What is CloudOps (cloud operations)?

12 November 2024

Authors

Camilo Quiroz-Vázquez

IBM Staff Writer

What is CloudOps (cloud operations)?

CloudOps (cloud operations) is a framework that combines tools and best practices for managing, delivering and optimizing cloud-based IT services and workloads.

It is used across public cloudprivate cloudhybrid cloudmulticloud and on the edge to improve the performance, availability, cost efficiency and security of cloud-based apps and services.

CloudOps does for cloud computing what DevOps does for application development and delivery—it defines a set of operational processes and protocols and oversees their day-to-day implementation. CloudOps emphasizes the use of automation, cross-team collaboration and continuous improvement to drive value, efficiency and scalability in cloud environments. An organization’s CloudOps approach is often informed by its overall cloud management strategy.

CloudOps is used to help organizations maintain cloud infrastructure and services, automate software delivery and updates and uphold service level agreements (SLAs). CloudOps also helps organizations manage cloud security and compliance, improve app and server management and use automation across the cloud estate (such as using automation to provision cloud resources to match demand in real time.)

Similar to DevOps, CloudOps focuses heavily on visibility and observability. CloudOps teams use analytics, monitoring and reporting—often with the help of AI tools—to gain a stronger understanding of cloud performance and resource usage. With this insight, CloudOps teams can automate systems that improve cloud environments, reduce IT sprawl and waste and help organizations achieve greater ROI on cloud investments.

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What do CloudOps teams do?

CloudOps teams focus on managing every aspect of cloud resources, their main objectives can be broken down into three categories.

Establish cloud governance

A CloudOps team creates the rules, policies and procedures for managing cloud resources enterprise-wide. These policies include setting cybersecurity protocols such as disaster recovery plans in case of outages or malware attacks and metrics for monitoring and provisioning resources.

When resources are migrated or built natively in the cloud, CloudOps teams make sure that cloud services are optimized for performance, meet business and financial objectives and are secure and compliant with regulations.

Implement cloud orchestration

For many organizations, the CloudOps process begins with the migration of traditional resources to the cloud. The process of cloud migration includes selecting whether a cloud platform such as private, public, hybrid or a multicloud environment is right for the organization, migrating data and applications and making sure that service, security and compliance requirements are met throughout.

An important part of cloud orchestration is the automated provisioning and deprovisioning of cloud resources. This process allows organizations to quickly scale and remove unneeded resources while reducing waste and costs.

Manage day-to-day operations

After cloud governance protocols are established, CloudOps teams work with IT teams and DevOps teams on implementation. CloudOps teams work throughout the application lifecycle and on automating the deployment, monitoring and optimization of applications and services.

CloudOps teams monitor observability tools to gain an understanding of how applications are performing and work to troubleshoot any errors that arise. Through these insights, CloudOps teams develop and deploy patches to into systems to optimize their performance.

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Benefits of CloudOps

CloudOps teams help organizations realize the benefits of cloud computing, namely the greater flexibility, efficiency and strategic value cloud technology offers compared to traditional on-premises IT infrastructure.

A successful CloudOps practice helps organizations achieve:

Continuous operations and continuous improvement

By adopting CloudOps practices, organizations can maximize business continuity, or the ability to reduce downtime and provide users with consistent service. CloudOps teams automate service delivery and the software development process, including the development and testing of new code. They also oversee the process of migrating physical resources to the cloud, making sure workflows and service delivery are not interrupted during this process.

Automation and standardized workflows enable rapid provisioning of resources to meet real-time demand, minimizing deployment times and enhancing overall operational agility. This accelerated delivery translates to faster time-to-market and improved competitiveness.

High availability

With a strong emphasis on observability, data management and orchestrated processes, CloudOps helps deliver the uninterrupted availability of services and applications, even across diverse cloud infrastructures. By implementing robust monitoring, failover mechanisms and automated remediation protocols, organizations can minimize downtime and maintain high levels of service reliability.

High availability is important in providing quality service to users and can also be a compliance issue for service providers. By monitoring performance through metrics and logs, CloudOps teams make sure that organizations meet their service level agreements (SLAs) that dictate the terms of service, including availability. Failure to meet the terms laid out in an SLA can result in fines, penalties and loss of organizational reputation.

Simplified scalability

Physical servers stored in data centers are costly and inefficient to maintain, store and decommission when no longer needed. In contrast, cloud resources can be provisioned on-demand and require less physical hardware to operate.

Virtualization enables the abstraction of physical hardware, making it possible to divide a single server into multiple virtual machines (VMs). Cloud automation tools make it possible to provision virtual machines efficiently.

CloudOps teams can also provision and deprovision storage and bandwidth in real-time–meeting demand and removing costly unused resources. Simplified scalability means that organizations can adopt an agile model that promotes business growth and suits changing operational needs.

