Managing Cloud Sprawl to Create Consistency Across Hybrid Multi-Cloud Infrastructures
As organizations continue to embrace and integrate a growing array of cloud-computing elements into their enterprise infrastructures, the ensuing sprawl is creating challenges that are threatening progress toward strategic transformation objectives.
Organizations across industries must explore operational models that integrate DevSecOps culture into infrastructure design, development, and implementation to address the paradox of improving security while enabling innovation and data sharing.
Visibility, security, and data portability need to be built into the infrastructure architecture.
As organizations continue to embrace and integrate a growing array of cloud-computing elements into their enterprise infrastructures, the ensuing sprawl is creating integration, security, and data management challenges that are threatening to hamper progress toward strategic transformation objectives, according to Chris Rosen, a program director with IBM during a recent podcast interview with BizTechReports.
“At the center of it all are questions about how to put in place proper governance structures to control and monitor access control across multiple public clouds and an increasingly complex on-prem environment. The real trick is about how to achieve security and compliance while preserving innovation and unleashing insights from these heterogeneous environments to drive data-driven decisions,” said Rosen.
Organizations across industries would be well advised to explore operational models that integrate DevSecOps culture into infrastructure design, development, and implementation to address the paradox of improving security while enabling innovation and data sharing,
“In the past, we lived in a world where security was a checkbox at the end of a process. Today, however, visibility, security, and data portability need to be built into the infrastructure architecture. Envisioning -- and then realizing -- this DevSecOps infrastructure architecture will require multi-disciplinary collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders, including IT operations, line of business staff, security professionals, and individual development teams,” he said.
Automation Key to Cloud Complexity Management
There is no getting around the complexity related to the adoption of new cloud resources at the infrastructure, platform, and application layers will continue to rise for nearly all organizations. Orchestrating and controlling this sprawl will be virtually impossible to manage using manual processes that require significant human intervention.
“That is why it will be critical for organizations to make strategic investments in carefully considered automation tools that can manage complexity and remove the opportunity for human error to be introduced through clumsy manual processes. Automation will also be the key to ensuring that the proper controls are in place -- and enforced,” explained Rosen.
Chris Rosen, IBM
Open Source Critical to Data and Application Portability
As layer upon layer of cloud elements are added to enterprise infrastructures, organizations will need to ensure control of data and application portability. According to Rosen, open technologies will play a critical role in corralling cloud sprawl.
Integration of open source technologies and principles into enterprise architectures lays the foundation for maximizing control and flexibility, enabling the relatively hassle-free movement of data and applications from one environment to another.
“If I am unhappy with a cloud service provider -- for any reason -- a commitment to open source will make it possible to take my ball somewhere else -- whether that ball is data or applications. To have that portability, organizations will have to build their enterprise compute capacity on open standards. Those that invest in proprietary technologies and vendors will be more likely to be locked in. It will require significant effort to move applications and data elsewhere,” said Rosen.
For more information on BizTechReport podcast interviews, please contact Melissa Fisher at MFisher@BizTechReports.com.