5 Key Benefits of Cloud Management Services

While public cloud has become a staple ingredient of the modern-day business soup, its effective management is far less well-established, and it can be very easy to gloss over the very real benefits that Cloud Management Services (CMS) offer. Here is a handful of the most important.

1. Tightened Security

In years past, the public cloud has been tarnished with a reputation for sub-par security, characterized by high-profile data breaches and severe reputational repercussions.

But, in truth, the public cloud is at least as secure as on-premises infrastructure – provided it’s properly maintained and monitored. This responsibility rests at the feet of the organization that purchased the service, not, as often believed, with the vendor that sold it.

A complete CMS service will help improve security by consistently monitoring all workloads and performing hundreds of critical, pre-built security best-practice checks. With these precautionary measures in place, when a threat occurs, alerts will be triggered, activating automated response and notifying a team of cloud-accredited experts, helping to reduce security gaps and the risk of harmful data breaches.

2. Significant Cost-Savings

‘Public cloud’ and ‘cost-savings’ are two terms that go hand-in-hand. Offering enterprise organizations the opportunity to step away from the constant management and upkeep of more costly on-premises architecture and private cloud configurations, the public cloud has long stood as a beacon of cost-effectiveness when utilized effectively. Yet, without effective management, these monetary gains can all but evaporate.

Without adequate visibility into usage, the ability of in-house IT teams to accurately forecast future use is impossible, and will often result in only partial resource utilization and organizations paying for capacity that will never be met.

Truly great CMS provides a solution to these losses and makes use of intuitive tools such as heat maps and usage snapshots to deliver accurate insight into past usage. With this information to hand, IT teams can make more informed forecasting decisions – eliminating waste, maximizing utilization, and routinely generating savings of up to 30% and beyond.

3. Simplified Compliance

Throughout many industries and business sectors, adhering to regulatory compliance is a necessary evil. Established as a means to protect end-users and corporations from adverse circumstances, the strict nature of these edicts often means that hefty fines, fees, and remunerations are enforced when non-compliance is uncovered.

To avoid penalties, organizations must fall in-line with regulations laid out by governing bodies and, often, this extends to all information stored or processed within a public cloud environment.

Best-in-class CMS providers will help to maintain compliance by monitoring public cloud configurations against regulatory standards, highlighting, validating, and resolving non-compliant workloads. This will not only help maintain compliance, but also ensure that best practices for data security are upheld – reducing the threat of non-compliance and the fines that accompany it.  

4. Enhanced Visibility & Control

For enterprise organizations, the promise of near-limitless flexibility and scalability at speed has made the public cloud an attractive prospect – indeed, Gartner estimates global spending on public cloud services will rise to $206.2B in 2019, up from $175.8B in 2018. But accompanying this move toward public cloud platforms, a loss of control and visibility is common.

With an ever-greater number of provisioned services, spread across multiple geographical locations, combined with near-instant spin-up and spin-down of resources, it has become nigh-impossible for in-house teams to track, manage, and report on cloud services accurately. And this lack of information often leads to resource waste, over-payment, and added security risks.

As a means to recapture authority, CMS gathers and analyzes usage data in near real-time – delivering in-depth reporting to illuminate how much of a service has been bought, how much it costs, how much is being used, and how it’s monitored for threats. This, alongside other valuable insights, offers businesses the opportunity to get back to grips with their investment and take the appropriate steps to secure and optimize their cloud.

5. Expert Support & Advice

Despite its reputation for simplicity, navigating the public cloud sphere and the plethora of providers who all offer varying, proprietary services is no small task.

With insight into the public cloud market, an in-depth understanding of vendors and how they operate, and familiarity with the latest trends and services, cloud management service providers are perfectly placed to offer expert support and advice.

Whether you need general information about how to grow and strengthen your public cloud environment, or specialist advice about which mission-critical workloads to migrate, in what order, and to what vendor, independent CMS providers can ensure you make the right decision for your business, every time.

Cloud Management Services from Cass

Cloud Management Services (CMS) represent an opportunity for businesses to gain visibility and control over their public cloud environments by optimizing spend, minimizing waste, utilizing expert knowledge, and maximizing security and compliance.

To learn more about how CMS can help you to unlock the full benefits of your public cloud investment, why not get in touch with a cloud-accredited expert? Or, download our Enterprise Buyer's Guide to Public Cloud Computing for more information.