Choosing Cloud Management Platforms
Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) provide centralized infrastructure and resources management through discovery, template based provisioning, automated monitoring, and automation. They also provide powerful cost-optimization and governance capabilities that allow for multi-cloud strategies, and enable you spot opportunities for improvement.
When choosing a CMP look at the following aspects:
Find and fix problems faster by performing root cause analysis that identifies the critical areas of failure and reduce the time needed to repair. Create self-service portals that let IT teams as well as end users to seek the resources they require to access, reducing manual labor for IT and improving the user experience for all users.
A cloud management solution should be scalable and provide easy integration with existing IT systems to ease deployment management, as well as optimization. It should also be able to support hybrid environments and multiple cloud platforms. The ability to seamlessly manage resources across diverse cloud and on-premises platforms reduces costs, improves performance and increases productivity.
To allow greater flexibility in your cloud operations, look for a vendor that has different user interfaces. These include command-line, Web, and RESTful APIs. It should also support different hypervisors as well as bare metal configurations to ensure the best compatibility with cloud environments.
Choose a vendor that offers an initial free version of their CMP for small teams to try the product prior to committing to a paid version. It is essential that your team has access an extensive knowledge base and documentation to quickly learn how to use this tool. It should include best practices guides along main steps for buying a small business with a troubleshooting guide as well as FAQs that will help your team implement and manage the CMP.