By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
As organizations’ cloud setups grow more complex, even the largest IT teams increasingly need automation tools to ensure that clouds keep operating, scale as appropriate, and remain secure against internal and external threats. In many cases, these teams must also automate workflows across multiple cloud environments, or even a combination of on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure.
Common cloud automation use cases include autoscaling, workload management, effectively administering resources across multiple clouds and on-premises, data backups, and services deployment. Cloud automation is a foundational element in cloud orchestration, in which several cloud-based tasks can be automated in concert to serve a particular function, such as adding audit trails and controls so an organization’s data complies with regulations. It also has a role to play in DevOps by helping enable CI/CD workflows.
IT teams may rely on cloud automation to reduce wasteful spending, by setting automation tools to align available resources with current demands on infrastructure. This can help teams avoid accidentally over- or underprovisioning cloud resources, which can prove especially helpful at organizations with complex cloud infrastructure that want to mind their budgets.
