What is Cloud Automation and What it Means for Virtualized Environment?

The modernization of IT operations and networking practices has led to a rapid adoption of an automated and specialized brand of technologies and tools for computing. These are collectively classified as part of Cloud Computing Automation or simply Cloud Automation. Cloud Automation is considered one of the top necessities for a successful digital transformation, and therefore, needs a deep study of how effectively automation processes can accelerate IT modernization from the context of the environment, analytics, optimization of workforce management, resources planning and its impact on the overall business processes. According to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Cloud Automation platform is vital to any DevOps-centric business as it provides a set of “flexible services designed to enable companies to more rapidly and reliably build and deliver products using Cloud computing and DevOps practices.”

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In the modern context of cloud management, these services simplify provisioning and managing various Cloud infrastructure, including for deploying application code, automating software release processes, and monitoring an application and infrastructure performance.

In this article, we have put forward a simple approach to understand “What is Cloud Computing?”, major trends in the industry and the emerging technologies that are pushing the boundaries of Cloud computing in the modern era of Intelligent Automation (IA) and Augmented Intelligence (AI).

What is Cloud Automation?

Cloud Automation is the advanced application within IT management practices that leverages various disciplines of computing and software designing. There are many industry-recognized definitions of Cloud Computing. We have identified the top 5 sources of Cloud Computing definition.

According to IBM, Cloud Computing offers an on-demand access to various computing resources, testing tools and application servers in addition to data storage and analytics platforms. It has defined Cloud Computing as a “technology that makes cloud work.”

Microsoft Azure is a popular Cloud Automation platform. Microsoft defines “Cloud Automation as a tool that delivers a cloud-based automation and configuration service to support consistent management across your Azure and non-Azure environments.” These could comprise of solutions and tools for managing the process automation, configuration automation, and licensing. These could be used for controlling one or many workflows right from Cloud deployment stage to decommissioning of workflows and resources.

Sumologic states that “cloud automation is the practice or discipline of using specialized software tools and methodologies to automate some or all of the manual tasks associated with managing and operating cloud-based IT infrastructure within the Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud environments”

NetApp defines cloud computing as a purely ITOps approach that enables “IT teams and developers to create, modify, and tear down resources on the cloud automatically.”

As per UiPath, Cloud automation is a SaaS-based solution for advanced provisioning and use of hosted software applications for various IT tasks and their management across the value chain. From managing licenses to creating Robotic Process Automation (RPA) workflows, Cloud Automation can create simplified environment using machines, virtualized networks, job rules and schedules to meet Cloud performance demands.

What AppDynamics states about Cloud automation? According to AppDynamics, Cloud Automation refers to the identification, deployment and processing of various cloud management techniques to reduce manual effort or intervention with the help of automated provisioning, configuring and managing Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud environment.

We have given a spin to Cloud Automation definition based on the analysis of various tools and technologies that are currently available (or developing) within the various Cloud Computing ecosystems, including Virtualization and Dockerization.

Cloud automation, thus, can be defined as the IT modernization technique that modern IT and DevOps teams need to fully orchestrate, augment and automate various IT processes on virtualized environment working within a Public, Private or a Hybrid Cloud infrastructure.

an IT team needs to use orchestration and automation tools that run on top of its virtualized environment.

Benefits of Deploying Cloud Automation

IT organizations can derive major benefits from Cloud Automation deployments, apart from reducing the manual effort in handling of complex IT management processes, including administrative and logging systems.

According to AppDynamics, cloud automation is essential to a successful transition to leveraging Cloud infrastructure and can include tasks such as automated storage and backups, managing security and compliance, changing configurations and settings, and deploying code.

Cloud automation software tools automatically control the installation, configuration, and management of cloud computing systems. These enable IT teams, large as well as small, to accurately measure the volume of IT resources needed to successfully complete the modernization / transformation. Automation is seen as a resource-saving and time-optimizing technique even as it can streamline all the activities related to Cloud Computing and peripheral specializations such as Software DevOps, mobile virtualization, AI-based automation for ETL and CI/ CD workflows.

As per popular AiThority.com’s IT predictions for 2021, organizations would increasingly use Cloud Computing and Automation tools to meet their digital transformation goals and requirements. By 2025, nearly half of the global businesses would move to distributed Cloud infrastructure to generate and accelerate revenue powered by Automation-led digital transformations. The growing use of Cloud computing would also enable companies to move to Container-based management, led by highly effective Cloud-native applications and software development.

[To learn more on our editorial calendar featuring IT automation and Cloud Computing, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]