As cloud estates continue to grow in complexity, keeping track of new software deployments and ensuring consistent performance is an ongoing challenge.
The Risk of Shadow IT
Many businesses have unknown cloud services sitting outside the view of internal IT departments.
Often, legacy management systems lack the visibility to locate, understand, or control cloud usage – leaving IT teams in the dark. This shadow IT can put your cloud at risk. Without proper monitoring, it can contribute to:
- Cloud waste
- Security breaches
- Lack of cost controls
- Low visibility of services
You need to have complete visibility over your cloud resources. And understand what applications are being used, where they're located, and how they're managed.
Improve Monitoring of Your Cloud Environment
Attempting to regain control and visibility over an enterprise cloud estate can be a considerable undertaking. Often, internal teams lack the resources and reach necessary to keep track of their cloud services, applications, systems, and software.
In these instances, many enterprises seek the support of a cloud asset management provider. They work alongside IT teams to provide industry expertise, rightsizing recommendations, and actionable insights – backed up by powerful reporting tools. This helps businesses cut through cloud complexity and regain full transparency over their applications, resources, and spend.
But how can organizations reap the rewards of better visibility and control over their cloud?
Perform a Cloud Audit
A cloud audit is a great way to find out where you're using cloud assets ineffectively. When performed correctly, an audit will give you a single, unified overview of your cloud estate.
By auditing your cloud environment, you can quickly identify any shadow IT or hidden infrastructure. Plus, you'll have visibility into extra cloud capacity or wasted resources. This will help you optimize your cloud inventory
During the audit, your cloud management provider will offer rightsizing recommendations and cost optimization advice to help guide future purchasing decisions.
If you're struggling to reign in your cloud spend, an audit is a great way to ensure that your enterprise cloud services align with capacity. So you never pay for what you don't use.
Use Tags to Boost Asset Visibility
Without consistent tagging, keeping track of cloud services is virtually impossible. To improve monitoring, you should incorporate resource tagging as part of your overall inventory management strategy.
Tagging assigns labels to your cloud resources, so they're easier to identify. For example, you can tag specific applications, their locations, business units, and more. These will help improve the visibility, organization, and management of your assets.
A cloud management provider will be able to take this monitoring to the next level. They can provide a unified platform for ongoing tracking and consolidation of all your tagged resources. And with improved insight into what you own, you'll be able to make better business decisions.
Get Control Over What You Own
Ongoing monitoring of your cloud applications is key to ensuring consistent performance while eliminating shadow IT and wasted resources.
Working with a cloud management provider is the best way to regain control of your cloud and get visibility over what you own. To learn how our cloud management services can help improve visibility and reduce spend, read our free brochure today.
Topics: Cloud Management Services
