No one seems to want to prioritize cloud governance and compliance from the start. Usually, once the customer’s cloud footprint becomes substantial enough, problems arise related to things like sprawl and cost management. Everyone has those projects that are important and they know it, but it always manages to stay project number 6 on the top 5 list. That is what commonly happens to the cloud governance strategy. Cloud governance enforcement doesn’t need to be complicated and it should scale, so you can start small – this is why we created OpsCompass Helm.
Nearly all organizations have embarked on their cloud journey. Some have dabbled in Azure and AWS and seen value in the cloud’s speed and agility – but now they have a cobbled together situation that needs to be cleaned up. Some organizations are growing their core businesses utilizing the cloud and need real-time analysis to manage this growth. We’ve also built foundation and framing solutions to help aid your organization’s strategic cloud planning. While everyone’s cloud plan is different, no matter where you are in your cloud journey, the three crucial aspects of successful governance never change.
People
IT departments have adapted gradually over the past few years as cloud has been more widely adopted. Unless your business was founded on the public cloud, technology leadership has typically inherited their environments and they are looking for ways to get back control. Setting up the personal resources in an IT organization to deal with a flexible and fluid strategy is critical moving forward.
Process
Process is an area where a lot of organizations tell us they need assistance. Public cloud adoption has hit the point where it will now exponentially grow. It can be hard to set up a process that enforces your policies. Even though our Helm platform falls under the technology category (more to come on this shortly), we help our customers form processes and workflows that align with the characteristics of the cloud and the requirements for governance. Baseline enforcement and operational fitness are the name of the game at this stage.
Technology
If you’re on any of the major player’s cloud platforms, a tool that brings everything together and at scale is absolutely necessary. Cloud team’s need the ability to maintain and enforce a baseline across their clouds and know when violations happen. This should be automated and built-in to your operational processes. Instead of ad-hoc “fire-drills” to fix a problem or a deployment mistake that wasn’t caught until it became a very costly mistake, something like Helm surfaces the highest priority issues immediately and helps you get that information to the right people.
People, process, and technology. Once these boxes are checked, cloud governance is a seamless part of your workday, workweek, and fiscal year.
