As IT operations have become more client-centric these past few years, IT teams are starting to adopt different tools for tasks and projects. Yet, without a common management framework for teams to use tools, resources and IT services properly, their visibility, availability, and security — among other things — are compromised. In other words, without a centralized operations management system, cloud activities couldn’t possibly bring the desired results.
But, let’s take it from the top, to understand what centralized operations include, and why IT teams need to adopt this approach.
What does Centralized Operations mean?
Centralized operations are simply the aggregation and categorization of applications, tools, resources and services to a single administration console. This model suggests a more organized approach to managing cloud assets; which would otherwise be very challenging to keep under control. And, that’s exactly what centralized operations management is all about.
Why do teams need a Centralized Operations Management system?
Centralized operations management ensures operational control, security and overall efficiency. Through a single point of ownership, IT and DevOps teams can migrate, plan and run workloads on the Cloud smoothly and efficiently. What’s more, opting for a CMP solution, like Cycleops — that can boost developer productivity via self-service DevOps automation capabilities — so much the better.
Cycleops and AWS — Centralized Operations Management at its best
The benefits of moving to the AWS cloud are undeniable. That’s why so many companies have been trusting AWS for migrating workloads and keeping their applications robust for many years now. What many companies may not know, though, is that their teams could streamline their AWS cloud operations more efficiently, if they combined AWS with an all-around Cloud Management Platform (CMP). How? Simply put, a CMP consolidates all cloud assets and IT operations at a centralized point of action; and, this alone, offers a host of additional benefits, as we’ll see later on.
Our CMP, for instance, Cycleops, has fully integrated its internal toolkit and managed services with AWS. Being an AWS Partner, as well as a self-service DevOps console, Cycleops allows for a deeper AWS cloud services management experience. With Cycleops’ centralized operation management capabilities, teams can safely pair the company’s legacy infrastructure with the AWS Cloud, and manage applications efficiently; and, at scale.
Furthermore, via Cycleops, you can break down silos, once and for all; bringing different teams together in one dashboard — and one toolset — to operate using the same technologies.
7 Benefits of using a Centralized Operations Management system
A comprehensive centralized operations management platform, like Cycleops, allows you to view, and take action on the assets, resources, and applications you maintain on AWS. Through a single integrated dashboard — and, with DevOps automation processes in place — you can minimize both the time-to-market and downtime.
Now, let’s see what a centralized operations management system can offer, in more detail.
1. Visibility and observability
It’s easy to set up the foundation for your operations if you have visibility and observability of your assets and resources; and, how they’re being utilized. Thus, visibility and observability allow you to increase the availability and performance of your applications. A centralized operations management system can give you access to such information; and, your team can act on the insights they gain, to quickly detect, investigate, and remediate problems.
Monitoring
As you’ve probably already gathered, you can’t possibly have security and compliance without proper operations monitoring up and running. Today, monitoring is more important than ever, since it’s the only way to safeguard your complex IT infrastructures and applications. How does monitoring do that? By giving you access to key system performance metrics; thus, allowing you to be proactive with issues and threats.
All this critical data can help you, on the one hand, address many different problems at once; for example, stemming from upgrades, deployments, etc. On the other hand, it can help you define your initial configurations and safely modify/adapt them to clients’ requirements, every time.
2. Integration with the AWS toolkit
AWS can provide you with visibility into processes, as well as tools that you can put to good use, across your environments and overall cloud operations. However, the processes and toolsets you use on AWS can be simplified and optimized by integrating them with third-party tools, and processes. In Cycleops, for instance, we have integrated the AWS toolkit and managed services with the platform’s internal tools, to streamline our own clients’ operations in the cloud.
3. Operational control, security, and compliance
With a centralized operations management system, which includes all best practices, you can implement security and compliance processes faster; and, more easily. Security and compliance guardrails can help you detect suspicious activity and promptly take action.
When centralizing operations, you can get end-to-end security information, which allows for continuous monitoring. Just by logging into a single dashboard, you can follow up on security breach alerts and ensure transparency of the cloud environment. With the centralized operations management approach, you can:
- Establish operational control over your cloud resources
- Protect your cloud investments
- Handle change management
- Diagnose and remediate operational issues quickly — before they affect end-users
- Increase response time
- Decrease MTTR
4. Automation and self-Service DevOps practices
Automation enables you to focus your efforts on delivering the desired business outcomes; and, even driving innovation. A centralized operations management system supports automation processes and self-service DevOps practices, allowing for fast and efficient organization and security of your environments and resources; as well as prompt application delivery. You can also integrate CI/CD tools, to enable collaboration between teams and reach operational efficiency faster.
5. Reusability
Naturally, without automation, you can’t have reusability. What’s that, and why do you need it? Well, reusability is nothing but using and reusing source code to add new functionality; with or without modifications. In this respect, reusability promotes automation, as it allows you to build repeatable mechanisms, and, hence, automate workflows.
Especially when it comes to deployments, you can compose a stack template once, and you can reuse it upon AWS resources; again, with or without modifications — depending on the task or project. One of the greatest benefits Cycleops offers, as a self-service DevOps platform, is exactly that, as it allows you to compose, deploy and monitor your stacks, without having to write code.
6. Team collaboration
As mentioned, a centralized operations management system aggregates everything in one place of control and action. And, if you have a comprehensive CMP that can centralize operations for you, even better.
Moreover, a CMP can streamline communication and collaboration among different teams. A wholesome CMP, like Cycleops, doesn’t require your teams to have extensive expertise; which helps flatten the learning curve. Everybody has access to the same technologies, which prevents miscommunication and avoids human errors. Finally, with its self-service DevOps capabilities, it automates workflows and staff productivity with noticeable improvements.
Cycleops: The Self-Service DevOps approach to Centralized Οperations Management
Driven by the modern user experience, digital transformation is all about speed and agility. By consolidating all your AWS assets, resources and applications in one central point of action, you can continuously improve availability, performance and, ultimately, user experience. So, how can you gather everything up, under one roof, and streamline operations?
The answer comes from a CMP that enables self-service DevOps, like our platform, Cycleops. The platform is designed to help you manage your applications efficiently and provide enhanced user experience, by leveraging AWS services.
Its self-service DevOps automation capabilities allow for seamless provisioning, full-stack monitoring; while, at the same time, enabling team collaboration and boosting productivity.
In addition to the above, Cycleops comes with an extensive service catalog and ready-made stack templates that add to the AWS offerings.
Discover how you can transform your business, by leveraging Cycleops’ self-service DevOps approach to centralized operations management.