Cloud Management: 4 Best Practices Enabling Cloud Success

By Author: Sainkeet Abhyankar
Total Articles: 1
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Over the past decade, there has been increased adoption of cloud infrastructure. Undeniably, IT achieves great benefits by moving their resources to the cloud- staying leagues ahead of the changes in the digital economy and flexibly delivering the right information technology to the right user with the right experiences anytime and anywhere. 
However, moving to the cloud is not as easy as it might seem. Of course, you need a stringent and well-thought-of cloud adoption strategy in place. Still, it is equally vital to brainstorm around cloud assessment and management as well after you’ve successfully moved your differentiating assets to the cloud. In a cloud service model, cloud management is critical to achieving desired KPIs and avoiding potential pitfalls that could obstruct your cloud success. 
Solving the Challenges in the Cloud Complexity with a Cloud Management Platform
Unlike erstwhile times when enterprises only have the option of public, private, and hybrid cloud, today they enjoy the diversity of cloud resources along with the benefits it offers. However, this cloud ...
... diversity has complexed things for IT leaders who now suffer to manage and control their excellence while meeting their SLAs. 
And since you cannot give up the rich cloud diversity and the meeting of SLA requirements, you’ve surrounded with challenges like:

The need to simplify user experiences while maintaining their competitiveness
Driving knowledge around the compliant use of cloud resources
Countering the risks associated with your cloud environments
Meet organizational standards and IT demands while leveraging the benefits a cloud infrastructure offers 

A cloud management platform not only strives to solve all these challenges but empowers you to establish holistic control over your cloud resources and user experiences. With such a cloud platform in action, you can easily manage, assess, and optimize your underlining cloud resources across VMware, AWS, Azure, and so on while you expand your cloud environment. 
The Best Practices around Cloud Management 
A cloud management platform safeguards you from the vulnerabilities and threats- security risks, poor performance, outages, etc., plaguing your cloud environment, ultimately preventing revenue loss or straining customer loyalty. 
Here are a few best cloud assessment and management practices to ensure a resilient, flexible, and agile cloud environment.   
#1: Deploy multiple instances to avoid any single point of failure
Refrain from deploying all your instances, services, resources, and other components as a single instance. Instead, deploy them as multiple instances across several data centers, so if ever one part goes TITSUP (total inability to support usual performance), it doesn’t bring your entire business down. Of course, deploying multiple instances will be a tedious process, but this will ensure that your cloud infrastructure is up and running at all times. 
#2: Prepare a risk mitigation plan
Even after enforcing stringent cloud governance and security plans, there can be instances of a breach or similar threats with your cloud management platform. And if that happens, even for seconds, the downtime can make you lose billions of dollars. 
Therefore, always plan for risks and train your employees for such scenarios. Prepare recovery plans, backup data, and perform other actions continuously to maintain reliability. 
#3: Monitor your cloud services 24*7*365
SLAs do not ensure positive uptimes of your cloud infrastructure, which is why you need to monitor and assess your cloud services continuously. This will help you avoid security threats before they spin out of your control. These include:

Analyze your network performance and evaluate if it meets expectations
Ask your cloud assessment team to check for overlying issues
Monitor data usage continuously to prevent bandwidth issues 

#4: Manage total cost of ownership of your cloud usage
If you employ the pay-as-you-go service of a cloud management platform, you need to be careful with your cloud usage limits, constraints, and quotas. Evaluate and manage the TCO of your cloud infrastructure services, and in case you go overboard, optimize for efficiencies and accuracy. 
Build a Centre of Excellence (CoE) With a Reliable Cloud Management Platform
Even with the right talent and team, you cannot avert breaches and threats. However, with the right cloud management platform, a CoE, and a cloud assessment service provider, you can overcome the challenges surrounding your cloud infrastructure.