Organizations that have embraced a cloud-first model are seeing a myriad of benefits. The elasticity of the cloud allows enterprises to easily scale up and down as needed. In practice, rather than commit to just one cloud service in today’s world of more distributed organizations due to Covid-19, many enterprises prefer to have multiple cloud solutions they source from a variety of vendors.
The cloud also helps to enhance security, improves insight into data, and aids with disaster recovery and cost savings. Cloud has become a utility for successful businesses. Around 75% of enterprise customers using cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) have been predicted to adopt a deliberate multi-cloud strategy by 2022, up from 49% in 2017, according to Gartner.
“Businesses don’t want to be locked into one particular cloud,” says Tejpal Chadha, Global Head, Digitate SaaS Cloud & Cyber Security. “They want to run their applications on different clouds so they’re not dependent on one in case it were to temporarily shut down. Multi-cloud has really become a must-have for organizations.”
Yet, at the same time, companies that tap into these multi-cloud solutions are opening themselves up to additional, and potentially significant, security risks. They become increasingly vulnerable in an age of more sophisticated, active cyberhackers.
To address security risks, cloud services have their own monitoring processes and tools that are designed to keep data secure. Many offer customers basic monitoring tools for free. But if companies want a particularly robust monitoring service, they often must pay added fees. With multiple clouds, this added expense can be significant.
“The cost goes up when you have to have specific monitoring tools for each cloud,” Chadha says. “Monitoring also needs to be instantaneous or real-time to be effective.”
Organizations using multi-cloud solutions are also susceptible to cloud sprawl, which happens when an organization lacks visibility into or control over its cloud computing resources.The organizationtherefore ends up with excess, unused servers or paying higher rates than necessary.
For enterprises safeguarding their multi-cloud solutions, a better tactic is to use just one third-party overarching tool for all clouds – one that monitors everything instantaneously. ignio™, the award-winning enterprise automation platform from AIOps vendor Digitate, does just that.
ignio AIOps, Digitate’s flagship product, facilitates autonomous cloud IT operations by tapping into AI and machine learning to provide a closed-loop solution for Azure and AWS, with versions for Google Cloud (GCP) and private clouds also coming soon. With visibility and intelligence across layers of cloud services, ignio AIOps provides multi-cloud support by leveraging cloud-native technologies and APIs. It also provides actionable insights to better manage your cloud technology stack.
ignio is unique in that it cuts across multiple data centers, both private and public clouds, and seamlessly handles everything in a single window. It gets a bird’s eye view of the health of a company’s data centers and clouds. Then, ignio continuously monitors, predicts, and takes corrective action across clouds while also automating previously manual tasks, which ignio calls “closed-loop remediation.” The closed-loop remediation enables companies to automate actions for both remediation, compliance, and other essential CloudOps tasks.
“The ignio AIOps software first comes in and, in the blueprinting process, gives a holistic view of what companies have in their universe,” Chadha says. “We call that blueprinting or discovery. Then, we help automate tasks. We’re completely agnostic when it comes to monitoring or taking corrective action, or helping increase automation across all of these clouds.”
As Digitate ignio customers automate processes and reduce manual IT efforts, they’re finding they’re saving money — some millions of dollars a year. For many companies, tasks that once took three days now take only an hour.
“The biggest benefits are that less manual work is ultimately needed, and then there’s also the costs savings,” Chadha says. “Enterprises using this tool are managing their multi-cloud estate much more efficiently.”
To learn more about Digitate ignio and how Digitate’s products can help you thread the multi-cloud needle, visit Digitate.
IT Leadership