Skip to main content
  • Industry Solutions
    • Managed Service Providers
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Developers & Startups
    • Healthcare
    • Trading and Financial
      • Chicago Managed Trading Servers
      • Trading and Financial Colocation: Chicago & New Jersey
    • IBM AS/400 and iSeries Users
  • Support
    • Register
    • View Tickets
    • Submit a Ticket
    • Knowledgebase
    • News
  • Steadfast Blog
  • Steadfast Podcasts
  • Contact Us
Home
  • Call Us
  • Call | 888.281.9449
  • Login
  • Search

This form logs you into your management portal account. To access your help desk account, click here and use the form to the right of the news.

  • Cloud Hosting
    • Cloud Hosting
    • Private Cloud
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Public Cloud
    • Cloud Storage
      • Secure File Share
      • Wasabi Cloud Storage
    • Virtual Data Center Platform
  • Managed Hosting
    • Bare Metal Dedicated Servers
      • Deep Learning GPU Dedicated Servers
      • Linux Dedicated Servers
      • Windows Dedicated Servers
    • Virtual Private Servers
    • Data Center Colocation
      • Managed Colocation
      • Chicago: 350 E Cermak
      • Chicago: 725 S Wells
      • Edison, New Jersey
    • Security & Compliance
      • Managed Firewall
      • SSL VPN
      • DDoS Protection
      • Email Security
  • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • Backup
    • Disaster Recovery
    • Veeam Backup & Replication
    • Veeam Cloud Connect
    • Wasabi Cloud Storage
  • Why Steadfast
    • Why Steadfast?
    • About Steadfast
      • Our History
      • News and Press
    • Data Centers & Network
      • Our Data Centers
      • Our Network
      • Network Test
      • Peering Policy
    • Customer Stories
    • Service Level Agreement
  • Industry Solutions
    • Managed Service Providers
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Developers & Startups
    • Healthcare
    • Trading and Financial
      • Chicago Managed Trading Servers
      • Trading and Financial Colocation: Chicago & New Jersey
    • IBM AS/400 and iSeries Users
  • Support
    • Register
    • View Tickets
    • Submit a Ticket
    • Knowledgebase
    • News
  • Steadfast Blog
  • Steadfast Podcasts
  • Contact Us
Close
Return to All Blog Posts
Cloud Automation Helps Reduce IT Infrastructure Costs

Cloud Automation Helps Reduce IT Infrastructure Costs

August 31, 2016

On-demand pricing is a headline features of cloud platforms. Cloud infrastructure hosting clients pay for the resources they use. There’s little need to have idle infrastructure lying around because deleting resources is a low-friction process — something that’s not always true of physical infrastructure deployments.

As a virtual infrastructure platform, the cloud also lends itself to automation. Cloud web interfaces — and especially cloud APIs — allow cloud vendors and users to automate common processes, reducing the cost of managing infrastructure processes and freeing up personnel to focus on tasks that generate value for the business.

Automated deployment and provisioning of cloud infrastructure empowers businesses to consolidate IT operations, reduce errors, and increase efficiency.

Automated Deployment And Provisioning

If you’ve been a developer or IT pro for a few years, you’ll remember what it used to take to have a server deployed and provisioned with the necessary software environment. If, as a developer, you needed additional physical hardware to deploy or test a new feature, the lead time could be measured in weeks or even months. You’d submit a request for access and wait until the IT department deployed and provisioned servers. Or you’d wait until they told you why you couldn’t have those resources.

The cloud is a very different environment. The time between requesting resources and them being delivered is slashed to hours, or minutes if the developer is able to deploy their own cloud servers. That’s because the process is automatic and — in many cases — there doesn’t need to be a human in the loop at all. It’s all handled in software.

The cost savings can be profound: fewer IT staff are involved, there is less administrative overhead, and, most importantly, new features can be tested and deployed very quickly.

Automated Scaling

Automated scaling means that infrastructure deployment can closely match the business’s real needs. Because deployment and provisioning is automated, new infrastructure is ready as soon as it’s needed.

It’s possible to integrate load monitoring software with a cloud platform’s API and automatically deploy fully provisioned server resources to meet the exact needs of your application. And, as I’ve already said, the same automated systems can remove cloud resources when they’re not needed. Infrastructure deployments grow and shrink automatically depending on the current needs of the business.

Continuous Integration And Deployment

Continuous integration is the process of pushing code to a repository several times a day and testing it automatically. Continuous deployment will put that code into production when it passes the necessary tests and oversight — some companies deploy new code several times a day too.

Continuous integration and deployment are only feasible at scale because of cloud automation. CI platforms use cloud automation to spin up virtual servers as testing environments, run the tests, and then bring down the testing servers, all automatically without any intervention.

Continuous integration and deployment with automatic infrastructure deployment reduces the cost and complexity of development and testing, and helps companies get code into production quickly.

Cloud automation can help businesses save money, but what we’ve discussed today is only the tip of the iceberg. Take a second to think about the infrastructure processes your business would benefit from automating — exciting isn’t it?

Image: Flickr/SomeDriftwood

Share This
facebook twitter email compact

Comments (0)

Leave a Comment

Get an image next to your comment by visiting Gravatar.com and uploading a profile photo that links to your address.

Search the Blog

Categories

backup
(1)
bare metal
(1)
Business Talk
(23)
Chicago
(11)
Chicago colocation
(1)
Cloud
(34)
cloud backup
(1)
cloud services
(2)
colocation
(4)
colocation services
(1)

Archives

  • August 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (3)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • January 2021 (1)
  • July 2020 (1)
  • June 2020 (1)
  • April 2020 (1)
  • March 2020 (1)
  • August 2019 (1)
  • July 2019 (1)

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS Feed
  • 312.602.2689
  • ColoHouse Sales
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Services

  • Cloud Hosting
  • Managed Hosting
  • Backup & Disaster Recovery

Solutions By Industry

  • Enterprise Solutions
  • Trading & Financial
  • Healthcare
  • Developers & Startups
© 2023 Steadfast
  • Log In
  • Site Map
  • Legal Info & Privacy Policy