Cloud computing is a double-edged sword, new vitality brings new challenges

Over the years, network and system management software has been evolving toward cloud computing, and it is more appropriate to take this next step than you can think of. But the industry needs to do more in some ways.

To understand the scale of the problem, let's first look at what cloud computing is. Cloud computing has many definitions, but its core definition is that cloud computing is something that has never been abstracted before. You don't have to have servers, software, programs, and storage dedicated to certain tasks, all of which are abstracted to users, even to IT administrators. We cannot deny that the cloud is revolutionizing the web and injecting new energy into software management, but at the same time, this radical change poses great challenges for IT managers who are accustomed to observing, monitoring, and controlling their networks and systems.

Don't worry about individual servers, the focus is on the services they provide, such as email or sales should have. Under cloud services, resources, such as servers, network devices, storage, and operating systems, are shared for these services. Automated software can set up and decompose resources as needed, such as configuring a virtual machine that uses an operating system and an appropriate program, and then revoking the virtual machine later. However, people who use this service do not know the resources that are being used below. These resources can be changed all the time.

Cloud computing has two big aspects, public and private. In a private cloud, the IT department builds its own cloud in its own data center. They set up this automation, they provide all the hardware and software to support this service, they provide this abstraction through virtualization and automation technology.

In a public cloud setting, an enterprise provides this service through an external company. The most typical public cloud is software as a service (SaaS). In this service, the software is hosted by an external company on an internet site. Customer companies typically access this service through a Web browser. Further cloud services are platform-services (PaaS). In this service, users can create applications to run on this platform. However, all software and hardware are managed by an external company. This application is bundled with the application platform provided. Another further application of the public cloud is the infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this service, the hardware and the operating system are still managed by the provider, but the application is entirely up to the customer.

As you can imagine, these developments are beyond the expectation of enterprise management software. The root of management software in the physical world provides the visibility of all the hardware and software of a network. Now, this visibility has been deliberately canceled.