security. Cloud automation helps you to keep track of everything configured within your environment and the changes made to cloud resources including applications, files, registries, and services.
Using management software you can set up and subscribe to real-time notifications that are sent whenever a change occurs. This can help you pinpoint operational and environmental issues within your cloud environment.
Cloud solutions make it easy to provision new resources, but resource creation can quickly get out of control, leading to forgotten and unused resources. Unused resources continue to incur costs as they utilize valuable processing power and storage capacity.
Cloud automation can help you streamline IT focus by eliminating inefficient resource use. By identifying and removing unused instances, you can eliminate unnecessary processes and reallocate resources to more critical operations.
Cloud automation allows you to continue to deliver faster, more reliable services to your customers as your company grows. It makes it easier to provision the resources and infrastructure you need to jump on a new business opportunity or quickly change business direction to address evolving customer needs.
As you improve current services or products and introduce new ones, you can seamlessly scale resources to support new infrastructure without disrupting the customer experience.
Manually management of cloud-based IT environments can waste valuable time, money, and resources preventing businesses from realizing the full benefits of the cloud. Cloud automation services can help your organization improve workload distribution, resource usage, and the overall administration of IT operations in your business.
Otava can help your business move to the cloud and take full advantage of cloud automation services. Contact us today to learn more.
