As the cloud-based tech stack grows ever more complex, many companies struggle to maintain adequate visibility into all of their subsystems. And that visibility isn’t just a nice-to-have. Without effective oversight, you’re likely to end up with inefficiency, excess costs, and reliability issues throughout your product and operations. What can the modern cloud customer do to combat this rising complexity and ensure visibility into their various systems? Below we suggest a three-pronged approach to help keep your business running smoothly as you integrate new cloud tools and services.
First, it is essential to evaluate your current setup and decouple any unnecessary integrations. Do you have similar services duplicating work or creating inconsistencies? Any sources of unnecessary complexity need to be identified and resolved. As new systems are incorporated into your workflow, some integration can be extremely valuable, but it is also common for systems to become excessively entangled.
If component tools can be effective in isolation, then disconnecting these systems may lessen the risk of a domino effect taking everything down when an individual part has an issue. This decoupling will enable easier management and configuration across the business. To ensure product reliability, IT teams should conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis comparing the potential for greater efficiency to the benefits of a simpler, disentangled architecture.
Once your stack is optimized to strike a balance between the efficiency of integration and the simplicity of more isolated systems, it’s time to rethink your organizational structure. An integrated cloud system needs to be operated by integrated teams, and this starts with hiring the right people. While in the past, on-prem solutions could largely be managed by specialists with expertise in their individual subsystems, modern cloud-based infrastructure requires a greater breadth of knowledge, and this transition isn’t always easy. To ensure your teams are set up for success, consider revisiting your hiring practices with an eye towards attracting diverse talent with the range of skills and experience necessary to manage today’s integrated cloud infrastructure.
In addition, it may be helpful to look into ways to restructure departments and teams in order to encourage more cross-functional collaboration and communication. Gone are the days of developers working in isolation on their individual, siloed projects. To succeed in the current ecosystem, teams must be able to communicate freely, share resources, and easily coordinate between their many interconnected systems. Furthermore, it’s important to note that this applies not just to senior leadership, but also to employees at every level of the organization. It is vital that everyone, from junior developers to management up to top-level executives, is encouraged to communicate openly and effectively.
Ultimately, one of the most important things you can do to ensure visibility into your cloud systems is to invest in a tool that enables a single, consolidated view into your configurations. For simple systems, an in-house management tool might be sufficient, but for a more mature company, a third-party configuration intelligence solution is likely your best bet. These services can provide a single record of truth, enabling shared management and visibility into your entire ecosystem.
Here at CloudTruth, we’ve developed a comprehensive management service that makes it easy to access and update your configurations across a wide variety of platforms. Whether you’re integrating a cloud-based user authentication system, building out your entire product on a third-party hosting platform like Google Cloud or AWS, or anything in between, CloudTruth is there to provide the visibility you need to run your business.
When it comes to the cloud, knowledge is power. CloudTruth puts you back in the driver’s seat, giving you the information you need to develop and configure your systems with confidence. If you’re interested in learning more about how CloudTruth can bring a new level of intelligence about your cloud configurations, read our whitepaper or check out our website at cloudtruth.com.