Streamlining the Management of Hybrid Clouds with IT Operations Analytics [CM Crossroads]
Read the full article as published in CM Crossroads: The Configuration Management Community (Nov 15, 2014).
This past week our CEO, Sasha Gilenson, published an insightful piece in CM Crossroads on Streamlining the Management of Hybrid Clouds with IT Operations Analytics. He noted that, "There is tremendous drive toward a hybrid cloud today. According to a 2013 special report by Gartner, hybrid cloud computing is at the same place today that private cloud was three years ago: Actual deployments are low, but aspirations are high. The technology research firm predicts that nearly half of large enterprises will likely have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017."
Gilenson explains how "Although it's reasonable to expect that in the cloud the percentage of faulty changes and time of change will decrease, in absolute numbers, however, the same number of issues remains."
Below we highlight some points raised in this piece on how a transition to a hybrid cloud brings its own set of challenges.
Hybrid Cloud Challenges
Despite the significant interest of large enterprises to move their applications into the cloud, this transition raises questions about application performance in the cloud, response times, and data security. Hybrid cloud intends to overcome these concerns and bring together the best of a public cloud provider with a private cloud platform. However, a number of concerns emerge, like how incident response becomes a great deal more complex due to lack of visibility into the cloud. The article comprehensively goes into a many characteristics of hybrid cloud that add to management complexity including:
- High volume of changes
- Lack of visibility into cloud
- Greater complixity in the application layer
- Interdependence between heterogeneous environments
- Limited configuration standardization
Real-Life Examples of Hybrid Cloud Challenges
Based on first hand experiences and interaction with customers, the article examines the complications involved with hybrid cloud, showing how "A large US financial institution is operating a hybrid cloud by running tens of thousands of virtual servers. Its private cloud platform was developed in-house, with the deployments all fully automated. Though it reports a lower number of performance and availability issues, each issue shows greater impact and carries with it a longer resolution time. Due to specific application needs, 20 percent of the applications still run in dedicated environments, further complicating the consistency across environments.IT Operations Analytics Solutions for Hybrid Cloud Management
Introducing an innovative solution, the article goes on to explain that "One of the key challenges is the integration between different platforms, which can be addressed by monitoring and analyzing configuration as systems transition to cloud entities, enabling application and data portability. Using innovative analytics and an integrated approach to performance, capacity, and configuration management, IT operations analytics solutions provide the intelligence and visibility needed to proactively ensure service levels, operational efficiency, and continuous compliance in dynamic hybrid cloud environments."
Read the full article as published in CM Crossroads: The Configuration Management Community (Nov 15, 2014).
About Sasha Gilenson
Chief Executive Officer, co-founder
Sasha Gilenson enjoyed a long and successful career at Mercury Interactive (acquired by HP), having led the company's QA organization, participating in establishing Mercury's Software as a Service (SaaS), as well as leading a Business Unit in Europe and Asia.
Sasha played a key role in the development of Mercury's worldwide Business Technology Optimization (BTO) strategy and drove field operations of the Wireless Business Unit, all while taking on the duties as the Mercury's top "guru" in quality processes and IT practices domain. In this capacity, Sasha has advised numerous Fortune 500 companies on technology and process optimization, and in turn, acquired a comprehensive and rare knowledge of the market and industry practices.
Sasha holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Latvian University and MBA from London Business School.
