A CMP provided by your cloud managed service provider has a particular benefit: tight integration with your infrastructure, and alignment with the MSP’s process. Some MSPs will deploy a proprietary CMP free of charge. Others leverage a third-party tool, which might be white labeled.
Learn How a Cloud Management Platform Can Support Your Business
Cloud management platforms, or CMPs, help you manage multiple resources in your cloud environment. This—just like the idea of “cloud” itself—is defined somewhat broadly. A CMP could be deployed to manage a multi-cloud environment, for example Azure and GCP, or it could be more of a point solution for cloud automation within a single cloud, like AWS.
Additional common use cases for CMPs are resource management, cost tracking, governance, provisioning, and orchestration.
In addition, users may find that CMPs are deployed enterprise wide, or within a specific department, depending on what the business goals are.
Every organization has to evaluate their own reasons for looking to a cloud management platform, especially as IT environments increase in complexity. Adding another application to manage and maintain may not be ideal—unless the application actually helps to simplify operations. CMPs can deliver on this, but it’s also worth considering the source.
All of the major public cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, have tooling that can help manage inside of those environments. There are also third party, cloud agnostic vendors who offer both multi-functional tools or point solutions.
Finally, enterprises may access a CMP through their managed service provider.
Evaluating an MSP’s Tool
Tools provided by the major public cloud providers may be built in to services you are already consuming. Often the largest barrier to adoption in this category is simply education.
Tools provided by third-parties can be extremely robust, as these are often organizations that are dedicated to software. However, it may also come with additional licensing costs or require maintenance.
A CMP provided by your cloud managed service provider has a particular benefit: tight integration with your infrastructure, and alignment with the MSP’s process. Some MSPs will deploy a proprietary CMP free of charge. Others leverage a third-party tool, which might be white labeled.
When your MSP offers a CMP, you should look for a tool that is SaaS so you know you always have the most up-to-date version. Talk to your MSP about what your actual goals are with a CMP. For example, with cascadeo.io, you can
- Get alerted about your cloud environment’s health
- Receive alerts straight to your email
- Modify your thresholds based on your demands
- Integrate existing tooling
- Take advantage of machine learning
