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Cloud Management Software Buyer's Guide
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Cloud management is a technology designed to manage and maintain the data, products, and services related to cloud computing residing in the cloud. Cloud management activities generally involve various tasks such as performance monitoring, security, compliance auditing, and disaster recovery and contingency plans.
The management of these data, applications, and services residing in the cloud is a challenging job. We have overcome these challenges of cloud computing with a variety of cloud management platforms and tools that includes native tools offered by public cloud providers and third-party tools designed to provide functionality uniformly across multiple cloud providers.
What is Cloud management software?
Cloud management tools are helpful to monitor all types of cloud-related activities -- resource deployment, use tracking, data integration, and disaster recovery as well. In addition, cloud management tools enable to control the infrastructure, platforms, applications, and data.
Public cloud providers use highly specialized management software or tools for monitoring, cost management, and to maintain the data securely and for other services. But these public cloud management tools restrict their users to only perform limited tasks and reporting, without much insight into their infrastructure.
Third-party providers offer public cloud management platforms to supplement providers' native tools. Such tools can work across multiple public cloud provider platforms.
Some of the organizations use their in-house tools for private cloud management. Such tools are platform-specific management software that offers advanced software structures designed to manage complex private and hybrid cloud deployments.
What are the features of Cloud management software?
Cloud server management software is actually deployed in the cloud environment as a virtual machine containing a database and a server. The server interacts with APIs for connecting the database with the virtual resources for it to collect performance-related information and data analysis been sent to cloud admin to analyze the cloud performance.
Cloud management platforms and tools must provide basic functionality that can be provided natively or through third-party integration to enable organizations to deploy, manage, maintain, monitor and control applications in a cost-effective way.
» Easy access to resources - With the self-service capabilities, users are allowed to access public and private cloud to review their present resources, who can also create, modify and delete resource allocations.
» Automation - With workflow automation, it enables cloud consumption and helps organizations meet their reporting and deployment services.
» Access-control - With cloud management software, it is easy to secure the data on the cloud environment. The cloud server management platform manages role-based access to cloud data and services and enforces security configurations.
» Service-provider - Cloud management tools provide a platform to collect the service request from the user and to fulfill the service to access and deploy cloud resources.
» Manage logs - The cloud management tool takes care of monitoring and logging of cloud-based activities by automating incident management and log aggregation.
» Cost-effective - Cost management and optimization are some of the most important features of cloud server management software. It enables users to track and optimize cloud spending, align capacity and performance to its demand.
» Data security, Backup, and Recovery - Along with the above-mentioned features, data protection, disaster recovery, and data mobility and data replication are also the most important features of the cloud management tools.
» Automated services - Organizations with cloud implementations on the bigger scale may need large cloud service management platform that may have to perform specific functionalities like managing multiple platforms from a single point of reference, automate processes like application lifecycle management, the ability to handle system failures automatically which can be done with self-monitoring, notifying explicitly, and self-healing capabilities.
What are the benefits of Cloud management software?
With cloud management software managing the resources of a cloud platform has become a very easy job, be it physical and virtual resources. It automatically administers management tasks to help optimize your resource usage. Some of the main benefits of cloud management services are:
» Saves money - Organizations can save money using third-party providers by outsourcing cloud management. It typically reduces money spent on program maintenance, investment in maintaining staff, and their training. However, the maintenance of cloud-based resources and their security is challenging and at most priority. But outsourcing to one of the best cloud management service providers can solve the problem. This saves huge costs spent on paying salary to the maintenance staff, instead, you tend to pay nominal subscription fees for your data maintenance in the cloud. And this cloud maintenance and management service subscription rate is based on your needs.
» Data security and quick recovery - Effective cloud management practices strengthen and support high security and reduce the possibility of data loss or theft. The data is properly secured and their operational continuity is monitored and maintained, which includes regular data backups and managed services. One of the most important services is to keep backups at regular intervals. This is very helpful at times of major data disrupt to provide quick data recovery. During the time of any kind of disaster, your business and operations can continue without being interrupted with minimal downtime.
» Scalability - With the growth in the organization, the need for cloud usage may change. Cloud management services offer scalability for usage and growth by automatically allocating more resources that might be needed. Cloud service pricing can be adjusted according to usage.
What can be the cost of Cloud management software?
Cloud cost management software has become one of the most essential platforms for companies to control their cloud services-related spending by monitoring the company’s resource usage and computing needs. This software is integrated with the cloud infrastructure offering to minimize the costs of their pay-as-you-go model. Cloud management software is beneficial for companies by alerting resources of lowered demand or automatically scaling usage to optimal rates. Organizations use cloud management tools to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage. Best cloud management software also monitors and manages expenditure spent on cloud applications rather than cloud infrastructure.
There are many cloud management software available in the market at present. Few of them are open-source available for free. Other cloud management service providers charges can be based on monthly subscription, yearly subscription, or one-time license based.
Conclusion
An effective cloud management services are beneficial for organizations to get rid of unwanted cloud expenses and efficiently optimize the cloud resources cost-effectively. The cloud management platform is a coalition of resources such as software, automation, policies, governance, determines how cloud computing services can be made available. The organizations benefit better by hiring third-party providers to manage your data on the cloud around the clock.