How can cloud management apps organize data across clouds?
If you need to pull together different data sets, cloud management apps can track information workloads across multiple clouds and present the data in a simplified way.
In what seems like minutes, organizations have moved from contemplating whether and how the cloud might be a good fit to a mass migration toward it. Now, it is no longer unusual for a business to have multiple clouds supported by multiple providers. Unfortunately, the management piece is often an afterthought, leaving IT struggling to get a clear, consistent view across all environments.
In the case of interdependency between an application running across two separate clouds, it is particularly important to visualize activity with cloud management apps. But even without interconnection, it is still possible to track performance with some kind of unified view.
The good news is IT professionals have several product options to get a better handle on multiple cloud management. Numerous off-the-shelf tools and SaaS options are available to monitor third-party clouds. Some of these can work across multiple providers' clouds. That said, when tying together the monitoring data from applications running in different clouds, enterprises may experience some confusion.
IT professionals can build their own service to consolidate their perspective. IT can mix heterogeneous cloud management apps that specialize in monitoring activity on specific cloud platforms and tie those together in a common dashboard.
Each commercial cloud monitoring application is going to serve data in its own way. Organizations may choose to create an application view that standardizes how data from multiple cloud providers is presented on the same screen.
Some enterprises might need to integrate the tracked data from a third-party tool or service with other information. For example, a line-of-business manager might want to look at the cloud activity data in conjunction with production. Similarly, CFOs may want to tie cloud consumption with sales results, so it would be useful for them to add in financial tools.
Whichever route IT takes to track cloud activity across multiple clouds, cloud management apps and monitoring must be part of the discussion from the initial planning process. The ability to track activity is an important part of the management process. Thus, certain monitoring tools may influence which cloud provider a company ultimately chooses.
