In some way or the other, we all use cloud on our electronic devices connected to an internet. This is also true for businesses and organizations. Nowadays many organizational operations depend on cloud infrastructure. Therefore, they need to use an apt cloud monitoring system for keeping things in check.

With increasing cloud usage, there is more requirement for better monitoring of network performance. Here’s when you need to monitor the cloud to improve business agility and scalability. Besides that, cloud monitoring keeps a close eye on business reaction times, levels of asset utilization, accessibility, execution, and more. Hence, it becomes easier to handle the issues before they become major trouble.

In this blog, we share all the details that you need to know about cloud monitoring before making it an integral part of your business.

What is cloud monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is basically a procedure to manage and review business operations and workflow within a cloud framework. Generally, automated monitoring software helps in implementing control and accessing the entire cloud infrastructure. It means that the admins can properly review the health and operational status of cloud components and servers.

Generally, the concerns are for the strategy you use and the type of cloud structure you implement. For instance, if you use a public cloud service, you have less visibility and control while monitoring and managing the infrastructure. However, a private cloud, which many businesses prefer, helps in better control and flexibility while monitoring. A private cloud infrastructure even offers extra consumption benefits.

But no matter what cloud structure your business organization follows, monitoring remains an integral part of improving security and performance.

Why do we need cloud monitoring?

Here are some notable reasons to prove the significance of cloud monitoring for businesses:

1. Reduce Disturbances and Improve Productivity

If your organizational cloud environment has poor performance, it can hurt the business. Suppose, if your system is down, your stakeholders and customers won’t wait long. After all, they need to access the services without any disruptions.

Thanks to consistent cloud monitoring, you can mitigate such risks by handling the problems even before they create any confusion or disruption. Hence, your business won’t have to face any major issues. But before using it, you need to understand the whole cloud-based environment. Once you are aware of it, things become easier to identify. Plus, you can easily resolve technical errors that otherwise hurt business performance.

And, when the disruptions are minimum during operations, the organizational productivity automatically increases.

2. Real-Time Alerts & Updates

With cloud monitoring, you get real-time alerts and updates. Hence, you can handle all the issues proactively. Thanks to the cloud monitoring solution you can attain:

• Capacity monitoring: It helps in identifying any areas that are under the strain. Majorly, it sees if you require extra infrastructure for meeting the needs of resources. It even helps in checking areas that are not utilized well.
• Incident monitoring: Thanks to a monitoring system, you get an instant alert from the IT team to restore operations that are getting delayed due to any incident. Your team can also take the right steps to prevent recurring of that incidents.
• Performance monitoring: With a cloud monitoring service, you find out if any area in your infrastructure is not performing well. It also helps you find out the delays in plans to avoid them in the future.
• Availability monitoring: It needs consistent testing and scanning of different components for cloud deployment. You will get all the information on the services, network, and status of devices. Therefore, you can tackle all the issues that may be impacting availability.

3. Flexibility

The best thing about cloud monitoring services is that one can customize them as per their needs. So, an organization can easily install and configure these services as per their business requirements and growth.

How does cloud monitoring work?

The cloud monitoring services have various moving parts. It is vital to make sure that all things work seamlessly for smooth performance.

Generally, cloud monitoring works on handling various functions, like:

• Virtual machine monitoring: It is keeping a check on virtualization infrastructure, as well as specific virtual machines.
• Website monitoring: It helps in tracking the traffic, processes, resource utilization, and availability of websites with cloud hosting.
• Database monitoring: It involves the monitoring of queries, consumption, processes, and availability of various resources on a cloud database.
• Cloud storage monitoring: It helps in monitoring storage requirements, as well as various processes dependent on virtual services, machines, databases, and apps.
• Virtual network monitoring: It involves keeping a check on virtual network devices, connections, resources, and performance.

What are the advantages of Cloud monitoring for a business?

Here are some major advantages of applying cloud monitoring services to your business:

1. Complete service on one platform

Core IT is an advanced cloud monitoring solution to offer businesses one framework to handle everything from anywhere in the world. The clients will have complete ownership of the management capabilities and data on the platform. It also guarantees complete privacy of data from beginning to end.

2. Easy to access information

With a cloud system, you simply require a URL, a browser, and username, and a password to access information on the database. Plus, the user has access to various areas from any part of the world - provided they have an internet connection.

3. Well-structured information

The cloud system has properly structured information. There are graphs for data statistics, dashboards, historical data, and more. So, everything can perform seamlessly on one platform. The best part is that it is easy to gather app-relevant data from applied technologies and techniques into one single platform.

4. Cost-effective

Another advantage of a cloud monitoring solution is that it’s way more cost-effective than a local app. If you choose the SaaS model, you can even avoid the initial cost of license purchase. You simply have to pay for what you use. So, you can easily scale and adapt as per your needs.

In case, you want to host cloud-based applications, you get to avoid costs related to ownership and maintenance of hardware. It means you have to bear minimum infrastructure costs.

5. Better security

One of the best things about cloud monitoring service is that it offers great security. This system has a minimum probability of failure due to better quality and maintenance. Even the data restoration is automatic in case of failure. Another good this is that there is a negligible possibility of any attack by a virus.

