Addressing Roadblocks in Cloud Computing

Business owners are constantly searching for the next great technology that will help streamline solutions, improve workflow efficiency, and boost their ROI. Cloud computing has quickly become one of the most effective technologies in helping companies increase work output and cut costs. However, issues arise when businesses expand the scale of their operations when adopting cloud technology. This can become time consuming and expensive without the right guidance.

While there are no shortage of benefits to adopting the cloud, a small typo on a script can turn a well-oiled work environment into a financial black hole and logistical nightmare for companies. Failing to implement the adequate management techniques and quality control measures can lead to a number of issues. These include higher overhead, regulatory issues, and even data breaches.

Increasing operational efficiency, cutting costs, and enhancing security all begin with the integration of a centralized governance. Without proper governance, you’re bound to run into cloud migration roadblocks that could eat at a company’s potential of moving forward.

Centralized governance

A major challenge for companies using cloud computing is managing all the cloud tasks and tools. The best solution is a centralized governance structure for migrating workloads and handling all the moving parts. A recent cloud study found that the top cloud organizations are likely to use centralized governance to manage workflow, as doing so leads to faster decision-making and smoother day-to-day operations.

With a centralized governance, companies can fix solutions in real time without sacrificing the speed of their work output. This model helps companies make effective, efficient, and secure use of their IT resources. To develop a centralized governance, businesses should create guidelines that define the infrastructure for each application. This creates a consistent model that applies to the entire company.

This model should look at how to manage a business’s workload in every metric, including cost, performance, availability, security, and usage. The key is to create a set of parameters that prevents applications and their infrastructures from misfiring, going over-budget, or lacking the necessary security measures. Doing so will help fix these deviations in real time, keeping your operations balanced.

The use of resources in a centralized governance system can improve a cloud computing system’s cost, security, and usage across a variety of applications, services, and products.

Cost management

Cloud adoption can be a costly endeavor if it isn’t managed properly. Companies need to consider the utilization, performance, security, and availability of their products and services. Businesses can avoid unnecessary expenses by adding processes in their applications that maintain an efficient workflow without additional overhead costs. Operations often slow down when companies increase the scale of their operation, making it harder to manage a secure and speedy infrastructure without spending more.

A centralized governance system can also help keep costs at bay by establishing optimal parameters and processes for a cloud infrastructure. Doing so will simplify operations, automate faster decision-making, and ensure that workers use their resources to focus on more creative endeavors that add business value. Transparent communication between leaders and departments is also necessary for keeping track of costs month-to-month.

Meeting service level agreements (SLA) in the cloud is also essential to avoid regulatory problems. Companies can do so by appropriately allocating resources on the applications and solutions by measuring real eser performance. Utilizing the right amount of resources on the right application based on performance goes a long way in ensuring that a company’s finances line up with their volume and quality of work. Transparency is also important here as offering a comprehensive history of all transaction instances– including resource utilizations metrics and SLAs– helps companies make informed decisions on how to plan for future capacity requirements.

Optimizing security

It’s no secret that one of the cornerstones of an effective cloud computing system is a well-ironed security system that considers every variable and threat before they even arrive. Understanding the prevalent cloud security challenges and risks will keep a company’s servers secure. The best way to combat threats such as shadow IT, compliance issues, and improper encryption techniques is by understanding the risk they pose and how to shut them down before they hit a company’s servers.

While hackers pose a real threat to cloud systems, most of the risks happen internally rather than from an external source. Research from Gartner estimates that by 2020, 80% of cloud breaches will come from customer misconfiguration, mismanaged credentials, or insider theft. The best way to avoid these pitfalls is with an automated platform that runs policies to ensure security compliance.

There are more cloud security solutions than ever, making it even more important to do your research and plan your IT strategy accordingly. These cloud security tools are becoming increasingly specialized, addressing different segments such as data, encryption and user authorization; and identity and access management (IAM). Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) are also effective third -partysolutions that enforce security policy between consumers and cloud service providers.

Quality control is also critical for keeping your system working at a high level. Every company deals with a different set of issues when integrating cloud computing, meaning there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this quality control issue. All workloads should be tested, however, including those not connected to the internet. Internal threats also need to be assessed to determine whether or not extra security measures should be added.

Overcoming roadblocks and doing more in the cloud

Cloud computing requires different security infrastructure than traditional IT resources. It’s difficult to develop a cloud system that meets regulations, works smoothly, and protects a company’s servers. Having the right tools and policies in place makes the process much easier. A centralized governance system goes a long way in maintaining the quality of a cloud system addressing threats in real time.

A complete assessment of SLAs, security measures, and resource allocation will help you address any roadblocks that pop up in an effective and efficient manner, while also reducing unnecessary overhead costs and optimizing work output.

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Author

John

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