When businesses move existing applications and resources to the cloud, they always do it in phases, moving the most stable applications first in order to minimize down time. The transition is a slow process which enables users to have enough time to adapt to the new system. Because of this, cloud governance is also staggered per application or phase. The problem here is that people will get used to the staggered way governance is being implemented with many people overseeing governance for each different application. The correct method is a centralized approach to managing cloud services including monitoring of usage, security, uptime, and compliance of SLA’s.

Cloud infrastructure is particularly complex, and therefore needs to be abstracted in order for the resources to be used productively. This dictates the importance of a management or governance system between the people and the different systems consuming resources. This will also be a key element into finding out exactly how much benefit is being brought by the cloud-based monitoring system.

If your business is moving to the cloud, you should consider the following questions:

1. What should you be preparing for right now?

2. Are you looking at the overall picture? Implementation as well as completed migration of the essentials.

3. How well will everything fit together, and will you be in control of every aspect of the system?

4. Will you be able to check every type of monitoring data that you require or may require in the future?

5. And most importantly, will you be able to control the distribution of resources in a way that all of it is used efficiently and positively impact productivity?

You must develop a strategy that accommodates a growing resource pool and always assume that there will be more users and more resources added in the future. In short, be flexible. The problem is that most companies do not think this way. They are often acting in reaction to the present problems which will eventually push them towards more control and governance with very little importance given to productivity, and hence less value. What I mean is they will arrive at a system that may not provide resource allocation on the fly and will require sign off from several high-positions before the resource can be allocated. Too much control, less productivity, and ultimately diverges from one of the concepts of cloud computing, which is flexibility and resource allocation on the fly.

By Abdul Salam