Catching and preventing cloud sprawl

Cloud sprawl can be anticipated and mitigated when IT professionals have a plan

By Donna Donnowitz
November 3, 2014
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Advances in virtualization have made the cloud as prevalent as the keyboard. Software-as-a-Service applications offer quite a bit of ingenuity to the office place on their own, but their usefulness can lessen when multiple SaaS platforms are being run congruently. Employee workflows can screech to a halt if they become bogged down in the process of switching from one cloud to the other. Likewise, important files spread across multiple cloud environments create confusion when employees look to compile their resources. This slowdown created by an excess of cloud platforms is known as "cloud sprawl," and the phenomenon can be detrimental to an organization's productivity. Solving sprawl requires IT staff to challenge the problem head on by developing a long-term plan for the cloud.

Develop an end goal
Cloud sprawl is often a product of an IT staff's ambitions outpacing the company's organization. Often it seems like every wrinkle in running a data center can be solved with a SaaS platform these days. However, relying heavily on cloud solutions without considering the company's long-term virtualization strategy will lead to redundancies between each new environment, warned Beta News. A company can sidestep this problem by developing a long-term strategy and using this plan to guide investments in SaaS. Prioritizing flexibility and avoiding overlap is necessary to ensure that new environments fit seamlessly with the company's current infrastructure.

Expand employee training
Overlap and compatibility issues between different cloud environments often occurs when employees have different levels of knowledge about each platform. This lack of shared education can lead to multiple redundant purchases. Data Center Knowledge recommends that companies routinely educate employees on all of the cloud environments at play in the workplace. A greater understanding of the company's resources also provides employees with more problem solving tools. The company's leadership team should go through the training process as well. Failure to educate the firm's decision makers about important technology further isolates the business and IT ends of the spectrum.

Invest in management tools
Additional cloud platforms may not help organize a system cluttered with virtual environments. However, new hardware solutions could provide a means of sorting through the clutter. For example, IT teams could instantly simplify their cloud overlap by uprooting a cloud environment from one office and setting up shop in another. A remote console server could be used to make the transfer fast and simple.

Perle's wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.

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