Why you should manage cloud resources as an integral part of your business workflow

Looking at the last 2017 State of the Cloud Report from RightScale, two survey’ outcomes capture the reader’s attention:

• Companies now run 79% of workloads in cloud
  
• Managing cloud cost has become a top challenge as respondents estimate 30% waste, while RightScale has measured actual waste between 30 and 45 percent

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Customers choose to move their application to the cloud to focus on the business optimization rather than on managing the infrastructure, and they expect to save costs with this shift. But the real savings can happen only if the management of business logic is combined with the management of the resources that support the business logic.
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“Is it better to over-provision cloud resources with the risk
 of wasting them, or under-provision with the risk of degrading
         performance and delay the business process?"

For sure, saving money is one of the main reasons why customers are willing to adopt cloud solutions. But once in the cloud, their applications will rely on systems provisioned and dimensioned to run defined business flows, not unpredictable workloads volumes. Then, there are two possible risks:

• Delay in the business process because the proper resources are not available
• Pay extra-costs (unused time of the cloud resources) and not de-provision when the application activity is done
  

This leads to new questions: Is it better to over-provision cloud resources with the risk of wasting them, or under-provision with the risk of degrading performance and delay the business process? How about provisioning just the right amount of resources for only the time-period you need them?
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Why don’t you choose to pay for what you use? Exactly what you need, when you need it, and rather than incur extra costs and waste, de-provision when you’re done. And better if you have a proactive provisioning and deprovisioning of the resources implementing an elastic scaling based on some policies.
 
To succeed in this challenge, a new approach is required, that strictly ties your business workflow with the cloud resource management. While managing a business application, IT organizations need to be able to orchestrate provisioning and deprovisioning of the infrastructure needed by the business application in the cloud… not an easy task!

​Workload Automation* can make the management of your cloud resources more agile, responsive and, best-of-all, cost effective by providing a solution that fits multi-cloud environments (where cloud services come from different providers) and hybrid cloud environments (where a mix of on-premises and cloud services are used).
 
A new solution pack is available on top of Workload Automation, provided by HCL Products and Platforms. It includes a set of new plug-ins to manage the provisioning and deprovisioning of virtual machines in the cloud, on as-needed basis. By orchestrating the application workflow and the workflow that manages the entire life-cycle of the virtual machines needed by the applications (including the actions: start, stop, snapshot, etc …), Workload Automation can increase both business and infrastructure agility.
 
The solution pack contains: 

• a plug-in for Amazon Web Services
• a plug-in for Microsoft Azure
• a plug-in for IBM SoftLayer

Using the solution pack is very easy:

1. The Workload Automation administrator downloads and deploys each of the plug-ins.
2. The application developer finds new job types to complete the application workflow, providing a flexible and dynamic allocation of cloud resources. 
3. The scheduler runs the applications workflow: the new job types connect to the cloud, provisioning virtual machines that are automatically freed up when no longer needed.

 
Also, with the solution pack, changing provider is very easy. For example, you can pass from Amazon to Microsoft or vice versa. It is just a matter of replacing a few jobs in the workflow that maps your business process, and that’s it!
 
Watch this video to see the solution pack in action.
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Do you want to know more about managing cloud resources with Workload Automation and HCL innovative solutions? Don’t miss our next blogs to get additional details on how to take advantage of the solution pack in different customer scenarios.

And explore with us further opportunities such as exploiting elastic scaling for a proactive management of the provisioning and deprovisioning of the resources. We are designing an intuitive user interface where you can define your policy for cloud elastic scaling allowing your application to be always responsive while keeping costs aligned with the workload demand. Policy options, approval process management,… we are interested to present you our solutions and discuss your ideas and needs.

Shape the future of Workload Automation, by contacting [email protected]

*Workload Automation is available as IBM Workload Scheduler and Automation offerings, and HCL Workload Automation.

Alexandra Thurel, Director Offering Management at HCL

Alexandra is responsible for product strategy and offering management for the Workload Automation solutions, within the HCL & IBM partnership. She has 22+ years ‘experience in Software Industry, with deep experience in Services, Development & Release Management, Support Management, and Product Management. One of Alexandra's primary objectives is to develop strategies that will maximize clients benefits while exploiting the greatest automation capabilities.

Marina Fabbri, Information Developer at HCL

Marina works as an Information Developer in the Workload Automation team. In her role, she also creates marketing and how-to videos that demonstrate the new features of the Workload Automation product suite.
 
Special Thanks go to Liliana Pasceri, Workload Automation technical leader, for her contribution to this blog.