DevOps introduced a change in the IT culture with the adoption of agile, lean practices for development. It emphasized people, tools, methodologies, and discovered how a balance between the development and operations team could bring a significant shift in a software development cycle. DevOps leverage automation tools to build a dynamic infrastructure.
Since automation is the key here, DevOps collaborated with cloud computing services to bring impact to its cause. A plethora of computing services out there supports the scalability and reliability of infrastructure, as needed. With this collaboration being more fruitful (DevOps and Cloud), this practice was given a name- CloudOps.
CloudOps refers to cloud operations, which involve network, performance, security, helpdesk, and device management to keep applications and infrastructure running.
READ MORE: Understanding Cloud-Ops: The Reinvented IT Ops
As businesses analyze the importance of cloud and DevOps, they are adopting this practice (ClouOps) to run their infrastructure and software solutions on the cloud. However, getting started with CloudOps needs expertise in several services- data migration, infrastructure optimization, architecture building are to name a few.
If CloudOps adoption is on the technology roadmap of your organization, then here are a few services that might be required at some point to implement CloudOps.
Cloud Architecture Design:
Building a software system is a progressive task, which involves building a strong underlying structure (called the architecture). When creating a cloud architecture, it is important to take care of factors like sustainability, cost optimization, scalability, performance, security, efficiency, etc. A cloud architecture that delivers on the organizational expectations and requirements requires technical efficiency and insights into the cloud services.
Cloud Readiness Assessment:
Cloud readiness assessment is a list of factors that indicate that the data and applications are ready to be moved to the cloud, with minimal impact on operations during the transition. This includes creating a checklist using cloud readiness assessment tools, creating a visual representation of the organization's needs, and enlisting a plan of action to start the migration.
The cloud readiness assessment may include factors such as:
- Verify that the data & applications are designed to work in the new environment.
- Analyze current loads and check if the existing processes and applications can be merged with the new solution on the cloud.
- Check standards, compliances, and format of data to ensure that the new environment will accept the old data.
Cloud Migration Services:
Cloud migration is the process of moving data, applications, and other business management documents to the cloud from on-premise servers. However, this migration to a different environment has several challenges attached to it and it is necessary to overcome them.
Cloud migration requires special measures to ascertain business continuity during server switching. This may include:
- Rewriting complete application architecture according to the cloud environment.
- Taking care of compliances and standards while moving data from on-premise servers.
- Investment in special tools and people needs to be done when it comes to on-premise to cloud migration.
- Performance issues such as latency, downtime, interoperability, etc. need to be taken care of.
- Optimizing costs with the cloud FinOps expert is necessary to derive maximum benefits from the cloud/multi-cloud strategy.
ALSO READ: On-Premise to AWS Migration: Know Why and How to do it?
Cloud migration needs detailing and only an experienced CloudOps team can help in designing the action plan, take care of technical aspects, and ensures that data is safely moved to a different environment. This is where the role of a managed cloud services provider comes into play.
Managed Cloud Services:
Managed cloud services are partial or complete management of a cloud platform. This may include migration, maintenance, and optimization of a public cloud environment. To add to it this, there is engineering on-demand, 24/7 help desk support, operations management, etc.
A managed cloud services provider is a team that can help in managing a private, public, and hybrid cloud environment. Most businesses usually outsource this team to take care of their business’s cloud environment. This team ensures that the best cloud practices on the cloud are followed such as selecting the right cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP) according to the organizational needs. Also, this team is responsible for designing the entire infrastructure (including resources, architecture, tools, cost, etc.) to bring the benefits of the cloud to an organization.
Cloud Computing Services:
There are numerous cloud computing services available and every one of them has a sure advantage. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining resources for storage, databases, computing power, etc, they help to avail the services on an as-needed basis from cloud providers. But, it is important to figure out which one works best for an organization.
For example, If the application is built using Microsoft technologies (SQL, Sharepoint, .NET, etc.), then it is better to go with Azure as a cloud provider. Similarly, if the application requires frequent start/stop, then a cloud services provider should be chosen on the basis of pricing policy.
Here is a quick guide to making the most out of cloud services. Do check this out and to know more about how computing services can be customized according to your organizational requirement, schedule a free consultation with our CloudOps expert.
