Many IT organizations love the benefits cloud has to offer and always want the latest and greatest technologies available to get a leg up on competition. Others want relief from the nagging IT issues they face on a daily basis. Luckily, these can often be quickly resolved: with deployment automation or cost control.
However, we’re now entering an era where many of the original cloud technologies like IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) , PaaS (Platform as a Service ) and SaaS (Software as a Service) have become mainstream. There’s much talk about the various newer cloud technologies – such as containers, cloud-native, and edge computing – and a lot of hype surrounding these topics too. These technologies will also become mainstream over the coming 2-5 years.
However, not all companies are ready to jump on the innovation bandwagon. Many want to stick with what they know, what is comfortable and reside in the current status quo, relying on on-premise solutions and what’s judged as ‘safe.’
For other forward-thinking companies, there’s a lot of exciting things happening with cloud technologies at the moment. But with the hype surrounding innovation, Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) are now themselves on the edge of becoming a commodity – a required strategic element of cloud initiatives.
The Need For Cloud Control
A CMP gives you the ability to automate, configure, deploy, and get full control of your entire hybrid cloud infrastructure from a single point of management. It also allows you to set automation processes for deployment, cost, resource use, and get a complete overview of what’s going on.
What are the use cases for CMPs? The most obvious ones are effectively managing IaaS and PaaS.
Containerization fits easily in to this model as well. It’s still a few years away from being a commodity, but we’re seeing now a broader acceptance of the technology in production environments. As a result, forward-thinking organizations have been abandoning their traditional on-premise solutions to make containerization their primary technology for application development.
For the others who aren’t willing, it often comes down to cost.
Let’s say you have 3,000 virtual machines managed by a dedicated IT Ops team of several people. As you probably know, this is quite an expensive IT operations task. There’s a need to keep tabs on lifecycle, overall costs, and the resources used because – if you don’t, much infrastructure can go to waste. We all know this. Without the proper tools, managing this can be very difficult.
Another CMP use case is when a managed service provider needs to manage costs and bill for their use. There’s a great need for an automated on-demand overview and control to know what’s going on.
State Of The Technology
So while many companies are going cloud-native and undertaking digital transformations, others are hesitant or resistant.The early adopters are using the ‘State Of The Technology’ – meaning that they’re taking advantage of cutting-edge innovation in the IT market. Two of these technologies are cloud-native and containerization.
However, it’s worth remembering that while these technologies are becoming a required part of application workload management, it’s only when things become a commodity that they really need additional functionality. This is precisely why Cloud Management Platforms are now themselves on the cusp of wider adoption. As CMPs enter the mainstream, those IT pros who are working with them now are certainly ahead of the curve.
Contact us today to see how we can help you orchestrate and future-proof your cloud infrastructure.