The Essential Role of Cloud Orchestration in DevOps Culture and Business Operations 

Cloud computing isn’t novel, but many organizations haven’t fully grasped its extensive benefits. Beyond mere scalability, understanding cloud orchestration is crucial for optimizing business processes. 

As a buzzword in the cloud computing realm, organizations with numerous DevOps teams must employ cloud orchestration to meet escalating demands for cloud capacity, a task essential for IT managers and Chief Information Officers.

What is Cloud Orchestration? 

Cloud orchestration is the automated management of diverse workloads across multiple cloud solutions, unifying them into a single workflow. It coordinates cloud resources—networking, storage, and computing—allocating specific workloads to optimal nodes based on application requirements. 

This self-service model empowers end-users to request various cloud services independently, expediting the delivery of requested workloads efficiently. Additionally, it aligns with the DevOps approach, facilitating rapid application deployment for end-users.

Why Choose Cloud Orchestration?

IT teams can optimize resource allocations effectively using cloud orchestration services, fostering increased efficiency for end-users. This versatile solution is compatible with various cloud service models, on-premises resources, and public cloud instances.

Key Features:

• Self-service models: Enable on-demand, self-service functionalities, ideal for pay-as-you-go business models.
• Support for cloud automation: Streamline the automation of resource provisioning, covering storage, servers, databases, and more.
• Cost-efficiency: Implement automated metering and chargebacks to enhance cost governance, ensuring the most effective and economical use of resources.
• Visibility and control: Utilize the cloud orchestration dashboard for a comprehensive view of cloud resources and their usage.
• Remediation: Leverage policy-based or event-driven remediation to minimize downtime and improve service level agreements (SLAs).

How to Get Ready for Cloud Orchestration? 

As organizations increasingly adopt cloud computing, the natural progression often leads to cloud orchestration, unlocking a multitude of opportunities. To successfully navigate this transition, companies should focus on cultivating expertise, particularly by attracting IT professionals well-versed in utilizing cloud orchestration or those willing to learn.

Key Steps:

• Attract Skilled Professionals: Bring in IT experts with knowledge of cloud orchestration to capitalize on its benefits.
• Strategic Decision-Making: Company leaders must make informed decisions on organizing cloud resources to ensure optimal capacity. This includes considerations such as data distribution across platforms like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
• Adaptability to Change: Recognize that answers to such questions may evolve with shifting business goals, market developments, and regulatory changes. IT managers and Chief Information Officers play a crucial role in initiating and closely monitoring this adaptive process.

Embark on your cloud orchestration journey with a strategic mindset, leveraging the expertise of your team to align with evolving business landscapes.

Distinguishing Cloud Orchestration from Automation

Automation executes specific tasks without human intervention, streamlining individual steps within a process to reduce manual effort and time. In contrast, cloud orchestration involves the automated configuration, management, and coordination of computer systems and software, surpassing the complexity of traditional automation. Unlike automation, orchestration requires decision-making and responsiveness to events.

In essence, cloud orchestration encompasses sophisticated automation but goes beyond. While automation simplifies tasks, orchestration introduces advanced logic, enabling decision-making based on the outcomes of one automated task and seamless coordination across multiple tasks simultaneously.

An essential distinction lies in the prerequisite for automation before orchestration, as tasks must first be automated to be orchestrated. Although the line between cloud orchestration and automation may blur, orchestration can be seen as the management of multiple automated tasks, demonstrating its elevated level of complexity and intelligence.

Why Cloud Orchestration is Essential

In recent years, the surge in demand for cloud services, driven by the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced technologies, has been substantial. As the adoption of cloud services increased, the task of monitoring these services became increasingly challenging. Cloud orchestration has emerged as a vital solution, providing a unified dashboard that offers a comprehensive view of all cloud resources, significantly enhancing visibility.

Key Reasons:

• Holistic View: A single dashboard in cloud orchestration simplifies the monitoring of various cloud resources, offering improved visibility and understanding.
• Usage Statistics: Cloud orchestration provides past and current usage statistics, aiding in strategic planning for future resource utilization.
• Centralized Governance: The centralized management of security, resource allocation, and access policies ensures effective feedback and governance.
• Workload Prioritization: Integrating multiple cloud services and managing their functional requirements can be challenging. Cloud orchestration facilitates the prioritization of workloads for applications and various types of virtual machines, simplifying complex resource approval processes.
• Self-Service Feature: Known for its self-service capabilities, cloud orchestration has swiftly become an integral component of critical business initiatives.

Recent Advancements in the Cloud Orchestration Industry

Gr4vy, positioned as the sole payment cloud orchestration platform, introduces a Payment Orchestration Platform (POP) seamlessly integrating with both cloud platforms and payment infrastructure. The company recently secured $11.1 million in Series A funding, with participation from Activant Capital, a prominent FinTech investor.

In the retail landscape, businesses often initiate with a single payment processor and gradually expand, leading to the creation of a cloud orchestration platform. However, managing and sustaining this process proves complex. Gr4vy offers an optimal solution for retailers seeking control over the flow of payments, both on the back end and front end.

In a parallel development, Singtel, the Singapore Telecommunication Limited, launched the groundbreaking Paragon platform. Paragon enables companies to leverage Singtel’s 5G network, activating network slices on demand and deploying mission-critical applications. 

This all-in-one orchestration platform for 5G edge computing and cloud services is expected to simplify the adoption of 5G MEC, reducing complexity, time, and entry barriers for companies. Paragon empowers faster deployment of use cases by eliminating operational and cost overheads, marking a significant stride in the cloud orchestration industry.

