Cloud automation is using automated processes and tools to manage and implement cloud infrastructure and services. It involves the automation of repetitive tasks, provisioning of resources, and configuration management, all to reduce manual processes and ensure consistency.

Cloud automation can be effectively used for various activities, including infrastructure provisioning, application deployment, security and compliance checks, scaling based on demand, and more. It leverages the power of software-defined infrastructure to achieve these tasks efficiently.

What is the difference between cloud automation and RPA?

Cloud automation and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) differ in their focus and applications. 

Cloud automation primarily concentrates on managing and optimizing cloud infrastructure and resources, making it ideal for organizations heavily reliant on cloud computing. It involves tasks like provisioning, scaling, and resource management within cloud environments, often requiring complex scripting and infrastructure configuration.

RPA is a broader automation approach that targets repetitive, rule-based tasks across various software applications and systems. It is versatile and finds application in diverse industries, focusing on automating processes such as data entry, extraction, manipulation, and interactions with user interfaces. Unlike cloud automation, RPA operates at the application or user interface level and is not limited to cloud-specific tasks.

 The choice between these technologies depends on an organization’s specific needs, with cloud automation optimizing infrastructure and RPA streamlining repetitive business tasks or processes.

Benefits of Cloud Automation 

Cloud automation offers many advantages for organizations desiring to streamline their processes, boost efficiency, and optimize their cloud resources. Below are the key advantages of implementing cloud automation:

  1. Cost Efficiency:  Automation assists organizations in effectively managing cloud costs by continuously monitoring resource usage and making real-time adjustments, thus preventing overspending and eliminating unnecessary expenses.
  2. Resource Flexibility: Automation enables automatic scaling of resources based on predefined criteria, such as increased workloads or heightened traffic. This ensures optimal performance of applications without the need for manual intervention.
  3. Accelerated Deployment:  Automation speeds up the provisioning of resources and the deployment of applications, which is especially advantageous for development and testing purposes. This results in reduced time-to-market for new applications and features.
  4. Fewer operational disruptions: Automated processes are less prone to errors than manual tasks, leading to increased reliability and fewer operational disruptions. Automated monitoring and issue resolution can detect and address problems before they impact users.
  5. Security and Compliance: Automation enforces security policies and compliance standards consistently across all resources, mitigating the risk of security breaches and helping organizations adhere to regulatory requirements.
  6. Streamlined Management: Cloud automation centralizes management tasks and reduces the need for manual intervention in routine operations. 
  7. Disaster Recovery: Automated backup and recovery procedures ensure the safeguarding of critical data and applications, enabling swift restoration in the event of disasters or data loss.
  8. Self-Service Accessibility: Automation can enable self-service portals where users can independently provision and manage resources within established guidelines, thus reducing the workload on IT teams.
  9. Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automation plays a pivotal role in CI/CD pipelines, facilitating automated testing, integration, and deployment of code changes, leading to accelerated software delivery.
  10. Automated Monitoring and Alerts: Automated monitoring and alerting systems can proactively identify and respond to performance issues, security threats, and anomalies in real-time.

Top 4 use cases of cloud automation

Let’s explore a few scenarios where cloud automation makes a significant impact:

  1. Compliance and security: Maintaining compliance and security in the cloud can be complicated. Automation can help enforce security policies, monitor for vulnerabilities, and respond to security incidents in real time. It can also automate compliance checks, ensuring that your cloud infrastructure adheres to industry regulations and internal policies, reducing the risk of security breaches and penalties.
  2. Autoscaling and Cost Optimization: Cloud automation is helping companies optimize their cloud spending by automatically scaling resources up or down based on their demand.  This ensures that you are only charged for the resources you really use. Additionally, it may identify and reduce unneeded or underutilized resources, minimizing waste and bringing down overall cloud costs.
  3. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automation is a pillar of modern software development practices. Cloud based tools enable the automation of the entire software development pipeline, from code commits to deployment. This speeds up development cycles, improves code quality, and allows for more frequent and reliable releases.
  4. Automated Backups and Disaster Recovery: Regular backups and automated disaster recovery plans ensure data resilience and minimize downtime in case of failures.

Cloud automation vs cloud orchestration with example

Cloud orchestration and cloud automation are both essential components of cloud management, but they serve different purposes.

Cloud Automation involves automating specific tasks, such as launching virtual machines or scheduling backups. Please see below more cloud automation examples:

  • Auto-Scaling: Automatically adjusting the number of virtual machines in response to varying traffic loads. For example, adding or removing web server instances based on web traffic.
  • Backup and Recovery:  Automating regular data backups and defining procedures for restoring data in case of data loss.
  • Patch Management: Automating the deployment of software patches and updates across a fleet of virtual machines to ensure security and performance.
  • Resource Provisioning: Automatically creating new virtual machines or storage when certain thresholds are reached, such as spinning up additional instances during peak usage.
  • User Account Management: Automating user provisioning and de-provisioning in cloud services, ensuring that access is granted or revoked as needed.

Cloud Orchestration manages complex workflows, like deploying an application stack that includes database servers, web servers, and load balancers, ensuring they work together harmoniously to achieve a specific goal. Please see below more cloud orchestration examples:

  • Application Deployment: Orchestrating the deployment of a multi-tier application stack, including provisioning VMs, configuring network settings, and deploying application code.
  • Disaster Recovery: Orchestrating the failover of services and data to a secondary data center or cloud region in case of a disaster, with minimal downtime.
  • Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automating the entire software development pipeline, including code testing, integration, and deployment, ensuring rapid and reliable software releases.
  • Multi-Cloud Management: Coordinating resources and workflows across multiple cloud providers for hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
  • Service Request Fulfillment: Orchestrating the provisioning of resources and services in response to user requests, such as creating a new virtual environment for a development team.

Start your cloud automation journey with Advance2000 

Advance2000 supports all IT Services associated with business infrastructures. If your organization needs managed IT, cloud automation, enterprise networking, IT Risk Assessment & Strategy, resiliency and disaster recovery, or storage, we deliver and support both on premise and virtual infrastructure solutions. Our IT architects are unrivaled in the industry, and we’ve helped hundreds of corporations optimize business productivity and increase revenue.

Since modern business models now operate at all hours of the day, we provide our partners live support 24x7x365. If any of your infrastructure needs support regardless of the hour, we have someone available to assist.