It’s that time of year when gyms fill up with New Year’s resolution-driven people who want to get into shape. At least, that’s the idea for the first few weeks of the calendar. Perhaps it’s time to work up your IT resolutions as well, especially when it comes to supporting your cloud-based systems in new and more innovative ways.
Here are three suggestions for better cloud use in 2016.
Resolution No. 1: Set up monitoring/management that proactively looks for performance and stability issues.
Most of us who leverage public cloud(s) use the provider’s native monitoring and management capabilities. However, a more comprehensive approach and technology is typically needed to effectively keep tabs on public and private clouds in production, as well as monitor traditional systems. The idea is to use deeper analysis of the operational data coming off the clouds to proactively spot potential issues before they hinder or stop production. This is money well invested.
Resolution No. 2: Govern all services or APIs.
APIs drive the clouds -- typically, RESTful Web services. Moreover, as you build or cloud-enable applications, more APIs are exposed. You need to place service governance around these APIs to control who can access them and what they can do with them. APIs are very powerful, but in the wrong hands they can cause operational damage. You need a sound cloud service governance plan, approach, and technology in place.
Resolution No. 3: Train my people.
Simply because clouds move into the enterprise doesn’t mean the enterprise is ready for clouds. Lack of training causes most of the issues happening right now with clouds. Those who operate the cloud-based system often don’t know how to do so effectively; thus, they end up learning via trial and error. A bit of training goes a long way.
Are these resolutions doable? Absolutely. They require some investment, but the value will come back tenfold.