Best Cloud Infrastructure Management Services That Stand Out

Hey there, my fellow readers! As companies become more dependent on digital transformation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage IT (information technology) infrastructure for many companies. Companies are confronted with a variety of challenges while attempting to keep their cloud infrastructure operating efficiently and reliably. These challenges include maintaining virtual servers, keeping sensitive data secure and ensuring optimal operational performance across multiple cloud environments.

Cloud Infrastructure Management Services provide support to companies by providing the necessary services (including monitoring, optimisation, security and overall management) required to maintain and operate cloud environments, thus reducing overall operational complexity, thus allowing companies to utilize valuable time toward new product or service development, enhancing customer experience, or growing their company.

In this article, we will review the definition of cloud infrastructure management services, list the major components of cloud infrastructure management services, examine the benefits of cloud infrastructure management services, and understand why cloud infrastructure management services are necessary for modern businesses.

What Are Cloud Infrastructure Management Services?

Cloud infrastructure management services can be defined as the monitoring, maintenance, administration, optimisation, and support of a company's cloud-based infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure management services help ensure that a company's cloud resources (virtual machines, storage, networking, databases, and security systems) are functioning both efficiently and securely.

Businesses using public, private or hybrid cloud infrastructures can benefit from having a cloud infrastructure management service provider to help their companies keep consistent performance for their cloud environments, while reducing the risk of operational downtime and other risks associated with managing an IT infrastructure.

Why do you Need Cloud Infrastructure Management Services?

Adopting cloud infrastructure management solutions can help deal with many crucial challenges. 

Operational efficiency: Manual infrastructure management does not scale. You need automation for provisioning, scaling, and maintaining resources across environments. 

Cost-control: Lack of proper management can make your cloud spend double due to the over-provisioned resources, forgotten instances, and improper resource allocation, all of which are common problems in cloud asset management. 

Security and compliance: Your infrastructure should align with the security standards and regulatory compliance. Management solutions impose consistent provisions across all your cloud resources. 

Developer productivity: The engineers are required to develop features, not write YAML or resolve Kubernetes clusters. The appropriate tools save your developers from the issues related to infrastructure. 

Multi-cloud flexibility: In case you use multiple cloud providers, management solutions can help you with consistent workflows across AWS, GCP, on-prem, Azure and other platforms. 

What are the Four Cloud Infrastructure Services?

When people discuss cloud infrastructure, they mainly emphasize the four building blocks that work together. 

Compute: This allows you the processing power to launch your applications, from virtual machines and containers to serverless functions and GPUs for AI workloads. 

Storage: This is where your data is being stored, from databases and file systems to object storage for backups and assets. 

Networking: It links everything together through load balancers, VPNs, firewalls and CDNs while confirming that your services communicate safely and perform well.

Virtualization: This is the abstraction layer that allows many virtual resources to stay together in a physical infrastructure. For example, VMs, containers and software-defined networks. 

These four building blocks are provided through the main service models- IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.  

Best Cloud Infrastructure Management Tools & Platforms 

Now that you know the building blocks of cloud infrastructure, let’s delve into some of the best cloud infrastructure management tools and platforms across distinct categories. 

1. Northflank: Developer Platform 

Northflank is a developer platform, suitable for teams that want production-grade cloud infrastructure without the operational complexity. A fully usable platform designed for managing cloud infrastructure by removing the complexity of Kubernetes, while still allowing developers to maintain freedom of choice. There are many features available on this platform:

Set up your first workload in a matter of minutes; CI/CD with GitOps included; Auto-scaling and Load Balancing; Monitor in real-time with logs; GPU Workloads and AI Support; No need for YAML when using this platform; and Multi-cloud management across all major providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, and Bare Metal) as well as Hybrid Cloud and On-Premises Deployment Options.

2. AWS CloudFormation & Control Tower: Native Cloud Management 

This combination of products is designed for organizations which use AWS as their primary cloud provider. Essentially, AWS CloudFormation is used as a tool to create infrastructure as code (IaC) for AWS resources, and AWS Control Tower is used to manage multiple AWS accounts.

