By Rick Blaisdell; CTO ConnectEDU

Cloud computing has definitely revolutionised the IT industry and transformed the way in which IT Services are delivered. But finding the best way for an organization to perform common management tasks using remote services on the Internet is not that easy.

Cloud management incorporates the task of providing, managing, and monitoring applications into cloud infrastructures that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location or of the system that delivers the services. Monitoring cloud computing applications and activity into requires cloud management tools to ensure that resources are meeting SLA’s, working optimally and also not effecting systems and users that are leveraging these services.

With appropriate cloud management solutions, private users are now able to manage multiple operating systems on the same dedicated server or move the virtual servers to a shared server all from in the same cloud management solution.  Some cloud companies offer tools to manage this entire process, some will provide this solution using a combination of tools and managed services.

The three core components of cloud environment, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and finally Software as a Service (SaaS), now offer great solutions to manage cloud computing, but the management tools need to be flexible and scalable just as the cloud computing strategy of an organization should be. With the new paradigm of computing, cloud management has to:

• continue to make cloud easier to use;
• provide security policies for the cloud environment;
• allow safe cloud operations and ease migrations;
• provide for financial controls and tracking;
• audit and reporting for compliance.

Numerous tasks and tools are necessary for cloud management. A successful cloud management strategy includes performance monitoring in terms of response times, latency, uptime and so on, security and compliance auditing and management, initiating, supervising and management of disaster recovery.

So, why is it so important to implement a cloud management strategy into an organization? By having a cloud management strategy that fits into the cloud computing resources that a company uses, it offers a faster delivery of IT services to businesses, it reduces capital and operating costs, it charges backs automatically for resource usage and reporting and it allows IT departments to monitor their service level requirements.

This post originally appeared on http://www.rickscloud.com/cloud-management/