Don't Deploy Until You Discern These Five Key Requirements for Your Cloud Management Platform

By Allison Boccamazzo, TMCnet Web Editor

We’re not going to make this yet another article about the gargantuan growth of cloud computing in the near future. But just to give you a taste of what everyone’s been flipping out over, earlier this year, the global cloud computing market was projected to grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to about six times as much at $241 billion in 2020 – an expected annual growth rate of just over $26 billion for the next nine years (as Fast Forward’s Bill Ives forecasts). Even more, IDC (News - Alert) research shows that by 2015, one in every seven dollars spent on packaged software, server and storage offerings will be through the a cloud model.

Further, a recent infographic depicts some of the cloud’s major benefits, including simplified IT management process; improved end-user experience; decreased IT performance challenges; reduced cost of infrastructure; and alleviated internal resource pressures.

With 50 million physical servers already in existence worldwide and with the $6 billion Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market growing at nearly 50 percent per year, it pretty much goes without saying that robust cloud management platforms are being looked upon as a way to exponentially help manage companies’ growing portfolio of cloud applications.

Thankfully, Wired has provided us with five key capabilities to look for before investing in a cloud management platform:

1.) Simplify Complexity

“Effective cloud management gives you the customization required for IaaS to be successful along with management tools versioning, source control, and configuration management to keep it all under control,” the site advises.

2.) Manage Multiple Clouds

By investing in a solution that allows you to transcend simple cloud application programming interface (API) compatibility, Wired explains. “A simple API translation tool doesn’t cut it. Your cloud management platform should enable this multi-cloud future, by enabling application interoperability across multiple IaaS cloud providers.”

3.) Support the Application Lifestyle

One of the biggest mistakes that can be made is launching an application and then forgetting about it. Once you launch, you need to maintain your application, and you need a cloud management platform that will help you do this. Look for a comprehensive cloud management solution that will help you tackle each factor of the equation, including security vulnerabilities, capacity management, performance optimization and failover.

4.) Automation: Set It and Forget It

Don’t get trapped in having to manually manage an application involving a bunch of redundant tasks. “Rather than having manual processes to provision each server or push code, the cloud is built to be programmatically managed…A cloud management platform delivers greatest value when it provides capacity management, support for continuous integration, and resource orchestration that reduces operational burdens and enables your team to support ever­ growing computing requirements,” the site suggests.

5.) Manage and Control Costs

Lastly and most importantly, keep an eye out for a cloud management platform that provides such things as cost forecasting, reporting, showback and one that allows you to consolidate services for optimum cost-control.

One such solution that covers all of these bases is Adaptive Computing’s (News - Alert) Moab Cloud Suite, an intelligent cloud management end-to-end platform which provides touchless cloud service optimization across the full cloud service lifecycle including agility, cost savings and service performance. Moab uses the patented Moab intelligence engine to automate service requesting, provisioning, optimization and management based on multi-dimensional policies that mimic real-world decision making. Moab ultimately enables organizations to create agile, automated and adaptive private clouds from their diverse IT infrastructure.

Even better, Adaptive’s new and improved Moab Cloud Suite 7.2 released last month takes managing and controlling costs to entirely new levels, as it offers out-of-the-box integration with users’ existing infrastructure, therefore minimizing system upgrades by leveraging what they have already invested in to make the most out of their cloud deployment.

Adaptive already manages some of the world’s largest computing installations with its Moab self-optimizing cloud management HPC workload management solutions. See what Adaptive can do for you today by visiting www.adaptivecomputing.com.