Cloud infrastructures are a scalable, efficient, and affordable way to manage business operations and data. Unlike on-premise data centers, they provide greater flexibility, agility, and integration. Given these benefits, it is not surprising that businesses are adopting the cloud at an astounding pace. Studies found that 94% of enterprises already use a cloud service.
No matter how reliable the cloud is, it is not enough to deploy it. You need to monitor and optimize it continuously to ensure the cost and complexity of the infrastructure.
Here are a few cloud optimization tips you can right now.
Why is Cloud Optimization Crucial to your Business?
Cloud optimization is the process of analyzing and configuring the allocation of cloud resources that power applications and workloads. That way, you improve workplace performance, maximize ROI, and reduce costs.
Cloud optimization is crucial to IT operations teams that are responsible for resource allocation. They need to meet the needs of finance teams that want to reduce cloud costs and prevent overspending. On the other hand, application owners do not want you to cut their resources.
So, why do these gaps happen? Because IT has evolved. In the past, your developers used to write the code. After going through the build phase, the code was manually tested, tuned, and deployed. The process was repeated for every new release.
To simplify the process and eliminate silos between software development and IT operations teams, companies started investing in DevOps that focuses on continuous testing, tuning, and deployment. However, this process lacks effective post-deployment optimization.
That is where cloud optimization steps in. With it, your IT Ops can maximize cloud value for spend and, at the same time, ensure the highest app performance. That way, they keep the finance department, app owners, and end-users happy.
When implemented strategically, cloud optimization tools lead to:
- The reduction of application risk
- The modernization of the cloud infrastructure
- Optimization of different areas of interest, including VMs, software licensees, storage, containers, and so forth.
- Efficient cloud migration
- Real-time response for virtual infrastructures
- Measure Cloud Analytics
Most managed cloud service providers offer cloud analytics reports to inform you about the performance of the cloud. One of the leading logging as a Service providers Logit.io offer affordable cloud monitoring with fully transparent billing, zero data egress fees and no vendor lock-in.
With cloud analytics, you can monitor how the managed cloud service and cost have changed over time. Most importantly, you can measure the impact of the cloud solution on your business.
Without cloud analytics, you cannot understand which cloud services work or do not work for your company.
- Build a Cloud Governance Plan
Simply put, cloud governance is a set of rules that apply to specific policies and principles. A cloud governance structure helps you monitor cloud implementation, adherence to compliance and regulatory requirements, and authorization levels to cloud services.
It consists of several techniques, including financial management, cost optimization, operational governance, configuration management, and security management.
Any solid cloud governance policy includes security policies, programming standards, backup recovery services, and infrastructure monitoring.
By implementing these principles, you will manage cloud resources more efficiently. Most importantly, you will control and minimize shadow costs. When you do not understand what systems you use and where business data resides, you may struggle with high data risks and rising expenses.
- Choose the Right Managed Cloud Service
Managing your business in the cloud and optimizing the performance of your infrastructure can be a challenge. Say you want to optimize the cloud with Microsoft Azure that offers an array of cloud computing services.
However, if you lack skilled cloud solution architects and engineers, managing a hybrid cloud infrastructure on Azure can be challenging.
That is where you should rely on Azure managed services. They have an experienced team of engineers that will help you get the most out of cloud architecture and automation. By optimizing database servers and VM instances, they will help you reduce costs and maximize team performance.
- Using AI in Cloud Optimization
Artificial intelligence is the backbone of cloud optimization. It can process data way faster than human minds. Here is how a typical Cloud Optimization model works:
- After the code goes through the CI/CD pipeline, the CO tool starts to measure its performance.
- The CO tool makes predictions about which set of configurations can improve software performance and minimize its cost.
- It changes settings and configuration parameters, affirms the changes, and runs tests. The goal is to analyze how the changes impacted the performance of the application.
- The CO tool compares data and makes new sets of predictions, which lead to new configurations.
- The process happens repeatedly, allowing you to reduce expenses and boost application performance.
Over to You
In the era of DevOps, cloud optimization is a necessity for any business with cloud-based infrastructure. The idea is to reduce the cost of the cloud without compromising reliability and performance. By investing in the right cloud optimization solutions, you will increase your ROI and boost app performance in the long-run.