What is Cloud Operations CloudOps?

Modern DevOps is usually tightly coupled with cloud operations and cloud management but can also cover some on-premise activities. There are many
benefits to cloud migration, including increased scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. However, there are also challenges to consider, such as the complexity of the migration process and the need to adapt to a new operating environment.

If a team consistently meets every goal, more likely than not, the goals were not hard enough to start with. Setting stretch goals and targets gets teams excited about transformation and can create a culture of collaboration. Metrics must be detailed enough to be traced back to a team, tracked quarterly, and attributed to a business outcome so that executives can see where they need more coverage or support. Fragmented lines of responsibility create confusion about who should be doing which tasks. It’s not uncommon, for example, to find dozens of IT infrastructure specialists on a production-incident resolution call because no one is certain who owns the task. As a result, customers can experience delays in restoration of infrastructure services or in a product release.

Cloud Engineer

Complexity is a given when it comes to cloud management and it can often lead to misalignment, confusion, and miscommunication. Many of the roles a part of the cloud team will come from other positions and departments. Therefore, to ensure success, you will need to establish cross-functional collaboration that brings the entire team together and reduce confusion. Typically a cloud architect will be in the weeds developing new designs and performing ongoing maintenance, but this person also might manage a team of architects and even serve as a liaison to engineers. This is a very technical role that requires extensive IT experience and cloud knowledge. The person you choose for this role should understand cloud technologies and be able to stay current with technology innovations and trends.

Oftentimes, developers will want more control over infrastructure and operations, having come from the constraints of a more siloed organization. On the flip side, operations folks and managers will likely be more in favor of having a separate group retain control over production environments and infrastructure for various reasons—efficiency, stability, and security to name a few. Not to mention, there are a lot of operational concerns that many developers are likely not even aware of—the sort of unsung, unglamorous bits of running software. A project could include multiple engineers to focus on different areas of cloud operations, such as networks, compute, databases, security and so on. Once the cloud infrastructure is set up, engineers will provide the first line of support and maintenance.

Replies to “Structuring a Cloud Infrastructure Organization”

I’ve written a series of blog posts on the recent trend towards more decentralized IT service delivery and consumption, however most enterprises have both methods in place. While there are multiple ways to do DevOps, there are also plenty of ways to not do it. Teams and DevOps leaders should be wary of anti-patterns, which are marked by silos, lack of communication, and a misprioritization of tools over communication. Create a hub of centralized documentation that everyone on the team can easily access. You can even keep this documentation in Lucidchart, or store it in Jira, Confluence, and other leading apps and integrations. To compare your architecture with compliance guidelines requires regular architecture review with your architecture review board.

Adopt agile cloud workflows and non-disruptive automation tools including as many self-service capabilities including provisioning and password resets. For some organizations, CloudOps has replaced the network operations center (NOC) as IT operations have shifted from on-premises to cloud-based infrastructure. Just as the NOC monitored and managed the data center, CloudOps monitors, instruments, and manages VMs, containers and workloads that run in a cloud. Developers, IT operations and security all collaborate using CloudOps principles to meet business and technology goals. When leading a cloud team, it is best to be transparent about business requirements and cloud migration goals.

Take Control of Your Multi-Cloud Environment

In this team structure, a team within the development team acts as a source of expertise for all things operations and does most of the interfacing with the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) team. This team structure is dependent on applications that run in a public cloud, since the IaaS team creates scalable, virtual services that the development team uses. Teams need access to granular and recent metrics on reliability (availability and failure rates), response time (milliseconds per transaction), and cost (percentage of toil and total cost of ownership).

Members of developing cloud operations teams need continual training to improve their technical abilities and stay up to date to understand cloud technologies, industry standards, and security requirements. Investing in CloudOps skills building through training courses, seminars, and conferences is essential for cloud projects to remain secure and competitive. A cloud engineer is an IT and engineering professional who is expected to have a wide variety of technical skills and knowledge. Cloud engineers are responsible for deploying and maintaining many components of the cloud infrastructure including network design, resource allocation, storage, and cloud security.

Announcing Cloud Entitlement Visibility, Anomaly Detection, and Threat Correlation For AWS

This might be the AMIs used for Kubernetes nodes and the base images used by application pods running in the cluster. These are critical components as they directly relate to the organization’s security and compliance posture. cloud operations team structure They are also pieces most developers in a large organization are not well-equipped to—or interested in—dealing with. Patch management is a fundamental concern that often takes a back seat to feature development.

• Shifting to an engineering-focused organization and gaining the support of advanced engineers also made it possible to adopt an SRE model.
• Atlassian’s Open DevOps provides everything teams need to develop and operate software.
• Cloud architects, developers, and engineers should work together to find opportunities for optimization.
• They also ensure that the migrated infrastructure and applications are configured for optimal performance and scalability.
• When thinking about organization structure, I find that it helps to consider layers of operational concern while mapping the ownership of those concerns.

Cloud software developers are professional software developers who have the creativity and technical know-how to develop programs that are stored in the cloud. Cloud developers should have an in-depth understanding of service level agreements and a range of cloud provider architectures, such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. No matter what cloud stage you’re in, managing the cloud is a meticulous process. Your team must be able to manage and support the cloud before, during, and after migrations. You’ll need a variety of roles and skills to build and maintain a successful cloud environment. Developer Productivity is tasked with getting ideas from an engineer’s brain to a deployable artifact as efficiently as possible.

How to Build an Effective Operations Team

That requires the creation and enforcement of policies that limit what users and applications can do in the public cloud. This ensures an application doesn’t end up using cloud resources when there is no return on investment. By now, you should have all the ideas you need to build a capable operations team, assign smart roles, and streamline operations over time. Take a standardized approach to deliver high-quality products and services by establishing bite-sized, repeatable processes in which everyone knows their role. Bear in mind, though, that it’s best to limit each rotation to one person for a smoother hand-off to the next.

Typically, automated processes include provisioning, user management, security management and application program interface management. Artificial intelligence and machine learning play important roles in automating tasks. Without a clear understanding of DevOps and how to properly implement it, a DevOps transformation is usually constrained to reorganizations or the latest tools. Properly embracing DevOps entails a cultural change where teams have new structures, new management principles, and adopt certain technology tools. With customer expectations and technology evolving at an unprecedented clip, moving to cloud is increasingly becoming a strategic priority for businesses.

Do Not Forget About Risk Management and Cloud Security

They should work with SRE teams to understand the challenges in consuming these services. This process helps prevent infrastructure teams from developing solutions that no one needs. The team can offer a catalog of existing services and a road map of upcoming services or improvements. The cloud migration project will require a DevOps engineer to oversee the development teams, closing the gap between them and system administrators.