Embotics Cloud Management Blog

Being a cloud administrator is hard work.

And if you’re reading this, I probably don’t have to tell you that.

More and more, end users rely on computing resources and services to do their jobs effectively – which can be a challenge (not to mention a time-suck) for system administrators. 

Cloud initiatives are typically easy to manage by IT administration teams… as long as the initiatives remain small. But as soon as that scale increases, the complexity also rises, leading to difficulties in the effective coordination and management of the IT services, with the consequences being that service quality and responsiveness suffers.

Times, they are a changing.

It’s not very likely that Bob Dylan had enterprise computing in mind when he penned those lyrics more than 50 years ago, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate when we look at the current state of where IT fits in the enterprise world. Here at Embotics, we talk to a lot of prospects and potential customers, and one thing we’re continuing to hear is that IT organizations are increasingly struggling to maintain relevance in a world dominated by cloud services.

The server virtualization market has come a long way. Today, nearly every enterprise uses virtualization – as it has become a mainstay in public, private and hybrid cloud deployments. As the virtualization market has matured over the years, organizations have evolved their VM strategies far beyond the point of simple virtualization. VM deployments today often include an element of self-service provisioning, where users can create their own virtual machines based on templates that exist in the service cloud.

When it comes to deploying a cloud management platform, chances are you don’t have a pristine greenfield environment, where there is no legacy technology in place that needs to be integrated with, and the infrastructure is just sitting there waiting to be fired up.

While it can seem daunting, implementing automation into your virtual environment doesn’t have to be an uphill battle. As the scope and scale of multi cloud environments continue to grow, automation can provide organizations with a sense of relief and ease – especially if the proper automation capabilities are selected.

At the end of each of our webinars, we hold a Q&A session where the audience can ask questions that arose from the webinar content. This blog series highlights some of those questions to expose them to a wider audience.

This week the questions come from the webinar, Critical Success Factors in Delivering Cloud and Related Services, where Monty Blight, EVP of Corporate Development at Embotics shared lessons learned while helping a national IT infrastructure provider grow its cloud business, and the different factors to consider for your own organization such as simple automation, customer self-service, and hybrid/public cloud.

At the end of each of our webinars, we hold a Q&A session where the audience can ask questions that arose from the webinar content. This blog series highlights some of those questions to expose them to a wider audience.

This week the questions come from the webinar, Beyond Cloud Automation - Reshaping Your Cloud Strategy, where Forrester Principal Analyst Dave Bartoletti and Embotics CTO Scott Davis discussed key trends in Hybrid cloud computing, and how they could impact your business strategy.

The Savers family of stores is a for-profit, global thrift retailer offering great quality, gently used clothing, accessories and household goods. Operating in over 330 locations, and with 22,000 employees, IT struggled to satisfy a growing demand for resources without an increase in IT team headcount.