How to avoid the coming cloud complexity crisis?

Today, the crisis of cloud computing complexity is on the horizon. People are adding hundreds of workloads to the cloud every day, building new databases, adding different types of compute and storage, and adding cloud-based networks, all without tying up almost existing resources.

The end state will be that the organization needs to manage too many resources, too much heterogeneity, too much complexity.

However, all is not lost. Organizations can do some planning and use good tools to control complexity, whether it's traditional on-premises complexity or the new cloud complexities that organizations are building. But, like anything valuable in IT, organizations will have to invest time, planning, and resources to solve this problem, not just in the upfront stages, but on an ongoing basis.

How to avoid the coming cloud complexity crisis?

Here are two suggestions:

(1) Organizations need to create complexity management plans

This means that organizations look back at the problems they face before embarking on investing in processes, technology, and the significant amount of money needed to solve problems. In this plan, organizations need to define ways to deal with traditional on-premises and cloud-driven complexity, how to track systems, how to minimize future complexity, and how to use technology to help.

(2) Organizations need to choose tools to manage complexity

You need to choose tools that provide configuration management, DevOps automation, hybrid (cloud and on-premises) monitoring and management tools, and cloud-specific tools such as cloud service brokers or cloud management platforms.