Cloud Management: After Your Migration

Those benefits don’t happen by accident. A successful migration is needed, of course, but so is a rigorous, well-executed cloud management strategy that keeps costs low, apps secure and performance levels high.

Keep a Lid on Expenses With Cost Management

Many businesses migrate to the cloud to take advantage of cost savings, but expenses can quickly spiral once you’ve moved applications. That’s what makes cost management so important. It’s all about maximizing the return on your investment.

What works for on-premise servers won’t work for cloud applications. The change from operational expenditures to capital expenditures means cloud-based cost management requires a different way of thinking. In particular, follow these five best practices:

• Start managing costs before migration by calculating CPU usage and assessing cloud providers’ billing models.
• Identify unused resources and either put them to work or make sure you aren’t being billed for them.
• Get to grips with usage and billing reports, which will help show where wastage is occurring.
• Establish a cost management team that works across departments.
• Partner with an expert for additional support.

Use Asset Management to Balance Performance With Costs

Asset management is just as important in the cloud as it is with on-premise applications. The self-serve nature of the cloud can create a gulf between what IT directors think is happening and reality.

The increased visibility that asset management achieves is essential for identifying waste and keeping costs to a minimum. It can also highlight compliance and security issues that could cost your business financially and reputationally in the future.

And don’t forget about the performance improvements that also result from increased asset visibility. You’ll be able to make sure providers fulfill their SLAs, for one, and optimize your own workloads in a way that improves performance while balancing costs.

Keep Your Cloud Infrastructure Secure

While the cloud has inherent security features, there are still steps CIOs and IT teams can take to improve security and protect their data.

Vetting vendors should be the first step you take in this regard. Make sure you do your due diligence and check that each potential provider has satisfactory security credentials and certificates, and that they’re happy to answer any security-related questions.

Once you’ve chosen a provider and migrated applications, start encrypting any data stored on the cloud immediately. Doing so will restrict access to your cloud data for anyone accessing it without the proper credentials. This is relatively easy to achieve because many providers have encryption tools included in their offerings.

Finally, consider what happens when employees leave your company. Without a proper offboarding process, former employees could still be able to access your company’s data. Use an identity and access management solution to consolidate all user passwords and login details into a single entity, which can be turned off as soon as someone leaves the company.

Track Performance With These Key Metrics

You can’t have a cloud management strategy without having a way to track the performance of applications or a way to identify opportunities to improve. The key is to approach cloud management holistically. Consider these metrics:

• Request rate
• Application availability
• User satisfaction
• Error rate
• Resource Metrics

Don’t just track these metrics. Use them to fine-tune applications and proactively avoid problems by sharing intelligence with developers.

A successful migration is only the start of your cloud transformation. Cost management, asset visibility, security and performance monitoring are key to realizing the benefits of cloud infrastructures.

Images by: Charles Deluvio, Medienstürmer