Much of DevOps these days focuses squarely on managing application workloads in the cloud that can easily spin out of control from a cost perspective simply because developers frequently forget to turn functions off when they are not being used. To enable DevOps teams to more proactively manage cloud resources, CloudHealth Technologies, a provider of cloud management service, has formed a strategic alliance with ParkMyCloud, a provider of governance tools for cloud services that can be employed to enforce IT policies.
CloudHealth Technologies CEO Tom Axbey says the rise of multi-cloud computing is aggravating an already-complex DevOps management challenge in the enterprise. Integrating the two services will make it simpler for IT organizations relying on the CloudHealth service to manage and monitor clouds and execute an action such as turning off virtual machines using the capabilities enabled by ParkMyCloud.
CloudHealth primarily provides insights into how various cloud computing platforms are being employed. The partnership with ParkMyCloud provides a mechanism through which that intelligence becomes more actionable.
In general, IT organizations more than ever are finding themselves struggling with trying to manage multiple stacks of computing. In addition to running multiple platforms inside an on-premises environment, organizations increasingly are distributing application workloads across multiple public clouds to either take advantage of a specific service or prevent themselves from becoming locked into a single provider. As those workloads become more distributed, many IT organizations now find themselves swiveling between different management frameworks. Rather than manage those environments in isolation, Axbey says CloudHealth Technologies in collaboration with ParkMyCloud is making a case of a more unified approach.
Cost optimization is becoming a much bigger issue, adds Axbey, because IT organizations are discovering that the more workloads deployed on public cloud services, the greater propensity there is to simply let run those infrastructure resources that appear to have a nominal cost. But by the end of a monthly billing cycle, it’s not uncommon for IT organizations to incur a significant expense for a set of services no one was actually using.
CloudHealth Technologies and ParkMyCloud are not the only IT vendors eyeing this opportunity. But Axeby says CloudHealth Technologies has already substantially differentiated itself by providing end-to-end visibility across multiple clouds.
It remains to see how and when IT organizations will evolve to deal with the inherent challenges associated with multi-cloud computing. Many of them are just now getting their arms around mastering DevOps on a single cloud. Each cloud computing environment presents its own myriad set of interfaces and services that must be monitored and managed. Unless IT organizations have a way to centrally manage all those cloud services, the total cost of IT increases with each additional platform added to the environment—not only are more tools required, but each tool needs to be mastered by someone on the DevOps team.
In theory at least, one of the primary reasons to move application workloads to the cloud was to reduce costs. But without some ongoing supervision, moving to the cloud can be anything but less expensive.
