Cloud technology is slowly but surely taking over the modern business world, as business leaders running companies of all sizes are increasingly realizing the long-term potential of cloud migration. Moving your business processes and operations to the Cloud is not an easy task, though. You must ensure constant data availability and stability throughout the migration process, and it can take a while depending on your needs and the size of your data stores. Add to that, your Cloud environment has to ensure top-of-the-line cybersecurity in order to completely secure your business in the online world.
While you might think that all you have to do is migrate to the Cloud, there is also the challenge of managing and provisioning data centers in the post-production and migration processes. After all, you need to make sure that your data centers are consolidated and managed automatically through Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This is a model that codifies everything in your infrastructure to bring numerous benefits to your growing business. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how IaC can help your company thrive.
IaC boosts productivity through automation
One of the first and most obvious benefits of an infrastructure model like IaC is that it improves the productivity of your operations teams across the IT sector, and allows you to automate all infrastructure processes and changes to save time, money, and minimize the risk of human error. Up until the creation of IaC, infrastructure changes had to be handled and managed through extensive and complex manual work, which would invariably drain resources and sometimes cause setbacks to occur.
Nowadays, though, you can use your Infrastructure as Code system to automate the management of your data centers, and thus cut needless financial expenditure while redirecting talented IT experts towards different mission-critical tasks. If nothing else, you will be able to scale down your IT needs and simplify the entire operation. Given the fact that IaC also standardizes all processes, you can easily enable agility and create a successful DevOps environment to take software development and IT forward together.
Consistency in configuration and setup
One of the last stages of cloud migration includes infrastructure deployment, which includes configuration and setup, both of which need to be standardized in order to avoid human error, expedite the processes, and minimize the waste of valuable resources. Not to mention that the deployment and configuration stages need to be executed quickly to avoid setbacks and prevent unwanted down time for the company. If done manually, you can expect human error to occur at least once during the deployment process, which can create inconsistencies and subtle differences in configuration that can be difficult to remove.
To ensure that all processes in your new infrastructure are running smoothly, you need to use Infrastructure as Code to standardize the setup process. This will minimize the risk of errors and any compatibility issues, alleviate the pressure on your IT staff, and ensure a smooth transition to a more stable infrastructure.
Minimizing risk of human error
We’ve mentioned several times the importance of avoiding human error as well as minimizing the amount of manual management needed when it comes to data centers, whether they are in the Cloud or in an on-site IT infrastructure. However, another benefit of IaC is that it future-proofs your business from sudden and unforeseen talent churn. Some IT experts are highly specialized in running and managing complex infrastructures, and if these master engineers leave your company, you will be left with an infrastructure that nobody knows how to manage, or understand how it was set up.
That’s why implementing Infrastructure as Code should be your priority, as it standardizes all processes and logs them to create detailed reports and documentation of how the infrastructure works, how it’s managed and deployed, and how new employees can continue the work without setbacks. This is a much-needed failsafe for when the top IT experts leave your company, carrying institutional knowledge with them out the door.
Increased efficiency in software development
IaC allows IT experts to maximize efficiency and productivity on numerous fronts, especially when it comes to software development and integration with DevOps, for example. Given the fact that you can deploy cloud architectures in numerous stages to improve the efficiency of the development process, your developers can develop new software while constantly making incremental progress in a controlled sandbox environment.
What’s more, IaC allows your QA (Quality Assurance) department to continuously test different iterations of the software at different stages by always having an updated copy of the production, and you can deploy the infrastructure easily without any setbacks.
Mind you, Quality Assurance is not a goal, it is a continuous process that is vital for the success of your business in the Cloud. Quality Assurance specialists need to constantly check and recheck the applications and resources used in your Cloud infrastructure in order to ensure that all processes are running smoothly.
Infrastructure as Code also allows you to create a script that minimizes the use of extraneous resources, shutting down the resources you don’t need to create a more scalable environment for your IT department and developers.
Facilitating financial savings
Given the fact that one of the core functionalities of the Infrastructure as Code model is to automate all processes in your IT infrastructure, it allows your engineers and other IT experts to shift their focus from manual grunt work to more mission-critical tasks and projects. This allows you, as their leader, to minimize payroll costs by making better hiring decisions and scale the salaries of your employees to fit their roles and workload. You can use the IaC function of spinning down environments when they’re not in use to maximize financial savings even further over the long term.
Wrapping up
Infrastructure as Code allows companies of all sizes to better manage their IT and cloud infrastructures, comply with governing policies, maximize efficiency, and minimize financial waste. Now that you know how IaC can benefit your business, be sure to integrate it into your infrastructure to take your company forward in this digital age.