Advantages of Cloud Orchestration

1. Streamlined Optimization:

• Cloud orchestration goes beyond cloud automation by integrating individual tasks into a cohesive and optimized workflow. It automates various elements, including storage, multiple servers, databases, and networks, ensuring efficient management and deployment of processes and resources. This approach guarantees the cohesive maintenance of cloud elements.

2. Enhanced Visibility and Control:

• A key benefit of cloud orchestration is its provision of a comprehensive view of cloud resources, facilitating complete visibility. Equipped with multiple tools, it can monitor and automatically adjust VM instances, minimizing manual efforts and work hours. Furthermore, cloud orchestration offers centralized management of security, accessibility, and resource policies.

3. Cost-Effective Management:

• Cloud orchestration significantly enhances cost governance and encourages the economical utilization of resources. With optimized tools, it improves the efficiency of cloud services through self-service processes and automation. Additionally, the automated processes reduce infrastructure investment for organizations, ensuring substantial long-term cost savings.

4. Minimized Manual Errors:

• With the majority of tasks automated, cloud orchestration effectively addresses various issues within the realm of cloud computing. By streamlining processes and automating simple, small operations without human intervention, it develops a framework that reduces the risk of errors. This, in turn, enhances the reliability and consistency of IT operations.

The Rise of Multi-Cloud Orchestration and Hybrid Cloud Orchestration

In the realm of multi-cloud orchestration, companies leverage a mix of private and public cloud services to accomplish diverse tasks, ensuring precise outcomes. Different domains within a company often necessitate various types of research and software development, prompting the adoption of distinct cloud solutions tailored to their specific requirements. This has propelled the significance of multi-cloud orchestration within major organizations.

On the other hand, a hybrid cloud integrates private and public clouds through software-enabled communication, allowing seamless interaction between various services. This hybrid approach grants businesses flexibility by distributing workloads among different cloud services to optimize performance and resource utilization.

DevOps Culture and the Role of Cloud Orchestration

In the context of DevOps culture, both automation and cloud orchestration play pivotal roles. DevOps aims to streamline the system development life cycle, necessitating the automation of various processes to achieve desired objectives. Cloud orchestration becomes essential to facilitate continuous delivery and seamless integration of high-quality solutions. When the software delivery process involves multiple intricate steps, it requires not only automation but a fully orchestrated process to optimize the DevOps culture.

Despite the potential risks, some companies shy away from integrating cloud orchestration into their business operations. However, embracing cloud orchestration is the most effective way to mitigate human errors and enhance the efficiency of DevOps practices.

Prominent Cloud Orchestration Platforms:

IBM Cloud Orchestration:

IBM’s cloud orchestration platform stands out with its user-friendly self-service portal and automated tools, providing effective cloud management without straining budgets. Known for its high degree of customization and automated provisioning, the IBM platform excels in automating cloud services through policy-based tools. Users can deploy, configure, and integrate service management seamlessly, allowing for efficient monitoring, securing, and managing of applications. The platform offers valuable insights into resource usage and associated costs. IBM Cloud Orchestration features two packages, differentiated by price, both of which include customizable self-service portals.

Azure Automation:

Azure Automation, Microsoft’s cloud orchestration platform, offers a cloud-based automation service designed to streamline management across both Azure and non-Azure environments. Equipped with features such as update management, process automation, and configuration tools, Azure Automation helps users reduce human errors and deployment time. Its popularity has surged in recent years due to its compatibility not only with Windows but also with Linux hosts, executed with Python runbooks and PowerShell. The platform effectively manages cloud spending, optimizes cloud resources, and facilitates cost allocations and chargebacks.

AppFormix:

AppFormix is a comprehensive cloud operation management and orchestration platform designed to deliver end-to-end visibility in a multi-cloud environment. Through its intent-based and monitoring analytics, AppFormix transforms raw data into easily understandable formats. This platform is capable of tracking and analyzing programs operating on various public clouds, including Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services. Users can define business outcomes, identify issues, and, if necessary, take corrective actions. The user interface of AppFormix is user-friendly, featuring operational alarms and supporting in-service installation.

Morpheus:

Morpheus serves as a cloud orchestration platform that facilitates developers’ connection to self-service infrastructure. Offering multiple analytical features, Morpheus provides an insightful overview of cloud spending, allowing users to compare costs across various cloud infrastructures and resources using multi-tenant policies. With Morpheus, users can create distinct policies for different workflows, enabling efficient tracking of their management activities.

In Summary:

The escalating demand for cloud services has presented a challenge in managing cloud operations efficiently. As cloud automation gains popularity, cloud orchestration emerges as an innovative solution for resource management and advanced technology utilization. Cloud orchestration enables companies to enhance the efficiency of managing multiple automated tasks, optimizing resource utilization.

While the definitions and purposes of cloud orchestration may vary, it can be viewed as a more sophisticated form of automation. Both automation and cloud orchestration are indispensable for mature DevOps organizations. It’s crucial to recognize where automation alone might fall short and where cloud orchestration complements automation within an organization. Together, they minimize manual processes, fostering streamlined business operations and software development life cycles.

Market reports indicate that the global cloud orchestration market is projected to reach $105.07 billion by 2030, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.4% from 2021 to 2030. The market’s growth is attributed to the increasing demand for optimal resource utilization, a surge in cloud adoption across diverse industries, and a rising need for cost-effective process setup and automation. The upward trajectory in market demand underscores the necessity for organizations to prepare for the continued rise of cloud orchestration in the future.