Cloud managers are inherently responsible for helping developers choose the best cloud services for their organization, then providing ongoing operational support so the developers don’t have to. But before you can do any of this, you need to earn the right to be their cloud manager.
A recent Forrester report suggests three things to keep in mind when building your cloud management capabilities:
- Start early and stay late. Cloud managers should be involved early in the application design process and help determine which apps are right for cloud, and which cloud is best for each app. After developers deploy, test, and release the apps, cloud managers continue their support through monitoring and managing app performance, track and optimize cloud costs, and guide further cloud app design based on data. Shrinking the application life cycle should be your goal.
- Improve operations to support collaboration. You will need to take an active role in defining and establishing the processes, methods, and systems that support team collaboration.
- Fill operational gaps left by cloud providers. There is often a gap between the standard set of services and metrics cloud providers offer and the operational needs of the company. As a cloud manager, you need to fill those gaps by overseeing elements like enterprise integration, application architecture, governance, life-cycle management and more.
By improving your cloud management capabilities, you can make developers more productive, and optimize the performance, availability and cost efficiency of cloud applications. To learn more about managing a growing cloud portfolio, download the entire white paper.
Originally posted to: https://apptio.com/emerge/earning-right-manage-cloud-portfolio
Jessica Williams 