Post from 2015:
The rapid rise to prominence and proliferation of cloud computing resources have created tremendous opportunities for companies of all sizes and in every industry. By embracing the cloud, firms can improve their efficiency, add new capabilities, increase flexibility and cut costs. Altogether, this makes cloud adoption an essential goal for any organization hoping to remain competitive in the coming years.
To truly benefit from the cloud and gain an edge over industry rivals, though, it’s critical for firms to embrace the cloud in the right way and with the best possible support. Key to any such effort is automation. Automation can vastly improve the cloud’s performance for a given firm, while also shoring up its data security capabilities.
Writing for Data Center Knowledge, Bill Kleyman recently highlighted several of the most important layers of data center and cloud automation that companies’ IT leaders should focus on in order to optimize their cloud deployments.
Key automation layers
One of the key automation layers that organizations should focus on, according to Kleyman, is software/applications. He pointed out that with automated tools, administrators can provision new instances of an application or new servers to host apps within the data center or cloud environment as needed, helping to ensure that resources are allocated in the optimal way.
Another important area of consideration is the virtualization and hypervisor layer, according to the writer.
“Automation and orchestration tools aim to directly integrate with the virtual layer to better control resources, virtual services delivery and the virtual workloads themselves,” Kleyman wrote.
Furthermore, he pointed out that direct plug-ins for the hypervisor platform have become a standard feature, thanks to the growing importance of automation.
One more key automation layer, as spotlighted by Kleyman, is policy control. These controls cover such diverse areas as costs and security, helping to shore up the reliability and efficiency that cloud solutions can deliver.
Getting automation right
All of this highlights the value that automation can deliver for cloud implementations. However, Kleyman also emphasized that automation will only prove its worth when it is approached and deployed effectively. Critically, he noted that automation plans need to revolve around use cases and businesses’ unique goals.
Making is happen is easier said than done. As countless firms have come to realize, developing a high-quality automation solution can be a complex task for IT teams that do not have robust cloud automation experience. That’s why it’s so valuable for organizations to partner with experienced cloud services providers, such as Datapipe, to develop and implement optimized cloud automation strategies.
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