How to Overcome the Top 4 Cloud Management Challenges (with Azure)

Cloud Advantages Bring Cloud Challenges

Posted by Ryan McDonald on September 30, 2019 · 6 mins read

This is an excerpt from a blog article previously featured on 10th Magnitude.com.

Across all industries, no matter which one you are in, the fierce pace of technology means that you are competing on a new playing field. You’re now in a realm in which companies that have adapted to a digital transformation mindset are thriving.

These organizations are rapidly altering the way their companies are run and how they interact with their customers. These businesses are creating a data-first game plan that’s enabled by cloud-centric technology and a cloud-first culture.

It goes without saying that cloud computing has become an essential component in the success of any business. But with all the benefits the Cloud brings come an array of challenges that are inescapable.

The good news is that these challenges are not only doable but meeting them head-on opens up a new world of possibilities for your business.

The reality is that the landscape of cloud management has changed quite dramatically. And the companies that reap the amazing benefits the Cloud brings are taking a completely new approach to the way their cloud resources are managed.

Cloud advantages Bring Cloud Challenges

With cloud computing’s continued upward trajectory, managers in charge of cloud infrastructure are faced with a multitude of tasks — cost management, governance, security, and more.

Meaning that a modern approach to managing your new cloud resources is essential if you want to ensure that your company continues to evolve.

You can’t rely on the same solutions that you used on-premises. You need to move away from traditional processes, and instead unlock and deploy the phenomenal power of the Cloud and your data.

Managed Cloud will get you there thanks to its primary advantages — data can be managed on-demand, you can get applications to market quickly, and scale up or down to meet your needs.

This translates to companies that can break new ground – to innovate with less risk and bring products to market faster

A new approach to managing these resources will bring you to a place where challenges transform into a new world of possibility.

You want your cloud management challenges to turn into a new world of opportunity. For you, this probably means increased levels of security, resiliency, automation, as well as powerful governance and monitoring for operational insights and rich intelligence.

Working with a managed services provider can help you get there and more.

Modern Managed Services to the Rescue

To say that managed services have changed would be a major understatement. The Cloud has transformed (no, revolutionized) the way that managed services providers work with customers.

A traditional managed services model is more like an outsourced contract, which involves owning and managing a huge amount of capital requirement for a company’s infrastructure. Contracts designed to manage the risk of deploying new capital in those environments.

The Cloud has drastically changed the economics of this relationship. Thanks to the Cloud, there is no longer a need for a large amount of capital to deploy the infrastructure.

Instead, a company’s focus can shift to mitigating competitive risk by providing improved responsiveness, improved speed, and innovation for clients.

This allows a company’s scarce human capital to focus on data and applications, not the maintenance and operation of infrastructure.

The new world of comprehensive managed services will help you pinpoint opportunities and see danger in the road ahead. This enables companies to sharpen their agility and continue their digital transformation into the Cloud.

Your Cloud Challenges (in detail)

If you’ve moved to the Cloud, what does your cloud management world look like?

Take a look at the challenges listed below. Do any of them sound familiar?

Monitoring & Automation

  • Unmaintainable code and silos of automation
  • Inconsistent monitoring approach for IaaS, PaaS, and Containers
  • Lack of full-stack monitoring and visibility
  • Inconsistent manual configuration

Governance

  • Lack of security built into the development process
  • Complex, manual change management processes
  • Challenges finding a balance between speed and control
  • Lack of policy to enforce audit rules to ensure compliance
  • Diverse set of practices across business units

Management & Optimization

  • Tools used inconsistently across the organization
  • Difficult to understand why spend is increasing
  • Challenges gathering and analyzing data to support better insight and improve outcomes
  • Feeling of less control and more risk

Working in the Cloud is essential to keeping your business current, but the bullet points above clearly demonstrate that you can’t just implement the Cloud and leave it alone.

It requires constant management to ensure that you’re not missing anything, whether that’s installing the latest updates or addressing potential security concerns.

Here are some of the primary challenges associated with cloud management:

  • Its rapid pace of change: How do you keep up to date with the constantly changing Cloud?
  • Service management: How will you transform your IT operations to support the dynamic nature of the Cloud?
  • Effectively managing cost: You need to avoid potentially costly cloud sprawl with careful cost management.
  • Governance: Governing the usage of the Cloud and its resources is essential.

In addition, there are several major customer trends driving new cloud management and security needs:

  • Modernization: Spend is reduced with application and cloud modernization.
  • Scale: Increased cloud adoption is driving the need to be better organized and governed.
  • Security: The Cloud is now perceived as an asset in fighting evolving threats.
  • Transformation: IT is transforming to play a more strategic role.

Want to know how to address the top challenges? Continue on to the 10th Magnitude blog to read more.


Credits:

Photo by Paul Frenzel on Unsplash.