Increasing resilience and reliability through cloud computing

Background and best practices from Cloudblue
How the cloud can serve as a key to operational resilience

06.09.2024

A guest article by Jeroen Buijs*

3 min reading time

Providers on the topic

The cloud continues to enjoy increasing popularity in corporate use. One reason for this is that companies can increase their resilience cost-effectively compared to traditional on-premises environments. Cloudblue summarizes the best practices required for this.

The cloud computing market continues to grow steadily and there seems to be no end to this upward trend in sight. According to forecasts By 2032, the mark of a good 2.29 billion US dollars could be broken. This would correspond to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.5 percent. A key reason for this growth can be found in the attractiveness of the cloud: Companies particularly value the fact that cloud functions enable them to achieve a higher level of resilience that is often more cost-effective and reliable than traditional on-premises solutions.

Managed and operated by external data centers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), cloud systems are available 24/7. They are inherently resilient due to their failover mechanisms, backup and recovery capabilities, and redundancies. Unlike conventional systems, which often require planned downtime for upgrades and maintenance, cloud-based solutions typically experience little or no downtime. But like any technology, the cloud also comes with its own challenges. Best practices help companies take cloud resilience to the next level.

Security in the cloud

Resilience and data redundancy also require always being up to date with the latest security standards. Cloud providers therefore continuously search for vulnerabilities and promptly release security patches to proactively protect against zero-day threats. Only strong security protocols can ensure high reliability and minimize downtime – a crucial success factor in today's business world.

Specialized security departments enable providers to respond quickly to new threats without requiring user intervention, thereby permanently improving the overall security posture of cloud users. Companies benefit from this comprehensive IT support, including infrastructure experts, security operations staff and system administrators, as they do not have to provide the necessary resources in-house.

Scalability and monitoring analysis

In the cloud, companies can flexibly scale computing power according to software requirements, enabling efficient resource allocation. However, without careful monitoring and control mechanisms, costs can quickly explode. By implementing tollgates, predefined spending limits are set. They automatically stop usage once a threshold is reached. It is important not to set these thresholds too restrictively, as strong tollgates can potentially slow down system performance and cause disruption for users.

To further achieve operational resilience in the cloud, finding the balance between resource utilization and cost control is an important key. The scalable infrastructure solutions offered by cloud services can also help here. They optimize operations in a straightforward manner, as no internal hiring or outsourcing to multiple service providers is required.

Best Practices at a Glance – The Top 3

In summary, the three best practices can be briefly formulated as follows:

• 1. Patches: Cloud systems should be designed and built to provide the flexibility to deploy patches seamlessly and without system downtime. This approach enables continuous operations and ensures that software remains up-to-date and secure.

• 2. Monitoring and usage optimization: Setting usage “guardrails” and continuously monitoring system performance are critical to using resources more effectively and avoiding unnecessary costs. By tracking usage patterns and identifying underutilized resources, companies can scale up or down as needed, improving efficiency and cost effectiveness.

• 3. Cost awareness: Cloud services come at a cost, but companies can effectively manage their expenses and resources by promoting accountability within the development, product and IT teams.

Conclusion

In the cloud, companies can focus on their core business while strengthening their security measures and gaining access to a diverse pool of IT expertise tailored to their specific needs – for example in the form of a cloud monetization platform such as Cloudblue. As technology continues to evolve, the importance of cloud system resilience will only increase. By implementing best practices in patch management, usage monitoring and cost awareness, companies will be able to sustainably improve the reliability and efficiency of their processes.

* Jeroen Buijs is Head of Sales EMEA at Cloudblue.

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