Cloud Management Report

Research completed by 451 Research on behalf of Embotics suggests an increased use of third-party clouds and notes ‘Amazon + 1’ is turning out to be ‘the CIO’s organizing principle.’ Managing the now typically multi-cloud environments in a business efficiently is making cloud management platforms more and more necessary.

Key Findings

Surveying 166 US-based enterprise IT organizations with regard to use of cloud infrastructure as well as the automation and management of associated processes and technologies, 451 Research observed five significant conclusions:

• Enterprise IT environments are rapidly transforming with the majority of respondents stating current or near future use of container and orchestration technologies. 63% of those surveyed have or plan to adopt automation technology.

• Multi-cloud environments are the norm with 75% of surveyed organizations currently using more than one cloud.

• IT is being forced to rethink cloud management; though most of those surveyed have a cloud management platform in place, and many others are piloting such technology, the current cloud management tools are considered too slow, with a lack of single interface to view entire environments, difficulties creating, managing and tracking digital assets, and a growing VM sprawl.

• hybrid cloud use is increasing the need for management technologies able to assist through virtualization, consolidation, automation, and orchestration, delivering customer experiences that leave the infrastructure effectively hidden.

• The opportunity to provide cross-cloud capabilities able to address technology evolution and business demands for improved speed and agility is notable, and cloud management platforms are required to support this IT transformation.

The Benefits of Cloud Management Platform Implementation

Cloud management platforms enable data-driven decision-making, and while many businesses are wrestling with virtualization and consolidation, cloud management platforms enable an incremental transformation from virtualization to automation and orchestration. Cloud management platforms also support fixed-term and dynamic sourcing, thus providing planned and unplanned options, and typically fewer difficulties are encountered regarding contract complexity and vendor management. Providing ease of use and access options, cloud management platforms also support a combination of old- and new-style IT services, and automation is found to improve user satisfaction without any requirements to raise staff levels.

Cloud Management Platform Challenges

It is, of course, always a balancing act, and cloud management platforms have to calculate and manage the needs of different stakeholders, including the business, IT and developers. It’s also necessary for organizations to have both the maturity and political will to make the changes required to drive cloud management platform adoption throughout, and the end-user IT literacy levels within must be carefully considered. Regarding dealings with cloud Service Providers and cloud management platform providers, SLAs and agreements need to be devised concerning relationships, responsibilities, and customization work to ensure that what’s expected by the organization is in fact what will be delivered.

Navigating the Journey

Cloud adoption is accelerating and with it the demand for services able to navigate the journey and manage the transformation. Not only assisting in these complex IT revolutions, as well as virtualization and consolation, automation and orchestration, cloud management platforms can aid users struggling to manage VM sprawl. They further assist users in the application of cloud decision criteria to locate, access and employ cloud applications and services through criteria such as cost, compliance, utility, governance and auditability with rules applied to every application. And of further consequence, policy-based cloud management platforms allow for less time devoted to compliance issues when selecting multiple individual services and instead move the focus to more strategic risk assessments in the selection of federated services. For cloud services that are secure, well priced, offering optimal performance, and supporting the needs of various user groups, more and more organizations find that cloud management platforms are necessary to automate and orchestrate processes and ensure business goals are met.

By Jennifer Klostermann