In a market increasingly guided by digital, one of the biggest challenges for companies is to deliver quality results in the shortest possible time. In this sense, the process automation in Cloud Computing is essential for achieve operational efficiency, better use of available resources and the ability to adapt to new demands that arise.

The more automated the Cloud Computing environment, the more optimized your workflow tends to be. But how to achieve this in practice? This initiative requires planning and the use of appropriate tools capable of simplifying your operations.

Want to know more about the subject? In this post, we will address the main ways to achieve efficiency and scalability in Cloud Computing through process automation. Check out!

Why is automation crucial in Cloud Computing?

Automation in Cloud Computing can generate gains for the entire business. This is because it allows the company to have access to solutions that contribute to the management, total control and instant maintenance of data arising from its workflow.

Given the large volume of information generated by a company's daily operations, it is necessary to adopt methods and tools that simplify management and analysis of this data, and the activities of the organization in general.

From automation in cloud infrastructure, it becomes viable to provision, scale and manage resources efficiently and consistently. When tasks — such as asset monitoring, configuration management and application deployment are automated — the IT environment gains agility, reduces errors and can free up its professionals to focus on the department's more strategic demands.

A task performed by four people, for example, can be done by a single professional, generating savings and bringing resilience to the company's cloud. Humans can make mistakes in repetitive processes, whereas in automation, when well configured, they are executed in a standardized way.

What are the main areas for applying automation in Cloud Computing?

A series of key processes can be automated to facilitate your work routine, helping to build an infrastructure adaptable to market changes. Understand, below, in which areas automation in Cloud Computing can be applied.

Resource provisioning

Infrastructure provisioning processes play a critical role in the IT lifecycle. In this context, you can automate the creation and configuration of servers, networks and other infrastructure assets.

This way, the organization can react and respond quickly to the demands of its customers, making custom resources available and releasing them when they are no longer useful for your operations.

Furthermore, by automating resource provisioning, it is possible to reduce the occurrence of human errors and configuration inconsistencies, ensuring the security and compliance of the deployed infrastructure.

Environment configuration

The lack of automation in the configuration of environments results in processes that are more prone to errors and leaves them vulnerable in terms of security. This condition also tends to increase the deployment time of new applications, since each configuration must be done manually, compromising the agility of IT operations.

With the possibility of automation, the company can replicate environments in any region of the world or cloud provider in an agile way, an aspect that contributes from the adoption of strategies for disaster recovery to the global expansion of its activities.

Quickly updating and modifying environment configurations can be done through scripts It is templates, which facilitate the adaptation of operations to the needs of both applications and end users.

Backup management

The loss of vital data for business operations can considerably compromise its performance, privacy and reputation in the market. By automating backup management, it is possible to prevent these setbacks

Automating backup routines and task scheduling expands data protection against accidental loss, cyber attacks or internal corruption. In case of failures, this initiative minimizes downtime and the impact on the organization's productivity, promoting rapid restoration of information, in addition to ensuring the stability of your workflow.

Monitoring

Continuous monitoring of the cloud environment is essential to keep operational resources available and secure, as it prevents, identifies and eliminates failures.

Furthermore, the adoption of tools to automate the monitoring area facilitates control over essential metrics, such as network latency, CPU utilization, memory usage and system integrity.

Therefore, the environment can be configured to generate automatic alerts via email, text messages and notifications about anomalies, providing an agile reaction to possible problems.

In this area, there is also the option of configuring systems that detect threats and neutralize them. An example of this are intrusion detection systems that can be configured to identify and block IP addresses suspicious of unauthorized access.

What are the cloud automation tools and technologies?

To automate processes in Cloud Computing, it is necessary to consider that this journey is complex, requiring the use of tools that optimize it. This way, the IT team can save time and effort while leveraging cloud activities. Discover below some tools that help in this mission.

Ansible

Ansible is an automation platform that simplifies and orchestrates tasks in the cloud environment. It works from a structured approach in YAML and SSH, which allows the definition and implementation of configurations in a declarative way, which makes automation more accessible and understandable for your users.

This tool has a wide collection of modules that enable the interaction of different cloud services, such as Google Cloud and Azure, a factor that facilitates the integration and management of assets in companies that use multiple clouds.

Easy to use, Ansible has a agentless, which eliminates the need to install additional software in the applications to be automated, accelerating this journey.

Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool, which means that configurations and policies are written and managed in the same way as an application's source code. The IT team can provision and manage Cloud Computing resources in an automated and declarative way.

One of its differences is that it uses its own language, the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). With this application you can describe the desired infrastructure in terms of resources, its configurations and dependencies, in a configuration file.

Thus, users have the alternative of defining the infrastructure as code, condition that optimizes the automation and replication of environments in the most diverse cloud providers and geographic regions.

Incorporating Terraform into your Cloud Computing activities brings a complete and accurate view of the infrastructure as code, contributing to the management and versioning of your configurations with maximum efficiency.

chef

Also based on infrastructure as code, the Chef platform performs automation through a declarative approach, giving administrators the autonomy to describe the desired state of systems.

Chef stands out for offering consistency and compliance, ensuring server compliance with established policies, eliminating unforeseen discrepancies and preserving infrastructure uniformity.

The recipes and cookbooks created by the tool can be modularized and reused for sharing and application in the different areas to be automated.

Puppet

By following a code infrastructure philosophy, Puppet allows cloud configurations to be defined and maintained programmatically, bringing broad-reaching consistency and compliance.

The platform also works in a declarative way, enabling reuse and modularity, facilitating the management of highly complex environments.

Every manifest and module in the Puppet framework is versioned and managed, making it possible to monitor changes over time. This practice facilitates cooperation between groups and provides a detailed record of the variations made.

What benefits can be obtained from automation in Cloud Computing?

Carrying out manual processes can affect your productivity, while cloud automation boosts performance of your processes, generating more valuable results and increasing your competitive advantage in the market. Find out what the benefits of this initiative are.

Gain in efficiency and agility

Automated processes reduce the need for manual intervention, an aspect that makes executions faster and more consistent. Across all consistently configured environments, errors are reduced and security is increased.

Additionally, automation makes it easier and faster to implement changes and updates, enabling a quick response to business requirements and market demands.

Increased scalability

Having a good level of scalability is essential for the flow of operations in organizations, which tend to deal with traffic spikes, product launches and seasonal events.

Based on this principle, automation in Cloud-Based Computing ensures that the company's resources are always aligned with market demands, offering flexibility and operational efficiency, essential items for the continuous development of the business.

Cost reduction

Reducing costs in companies is an imperative measure to maximize profits. In an automated environment, it is possible to minimize wasted resources, optimize the use of infrastructure assets and reduce operational costs. The result is significant capital savings, which can be used in more strategic projects while maintaining the company's capacity for innovation and competitiveness.

Examples of automation in Cloud Computing environments 

World-renowned companies have already invested in automating their processes in the cloud, which has generated positive impacts on the success of their activities. Netflix, for example, migrated its infrastructure to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and implemented an extensive automation approach using Spinnaker, an internally developed tool.

With this, the platform streaming was able to deploy and update its services in a more agile and consistent way on a global scale. The provisioning, configuration management and deployment processes were automated, thus providing a smoother experience for the end user.

Well known as a hosting service, Airbnb is another success story. The company, which also uses AWS, adopted automation tools in its processes, which allowed it to quickly scale its infrastructure to better adapt to fluctuations in demand.

Process automation in Cloud Computing increases efficiency, improves scalability and reduces operational costs for organizations, in addition to promoting an agile response to market changes. In this context, they can achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, make strategic allocation of talents and resources, being prepared to deal with challenges to expand its operations.