Improve IT oversight with cloud management services

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Dan Sullivan.

IT departments implement process controls to keep operations running as needed, and best practices, like ITIL, emerged because we need standardized ways to operate our IT practices so they run efficiently, reliably and securely. But, self-service public cloud computing has changed the IT management landscape.

Analysts with a credit card, some data and an interesting problem no longer need to wait for IT to respond to their ticket request for a server and analysis software. A developer who wants to test a new idea can upload source code and data to a cloud provider and be back to coding in minutes, without having to contend with bureaucratic procedures. The democratization of access to computing resources is no doubt a positive factor for businesses, governments and other organizations, but we need to retool our management procedures and governance practices to accommodate the way we work with cloud computing…

Cloud management services step in to fill a need for more management oversight in the way we use cloud computing resources. The market for these services has matured, but a set of basic and useful services also remains available. Cloud management services, such as CloudEnable, CloudSoft, Enstratius (now part of Dell), RightScale and SmartScale, help bring some of the controls developed for on-premises operations to the cloud. How you use cloud services and the kinds of apps and data you work with in the cloud will influence your major concerns, but we will consider just four issues here: cost allocation and financial controls, access controls, key management, and auditing and reporting…

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