Management and governance seem to be emerging topics in the cloud-computing world, as companies who’ve now committed themselves to the cloud focus on traditional enterprise IT headaches, er, issues.<\/p>\n
Enterprise cloud computing has its roots in web services (the hot topic of 2004) and services-oriented architecture (SOA, the hot topic of 2007), and nothing was more prominent or less understood than issues involving governance back in those \u201cearly days.\u201d<\/p>\n
enStratus, which provides cloud infrastructure management services, has redoubled its efforts in explaining some of these issues, as many enterprise IT managers prepare themselves for Cloud Expo in New York. <\/p>\n
The company has specifically focused on logging in a new study. \u201cLogs contain important information on performance, security, and user activities, and provide critical information about what the system is doing,\u201d according to the enStratus study. \u201cAnyone who has ever had to deploy an operating system or application knows just how important logs are. With migration to the cloud, logging and monitoring become even more important since you are giving up some control to the cloud services provider.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, giving up that precious control, the main sticking point in getting enterprises to migrate to third-party cloud vendors. Given what will always be the messy nature of most multi-component, enterprise cloud structures, no one should expect this issue to dissipate somehow. <\/p>\n
\u201cLogging needs cover an incredibly broad range of possibilities,\u201d according to enStratus. \u201cMany groups within enterprise organizations have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that they need to track in order to get their jobs done effectively, and in some cases legally \u2013 and these vary drastically from group to group.\u201d <\/p>\n
The company cites compliance regimes such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX, which regulates public-company financial reports) and PCI (the Payment Card Industry security standards), and general audits as cases that rely heavily on logging and change control within it.<\/p>\n
Automated performance management is also a big cloud topic \u2013 as the enStratus study states, \u201cJust having logs isn\u2019t very useful unless they are being reviewed, and responses provided. By having a system monitoring the logs, automated alerts can be generated on conditions that are important to the organization. This can be very useful for the security, operations and applications teams.\u201d Additionaly, the study says that \u201cit can be just as important to receive an alert when expected actions don\u2019t happen as when unexpected events do happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
I’m just scratching the surface here, but in a nutshell, as the enStratus study says, \u201cIt is important to have a strategy to get the logs from the cloud provider to their centralized log servers and cover the API logging gap. By managing these two concerns, organizations can ensure that they have the necessary logs to safely conduct business while taking advantage of the operations and economic benefits of the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n