What Is Cloud Management & How Can It Help Your Business?

Modern businesses have part or all of their IT infrastructure relying on cloud-based solutions to facilitate various operations: streamline communication, increase collaboration, and achieve flexibility in work practices. However, products and services in a cloud – such as data, applications, access control, and the user – require administrator control for efficient and effective functioning. And this is where cloud management comes in handy.

Cloud management ensures cloud-based IT resources are operating efficiently and interacting with users and other services correctly. It gives admins complete access to resources they need, including automating processes, monitoring usage and cost, and maintaining scalability and flexibility. But what exactly is cloud management, and how can it help your business? Read on to find out.

What Is Cloud Management?

Cloud management involves organized oversight, administration, maintenance, and control of public, private, or hybrid multi-cloud computing resources, infrastructure, and services. It is the practice where IT managers monitor and maximize efficiency through moving workloads on different clouds. This enables businesses to quantify resources and understand how it works, especially when running their infrastructure on a hybrid cloud service.

Monitoring usage is the first initial step in cloud management, letting businesses understand their cloud usage and associated costs. In addition, it provides great insights into where to operate workloads in a multi-cloud environment. Typically, cloud management provides supervision of critical aspects in the cloud:

• Cloud data management: This involves backing up data in the cloud, which can be automated to facilitate disaster recovery strategy in any business.
• Cloud content management: Through multiple clouds, businesses can host content based on their requirements for easier accessibility, ultimately saving costs with higher latency.
• Cloud application management: Cloud management enables enterprises to monitor the usage of cloud-native applications and scale up processing or storage, where necessary, readily.

How Does Cloud Management Work?

Cloud management software gathers critical data necessary for making informed decisions regarding what to move to a public cloud and what to retain in a private cloud. It can also monitor the outcome of decisions to augment hybrid cloud and multi-cloud management. Most businesses develop in-house tools for private or hybrid cloud management, while public cloud providers provide their software tools for securing, monitoring, and managing the costs of cloud offerings.

However, tools in public clouds rarely provide acumen for performance, hence the need for third-party tools to manage public services for organizations using myriad public clouds. IT administrators can utilize private cloud management software tools to distribute resources efficiently. Furthermore, they can use data gathered from resource monitoring to predict and strategize for spikes in resource demands.

Business Benefits of Cloud Management

Besides improving IT performance and efficiency, a sturdy cloud management strategy is a vital component of cost management. Cloud management provides the following business benefits:

Lower IT Costs

Cloud management and cost-saving coincide, meaning integrating cloud management reduces costs associated with running IT in your organization. Besides, cloud data management enables businesses to pay for their needs rather than budget for unwanted resources. In addition, companies can save high costs with cloud management solutions by bringing talent in-house or using third-party providers.

Dependable Security

Unprotected, mismanaged, or undermanaged in-house hardware and software can result in security issues and vulnerabilities. As a result, organizations utilizing cloud services are highly targeted for high-profile data breaches. Cloud security management ensures proper management and monitoring of cloud-based services against potential breaches like malware. Regular security checks, multi-step authentication, and alerts can avert attackers and secure systems against potential threats.

Scalability

Fast-growing businesses experience an increasing demand for new hardware and software regularly. However, it is a costly investment if you run your IT infrastructure in a limited space or face slow rollouts. Cloud management provides the flexibility to scale quickly regardless of company size or resources required to run a successful IT infrastructure.

Easy-To-Follow Compliance

Companies must adhere to regulatory compliance designed to protect end-users and corporations from severe circumstances. Failure to do so may lead to penalties that involve heavy fines and other consequences. Therefore, organizations must follow regulations set by governing bodies that extend to data stored and processed within a public cloud environment.

Working with the right cloud management service providers enables you to maintain compliance by monitoring and managing public cloud configurations from regulatory standards, validating, highlighting, and resolving non-compliance workloads. This helps maintain compliance as well as uphold best practices for data security.

Effective Workflow Automation

Public cloud usage is often more extensive than private clouds. Hence, many businesses usually shift from private to public clouds during peak traffic. Cloud management provides insights into when to move from a private cloud to a public cloud, including when to stay in a private cloud. This offers workflow automation, essential for organizations that experience peak traffic at unexpected times.

Advices the Optimal Cloud Strategy

Besides letting IT managers understand when to move between private and public clouds, cloud management gives insights into the user experience and analyzes workflows processed in the cloud. Existing cloud analysis tools enable companies to conveniently create a balanced workflow more efficiently and plan for proper capacity. The analysis also lets the organization make an informed decision whether to utilize the public, private or hybrid cloud for specific needs, including the optimal balance between these clouds.

Work with Altek for Professional Cloud Management Solutions

An ideal cloud management platform should let users understand how and when any cloud infrastructure is used and benefit the user in making decisions about where to run workloads. Cloud management services represent an opportunity for organizations to achieve visibility and control over their public cloud environments. This can be attained by minimizing waste, maximizing security and compliance, optimizing spending, and utilizing expert knowledge.

At Altek, we are a completely managed service provider offering IT management, print solutions, VoIP, and cloud document solutions. Contact us to learn more or get started with professional cloud management solutions in Telford, PA, today!

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