Key features:

• Template-based infrastructure creation

• Multi-account governance

• Native integration with AWS service 

• Automatic resource management

3. OpenShift by Red Hat: An Enterprise Kubernetes Platform

Red Hat OpenShift is a Kubernetes platform designed specifically for enterprises with a lot of compliance obligations. It provides a full enterprise Kubernetes distribution with built-in security, developer tools, and operational features.

Key features:

• Enterprise Kubernetes distribution

• Integrated security and compliance

• Developer console and CI/CD capabilities 

• Multi-cloud deployment options 

4. CloudBolt: Hybrid Cloud Management 

CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud platform that enables orchestration across a variety of hybrid cloud services and manages both on-premises and cloud resources while automating workflows.

Key features:

• Hybrid cloud orchestration

• Self-service portal

• Cost management 

• Workflow automation 

5. Terraform by HashiCorp: Infrastructure as Code

Terraform is ideal for multi-cloud provisioning of IAC. As a solution to represent and provision infrastructure across multiple cloud service providers, Terraform performs the same functions through declarative configuration and state management.

Key features:

• Multi-cloud infrastructure provisioning 

• Declarative configuration 

• State management of IAC assets

• Large cloud providers 

6. Kubernetes: Container Orchestration 

Kubernetes is an application platform designed for teams that have dedicated platform engineering teams for support. Kubernetes is the de facto container orchestration standard in the industry.

A few of its critical features are:

• Container orchestration and scheduling 

• Self-healing and Auto-scaling 

• load balancing and  Service discovery 

• Broad ecosystem 

7. Azure Resource Manager (Native Cloud Management)

Best for organizations focused on Azure. Has templates for deploying and managing resources included.

Key offers are: 

• Template-based deployment

• Role-based authorization

• Integration with Azure Services

• Resource tagging/grouping 

8. Rancher (Kubernetes Management)

Ideal where there are multiple Kubernetes clusters. Open-source solution that aids in managing multiple Kubernetes clusters across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The offerings are:

• Multi-cluster management

• Centralized authentication 

• Workload management UI

• Policy enforcement 

9. Flexera (Cloud Cost Management and IT Asset Management)

This platform helps enterprises manage multi-cloud costs and IT assets. It offers cloud cost optimization, budget control and IT asset management across cloud and on-prem settings. 

The key features are:

• Cloud cost analytics and reporting

• Budget alerts and forecasting

• Resource optimization recommendations

• Multi-cloud and hybrid-IT cost tracking 

10. Datadog (Observability & Monitoring)

This is best for full-stack monitoring and analytics. One way to easily monitor cloud-based infrastructure is to use SaaS, or Software as a Service. This type of solution will give you access to an extensive list of metrics, traces, and logs that can be collected and analyzed across your entire infrastructure and applications. Among the most popular solutions available today are:

1. A full-stack observability 

2. Over 200 integrations 

3. Real-time metrics and alerts 

4. Application performance monitoring 

5. A user-friendly interface 

6. Powerful analytic capabilities 

7. Able to be really expensive depending on your size 

The Role of Cloud Infrastructure Management Services

Cloud infrastructure management services play a critical role in helping organizations today maximize their cloud investments. Organizations of all sizes have been aggressively adopting Cloud Technologies over the last several years and continuing to do so, but without properly managing their Cloud Infrastructure, they could struggle with business continuity, inefficient use of resources, and challenges to sustaining their growth. By engaging an experienced Cloud Infrastructure Management provider, businesses can reduce complexity, enhance the level of security, and increase their ability to innovate and remain competitive.

FAQs

What is a cloud infrastructure management service?

Cloud Infrastructure Management Services (CIMS) are the ongoing management, monitoring, maintenance and optimisation of all Cloud-based resources such as Servers, Storage, Network and Applications in order to ensure they are functioning reliably and efficiently.

Why are cloud infrastructure management services important?

Cloud Infrastructure Management Services are important because they support the business in increasing system performance, improving security, reducing downtime and optimising Cloud resource costs.

How do cloud infrastructure management services help save on the costs of cloud solutions?

Businesses can lower their unnecessary spending on cloud services by tracking how they use their cloud resources; terminating resources that are not being used, using auto-scaling correctly, optimising their storage in the cloud, etc.

Which businesses can utilize cloud infrastructure management services?

This applies to businesses of any size — from a start-up, a small business or an enterprise."