Improved security

Cloud solutions provide new opportunities for organizations but also presents security challenges for CloudOps teams. Cloud environments are susceptible to cybersecurity threats from malware, misconfigurations, weak credentialing, insecure APIs and more. CloudOps teams use a combination of security practices and third-party vendor tools to identify and mitigate these threats, including:

  • Data encryption: This process converts plaintext data, which can be read by anyone into data that requires a code or key to read. Data encryption does not prevent data breaches but helps reduce the damage by making leaked data difficult to decipher.

    Application programming interfaces (APIs) enable software applications to communicate with each other and transfer data across cloud environments. Encrypting data traffic traveling through APIs is key to protecting organizational data and customer data
  • Malware protection: Cyberattacks involving malware can cause large data breaches, disrupt service delivery and can result in organizations having to pay large sums of money to retrieve data. CloudOps teams implement various strategies such as a zero trust network architecture, which verifies all network users, two-factor authentication (2FA) and create incident response plans to guide teams when cyberattacks happen.

    CloudOps teams also use monitoring tools to uncover unusual behavior in network traffic. AI and machine learning-powered anomaly detection tools make it possible to analyze large data sets and identify data that is out of the ordinary. Discovering anomalous data can lead to uncovering security risks or potential system errors. CloudOps teams oversee the release of security updates known as “patches” that are designed to fix security vulnerabilities uncovered by monitoring traffic.
  • Secure access management: Setting and monitoring strict controls on who can access specific IT operations helps CloudOps teams protect sensitive data. It also helps CloudOps teams prevent weak credentials by making sure that default passwords are changed and appropriate password protocols are implemented enterprise-wide.

Cost savings

Unchecked cloud environments can lead to cloud sprawl, or the growth of unneeded cloud services and instances. CloudOps plays a crucial role in optimizing resource allocation, improving cost-efficiency and maximizing the return on investment (ROI) for cloud infrastructure and services.

For example, CloudOps teams use tools to monitor resource use and performance metrics and determine the resources their environments need. They can then automate the process of dynamically provisioning and deprovisioning resources so that only needed resources are being paid for. This is also a good example of the interdisciplinary nature of CloudOps. While CloudOps focuses on the operational and technological aspects of cloud environments, their work overlaps with FinOps and other teams in meeting the business objective of creating cost-effective cloud architecture.

CloudOps best practices

The principles guiding CloudOps include:

  • Promoting stakeholder visibility: A key step toward establishing a successful CloudOps practice is providing relevant stakeholders with full visibility into an organization’s workflows and resources. Creating a single pane of glass, or a centralized view of business data (often a dashboard that offers easy access to data, graphs and charts), is key to breaking down silos and enabling CloudOps, DevOps and FinOps teams to work in tandem.

    While hidden resources create the potential for waste and security lapses, full visibility promotes the collaborative nature of CloudOps and encourages the sharing of insights and institutional knowledge that drives innovation.
  • Improving monitoring techniques: Tracking the performance of cloud-based applications and systems through cloud monitoring enables CloudOps teams to collect and analyze data from cloud-based applications and services and generate insights on how to make operations more efficient.

    Cloud monitoring tools provide insights into potential bottlenecks, API traffic patterns, network configurations and cloud specific key performance indicators (KPIs). They also enable teams to set alerts that automatically deliver notifications when systems do not meet designated thresholds.
  • Implementing system automation: Cloud architectures require constant monitoring to remain secure and efficient. Automation can improve several operational aspects of the cloud including the provisioning of resources, remediating errors and detecting security threats. Automating the provisioning of IT infrastructure through infrastructure as code (IaC) helps promote efficiency in cloud environments.

    For example, CloudOps teams can automate systems that monitor network traffic and the provisioning of cloud resources to help avoid bottlenecks and maintain service delivery.
  • Providing anywhere access: CloudOps teams rely on data and accessible, digestible dashboards and reports. Cloud management tools offer access to cloud-based systems from any device that meets an organization’s security protocols. Increased access to cloud systems promotes flexibility and increased collaboration between teams. Anywhere access is an extension of cloud principles that reduce or remove the reliance on on-premises work and resources.

CloudOps vs. DevOps

DevOps is a methodology that combines the work of software development and IT operations teams. DevOps principles allow for real-time visibility and input for all relevant stakeholders into the software development lifecycle. Through this increased collaboration, DevOps works to break down operational silos, speeding the development workflow and the time-to-market of new products.

In addition, through automated workflows known as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), DevOps teams optimize the process of software and application development and deployment. CI/CD enables teams to automate the building, testing, integration and delivery of new code, making updates and the release of new applications faster and more reliable. As organizations perform cloud migrations, or the shifting of on-premises resources to the cloud, IT operations teams require more support to maintain cloud infrastructures.

CloudOps takes the DevOps practices of collaboration and automation and applies them to cloud architecture. Where DevOps focuses on software development, CloudOps focuses on the challenges of cloud computing, including the orchestration of cloud resources, scalability, security and reducing cloud expenditure. A robust CloudOps strategy facilitates the work of DevOps teams especially when working on developing cloud-based applications.

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