Businesses today face increasing pressure to deliver innovation faster while maintaining lean and efficient operations. Adopting cloud and hybrid approaches provides the agility needed to stay competitive, but manually managing cloud workloads can negate many of these benefits. This is where cloud workload automation enters the picture – providing the automated management and orchestration needed to truly unlock the cloud‘s potential.
What is Cloud Workload Automation?
Cloud workload automation (CWA) refers to solutions that help automate, orchestrate and manage workloads and processes across cloud environments. It handles provisioning and configuration of cloud resources, deployment of applications, scheduling and coordination of multi-step workflows, monitoring and remediation, and governance of operational processes.
CWA differs from traditional data center job scheduling in a few key ways:
- It is designed expressly for the dynamic nature of the cloud – auto-scaling, self-service, pay-as-you-go models etc.
- Integrates natively with major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
- Utilizes cloud-native constructs like functions and containers for modern application architectures
- Provides self-service access to automation directly to tech teams without IT bottleneck
- Delivers robust and customizable analytics tuned for cloud usage and spending
In essence, CWA solutions help tame the complexity of the cloud by applying automation, orchestration and governance across both infrastructure and applications.
Real-World Impact on Business Agility
The right cloud workload automation solution enables organizations to achieve rapid time-to-market for new initiatives, drive higher operational efficiency and reliability, and optimize cloud usage costs.
Let‘s look at real-world examples of CWA delivering these benefits:
Faster Application Deployments
Ciena Corporation was able to reduce application release cycles from months to weeks by implementing automated deployments with BMC‘s Cloud Lifecycle Management solution. Environment setup time was reduced by 50% and deployment lead time cut down from 3 days to just 90 minutes. [1]
Regulatory Compliance at Scale
UK-based Future Plc achieved 95% cost reductions in GDPR compliance processes by leveraging workload automation for automated data discovery, classification and remediation across its highly dynamic IT environment covering 1500 applications and 30 TB of unstructured data. [2]
Cloud Cost Optimization
Leading loyalty marketing provider Punchh slashed cloud costs by 30% amounting to over $1 million in savings driven by workload automation and cloud governance capabilities from VMware CloudHealth. [3]
Top 7 Use Cases Driving Cloud Automation Adoption
Industry analysts predict the cloud workload automation market to grow from $7.8 billion in 2022 to $21.7 billion by 2029 as more organizations discover its broad value. [4] Let‘s examine the top 7 use cases propelling this stellar growth.
1. Centralized Job Scheduling
CWA provides a single pane of glass to schedule, monitor and report on business-critical workloads spanning on-premises, multi-cloud and containerized environments. This could encompass ETL pipelines, backup jobs, finance reports, CI/CD workflows etc. Central governance prevents overlaps and ensures smooth sequencing.
2. Cloud Provisioning and Configuration
Manual processes for spinning up cloud resources can drag down velocity. CWA automates provisioning of storage, compute, network, security and more based on rules and approvals. Standard configurations are enforced through version controlled templates and drift is auto-remediated.
3. App Deployment and Management
CWA supercharges deployment velocity through standardized blueprints, environment templatization and automated validations. Powerful drift detection helps maintain consistency across dev, test and production. Apps are automatically mapped to optimal regions, instances and resource limits.
4. Hybrid Cloud Workload Migration
For enterprises adopting hybrid cloud, CWA enables seamless workload migration between on-prem and cloud while maintaining compliance, security and efficiency. With bi-directional sync, nothing gets left behind as workloads move to the optimal destination.
5. IT Process Automation
Many key IT processes such as employee on-boarding/off-boarding, software requests, access reviews, procurements etc. involve tedious swivel chair style orchestration. CWA can radically simplify end-to-end process flows with well-designed automation.
6. Cloud Usage Governance
Sprawling cloud usage easily gets out of hand without checks and oversight. Powerful analytics on consumption and monthly forecasts help optimize cloud costs. Automated policies prevent shadow IT by triggering approvals and enforcing limits.
7. Self-Driving Operations
Forward-looking organizations are using advanced CWA capabilities like auto-scaling, predictive analytics and AIOps to create self-regulating IT operations that require minimal manual intervention. The system senses and adapts to application traffic, user demand and other signals.
Key Capabilities to Evaluate
While core workflow orchestration and job scheduling capabilities provide the foundation, organizations need to carefully evaluate some key advanced cloud automation features including:
Cloud-native – Leverage microservices, containers, serverless etc. naturally
Provisioning – Configure infrastructure rapidly based on version controlled templates
Compliance – Meet security, regulatory and operational governance requirements
Analytics – Gain visibility into utilization, performance and spending
Collaboration – Break down silos for seamless cross-team automation
Resiliency – Ensure continuity via auto-scaling, healing, and migration
Maturity – Require battle-tested solutions with extensive enterprise adoption
The Growth Trajectory Ahead
As per Gartner, "By 2025, organizations that use cloud workload automation to orchestrate workloads and automate tasks across cloud environments will reduce cloud operating costs by up to 65%." [5]
With increasing maturity of offerings, we can expect more organizations to jump on the cloud workload automation bandwagon in the coming years and shift their processes into overdrive!
References
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BMC Success Story – Ciena Automates Application Development on AWS with Cloud Lifecycle Management. https://www.bmc.com/success-stories/ciena.html
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VMware Case Study – Future Plc Gains GDPR Compliance. https://www.virsec.com/resources/future-plc-case-study/
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VMware Case Study – Punchh Drives Multi-Cloud Savings with CloudHealth. https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2022/11/01/punchh-drives-multi-cloud-savings-with-cloudhealth/
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Cloud Workload Automation Market – MarketsandMarkets. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-workload-automation-market-215010021.html
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4 Trends Impacting Cloud Automation and Governance – Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/4-trends-impacting-cloud-automation-and-governance/