6. Improved performance optimization

The cloud monitoring technology also facilitates predictive diagnostics. Hence, it offers better performance optimization along with preventive maintenance. So, organizations don’t have to worry about their ongoing business operations.

What is the difference between SAAS, Cloud Security Monitoring, and Cloud Monitoring?

There are certain differences between Saas, cloud security monitoring, and cloud monitoring. But before addressing the issues, let’s find out about these technologies individually.

SaaS

SaaS (Software as a Service) is a model to deliver applications and make them available to the end users on the internet. You can simply access it via the internet rather than installing and maintaining software. Hence, it exempts you from the management of complex hardware and software.

SaaS system is also called hosted software, web-based software, or on-demand software. No matter how to call it, it’s best known for three Cloud Computing levels, including PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

The concept of SaaS is aligned with the given technological concepts:

• Big Data: It involves the collection, processing, organization, and structuring of generated information.Cloud Computing: It is for having communications and IT working as per the business growth requirements.
• IoT: It involves data integration from various delocalized devices that are forwarding the information.

Cloud Security Monitoring

Cloud security monitoring is a system to consistently supervise both physical and virtual servers. It further helps in analyzing data for any possible vulnerabilities and threats. These solutions depend on automation for assessing and measuring behaviors associated with specific data, infrastructure, and applications.

Typically, these are third-party solutions or natively built into cloud-based infrastructure. These are basically integrated into the existing environment. It further helps organizations to perform cloud monitoring along with advanced security management tools.

Cloud Monitoring

Cloud monitoring is a procedure to evaluate, manage, and check cloud-based services, infrastructure, and applications. Organizations can make use of different monitoring tools to check cloud-based apps.

Here is how cloud monitoring can handle various capabilities:

• Elimination of potential errors and breaches with better visibility into apps, files, and users.
• Regular reporting and auditing for ensuring better security standards.
• Monitoring cloud-based information and data across various distributed locations.
• Merging monitoring tools with distinct cloud providers.
• Constant monitoring of the cloud for real-time file scanning.

Difference between SaaS, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Security Monitoring

SaaS is a monetization and distribution system, whereas Cloud Computing is a concept of locating software at a specific place. Basically, SaaS is a part of Cloud Computing.

Cloud monitoring is based on data management in the cloud. It enables IT administrators to remotely verify resources and their operational status. Hence, it is an integral part of global strategy.

It also offers a global perspective for collecting data from an organization’s plants. It further helps in better decision-making and provides vast knowledge about company processes. Cloud monitoring solutions assure better evaluation of resources, guarantee performance, and predict vulnerability issues to avoid any delays.

And, when it comes to cloud security monitoring, companies can monitor cloud performance along with better security management.

What are the best practices for efficient cloud performance monitoring?

Given below are some best practices and recommendations to apply for efficient cloud performance monitoring:

1. Identify what metrics are essential for your business

What do you want to attain through monitoring? Whether it is security, performance, or accessibility over specific areas? Depending on customers’ preferences, businesses can identify the area they want to work on. For instance, multiplayer gaming companies may prefer high capacity and security more than other factors. With cloud monitoring, it becomes easier to determine what you want.

2. Picking tooling as per core metrics

At times, businesses immediately but a monitoring tool even before setting up a strategy or choosing the right metrics. But with the right cloud monitoring system, it becomes easier to choose the right metrics. And, accordingly, you can choose the best tools for selected metrics. Each tool has some pros and cons. Users just have to choose the one tool that’s most suitable for their needs.

3. Set performance baseline

The number is nothing if there is no context. Therefore, it is vital to set up a performance baseline for a better understanding if a system is not working properly. If not, a tool can help you find the issue. It helps you compare as per the standard operating range.

4. Monitor customer experience

Customers are crucial, so monitor their experience to improve your company’s services. Generally, businesses measure it with various features. However, the user experience mainly depends on decreasing friction, like service interruptions, crashes, or bottlenecks. Thanks to application or website performance monitoring tools, it is easier to show how good an app works on user devices. With real-time performance measures, a company can work on improving the performance of a website or app in the future.

5. Improve the testing process

A monitoring tool can also improve a company’s testing process. The failures may occur at some point. Therefore, a cloud monitoring tool is helpful to perform chaos testing to identify errors that need improvement. Hence, high-traffic apps and websites can function seamlessly.

6. Automate tasks

Are there any repetitive tasks in an organization? For instance, configuration changes, event-based responses, timely reports, etc. These are some tasks that are easy to identify and automate with monitoring tools.

7. Setup targeted alerting

With the help of monitoring solutions, it is easier to set up targeted alerting. So, the tool can automatically send messages via email, text, or some other medium.

How CoreIT is the best option for the cloud monitoring software?

Core IT is an effective cloud-based solution for businesses to improve their productivity. It can help businesses with increased availability of contacts, emails, tasks, and calendars. This solution is best to offer Hosted SharePoint solutions to various organizations. It is specifically best for businesses that need intranets to make communication and file sharing cost-effective and simple.

Thanks to CoreIT’s Hosted SharePoint solution, companies can:

• Manage, find, and share documents with ease
• Control permissions
• Access information anytime, anywhere

So, make Core IT part of your business processes for improved productivity.