6 key challenges of complex cloud environments — and how to manage them

The dramatic shift to cloud services over the past few years has given organizations unprecedented flexibility and scalability, enabling them to forge ahead with digital transformation efforts. For many, it has also led to intermingled, complex strategies that threaten to take away some of the luster of the cloud.

Enterprises don’t typically deploy one cloud service and call it a day. They rely on multiple offerings from various vendors for everything from procuring key business applications to creating new development environments to running their entire IT infrastructure.

The multiple/hybrid cloud strategy can result in complexities and challenges that many IT and business leaders didn’t see coming. And this can be made all the more difficult when various business departments and groups use the cloud without central IT’s approval or knowledge.

Here are some of the ways managing cloud environments is becoming more complex and challenging, and what organizations can do to succeed amidst these difficulties.

Cloud costs can quickly spin out of control, especially when departments outside central IT add to the organization’s overall cloud footprint. But because one of the main attractions of the cloud is the possibility of cost reduction, letting a multicloud strategy lead to runaway costs is especially unappealing for organizations.

One possible solution is to create a cloud governance program.

“Governance is not a fixed process or tool,” says Antonio Vazquez, CIO at business process automation platform provider Bizagi. “Governance programs can be structured and managed in many different ways, and they are critical to a successful cloud strategy. Moving to the cloud means that we need to manage change to reduce risk and cost, with governance as the top layer to facilitate that change.”

It’s a good idea to start small and then expand the governance plan, Vazquez says. Other best practices include partnering with cloud providers to get maximum value from their services, hiring people with cloud-related skills, moving toward DevSecOps methodologies for cloud-based development, and documenting and communicating the governance program properly.

“This change in paradigm makes it very complex to navigate, and the only tool that we have is governance,” Vazquez says. “A strong governance plan that includes best practices like tagging, workload management, RACI [responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed] matrix, rightsizing, cost management, security monitoring, etc., will provide the necessary tools to steer the boat and navigate complex cloud management.”

Fragmented investments in cloud services without a clear enterprise strategy can turn into long-term cost and management challenges, says Sumit Johar, CIO at automation software provider Automation Anywhere. “On the business applications side, organizations are facing an explosion of SaaS [software-as-a-service] applications,” he says. “A decade ago, an organization may have used from 20 to as many as 50 apps. But now the average is 250-plus apps.”

Since subscription-based cloud applications don’t need any IT infrastructure, a line of business such as human resources or marketing can buy their own, Johar says. “CIOs must ensure that procurement of these applications goes through an IT-led vendor risk assessment process,” he says. “Governing apps within an organization is becoming a greater challenge, and CIOs must put policies in place for business-led applications.”

Addressing security issues in the cloud has been a concern for IT leaders for some time. But as cloud environments become more complex, the challenge of protecting data and applications in the cloud is even greater.

“Security management has become one of the most critical issues for companies moving to the cloud,” Vazquez says. “On top of that, the pandemic has brought higher complexity to the environment in terms of employee dispersion.