Cloud Automation: Tools, Use Cases and Benefits

Introduction

In this article let us look into cloud automation. When cloud computing arrived in the market for the first time no one was certain how cloud technology would transform the business sector and what its implications would be. But gradually it gained popularity and when its impact was felt across organizations it became clear how it could revolutionize the market. Now the cloud technology has become indispensable in firms from small to mid to big and its adoption is ever increasing. This is justified because everyone across the business sector has grown an appetite for data and cloud computing is the perfect technology to satiate it.

But no game-changing technology is devoid of shortcomings and such was the case with cloud computing. Customarily, deploying, and operating enterprise workloads was a time-consuming and painstaking task. It was often repetitive insofar that tasks like sizing, provisioning, and configuring resources like virtual machines required manual and frequent interference. Such interferences also went beyond the actual deployment and then monitoring and managing availability and performance. These efforts cannot be negated or downplayed but they carry troubleshooting risks to the enterprise might also expose security vulnerabilities.

These issues were having a disconcerting effect on enterprises, particularly to the IT industry but then cloud automation entered the picture as a possible solution and whisked away all the apprehensions. With cloud automation, an organization eliminates these repetitive and laborious processes to deploy and manage workloads. As you read further you will have a clear understanding of what is cloud service automation.  

In this article let us look at:

1. What is Cloud Automation?
2. Cloud Automation Use Cases
3. Cloud Automation Tools
4. Benefits of Cloud Automation

1. What is Cloud Automation?

Going by the cloud automation definition, it refers to the various tools and processes that organizations make use of in order to reduce the manual efforts that go into managing and provisioning the cloud computing services as a whole. Cloud security stands as a key element in cloud automation as it attends to the scalability demands that are associated with DevOps. Cloud automation comes in three major forms namely- private cloud automation, multi-cloud automation, and hybrid cloud automation.

2. Cloud Automation Use Cases

Cloud automation use cases may vary depending on the particular businesses and their goals. Following are some basic cloud automation examples: 

• Auto-provisioning of cloud infrastructure resources;
• Shutting down unused instances and processes 
• Performing regular data backup.

A common use case for cloud automation is to establish infrastructure as code. Cloud automation engineers and cloud automation developers play a significant role in this aspect. Cloud automation enables users to add and deploy more resources without concern for where those resources are physically located in the data center.

3. Cloud Automation Tools

The benefits of cloud migration are clear in that it reduces operating costs and labor and thus it is needless to say why cloud automation has become an inalienable element of any cloud environment.  But cloud migrations require special attention. Tooling and automation in cloud computing take a load off such risky and business-critical procedures.

AWS CloudFormation

Using Amazon’s AWS CloudFormation, businesses can automate the scripts, followed by deploying them in the cloud-based infrastructure of AWS. With CloudFormation one can run a plethora of AWS tools that stand apart, these include Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Additionally, automated management of cross-region accounts is also carried out by CloudFormation.

Puppet

Puppet is a longstanding leader in management tooling and automation in cloud computing as it helps large software teams in configuring, modeling, and systematically enforcing the required configurations in their infrastructure. Puppet Enterprise facilitates the execution and deployment of out-of-the-box task-based commands and multi-device management.

Aside from CloudFormation and Puppet, there are several cloud automation tools available like Ansible, Chef, Kubernetes, Terraform, Microsoft Azure Automation. 

Cloud automation testing plays a very important role in the software testing industry. Following are a few cloud-based automation testing tools- SOASTA CloudTest, LoadStorm, Blazemeter, Nessus, Xamarin test cloud. 

4. Benefits of Cloud Automation

In order to stay competitive, businesses require an established cloud environment and that means a supporting IT infrastructure. Often it is complex than one would imagine but organizations are adopting cloud-based automation to streamline and optimize infrastructure-based IT procedures. Thus automation in cloud computing ensures business flexibility and ease of use. Here are a few benefits of cloud-based automation.

• There are significant costs involved in maintaining individually owned hardware, and even more, costs are associated with the manpower required to maintain the same hardware. Thus, it is economical to switch to cloud automation services as the total cost of ownership is considerably reduced.
• Cloud automation technologies with their centralized environment enable an IT organization or automation Centre of Excellence in tuning the automation activity throughout. Furthermore, with such centralized governance, access rights, and permissions with multiple layers can be controlled at all the levels of the group, object, user, and data.
• As per research, a whopping 94% of businesses experienced an improvement in security following the implementation of cloud automation solutions. Cloud automation solutions, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have extremely efficient setups that are dedicated to ensuring security that is typical and more particular than what an IT department could provide.

• With a cloud automation framework in place, customer account creation can take place instantly. Users just need to log-in and smart building automation. With this kind of cloud service automation, businesses can invest in a low-risk and low-cost manner that could aid them in attaining higher ROI on automation services. This differs from the automation software installed on-premise. It required higher time and cost investments.
• Business processes need to include all the stakeholders- employees, customers, suppliers, partners, job candidates, contractors,  and others in the loop. With a combination of cloud and automation, stakeholders can be enabled to participate in an automated workflow as Cloud service automation enables organizations in automating the full process, end-to-end.
• Cloud automation solutions ensure that users are always making use of the latest version so that one does not require to manually update or install software on their systems. 
• With real-time data processing becoming a staple of every business goal, one cannot endure a network failure or system outage. Cloud-based automation cements the resiliency of any system as it continuously monitors all events and also provides real-time cloud management. In case of any such events, preemptive measures are taken to flag any potential risks while simultaneously rectifying those possible errors and slips. 
• Cloud automation solutions are comparatively more scalable in multiple ways. For instance, businesses don’t need to worry about augmenting storage space when storing large data sets in data tables. As more departments and units are brought into the cloud automation framework, centralized governance and system management actions reduce friction and manual interference.

Conclusion

Thus, cloud automation can reduce the manual efforts that go into managing and provisioning cloud computing services as a whole and is both cost-effective and highly secure.

If you are looking for an extensive course in Cloud Computing, then the 5.5-month online Postgraduate Certificate Program In Cloud Computing offered by Jigsaw Academy can be of help. This program helps interested learners become complete Cloud professionals.

Also, Read

• Cloud Networking: A Complete Guide In 6 Points
• Green Cloud Computing: A Beginner’s Guide