DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • DevOps Onramp
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » DevOps in the Cloud » Cloud Visibility Remains a Top Challenge for Many Organizations

Cloud Visibility Remains a Top Challenge

Cloud Visibility Remains a Top Challenge for Many Organizations

By: George V. Hulme on April 5, 2019 1 Comment

A number of enterprises have a love/hate relationship with cloud computing. Because of its low upfront costs, the expense for cloud is lower, especially in the early years. But historically there has been another cost: the challenge of obtaining good visibility into applications, users and network traffic. I thought advancements in cloud management and security tools in recent years had largely overcome these concerns. Turns out, I was wrong—or, perhaps, market perception hasn’t caught up to reality.

Recent Posts By George V. Hulme
  • GitLab Gets an Overhaul
  • IT Spending to Reach $4.4 Trillion in 2022
  • Successful Digital Transformation: It’s About Strategy
More from George V. Hulme
Related Posts
  • Cloud Visibility Remains a Top Challenge for Many Organizations
  • Myth Busting: 5 Misconceptions About FinOps
  • Quality Is a Top Challenge for Data-Driven Projects
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • DevOps in the Cloud
  • DevOps Practice
  • Leadership Suite
    Related Topics
  • application management
  • cloud management
  • cloud performance monitoring
  • cloud visibility
Show more
Show less

A recent survey from Dimensional Research, which is based on responses from 338 IT professionals, found that fewer than 20% of IT professionals believe they have complete, timely access to data packets in public clouds. In private clouds, the situation is somewhat better, with 55% reporting adequate visibility. Unsurprisingly, on-premises data centers had the most positive response when it came to data visibility.

CloudNativeDay 2022

The survey authors said the results show companies have low visibility into their public cloud environments, and the tools and data supplied by cloud providers are insufficient. They identified some of the challenges such lack of visibility can cause, including the inability to track or diagnose application performance issues and monitor and deliver against service-level agreements, as well as delays in detecting and resolving security vulnerabilities and exploits.

Some of the findings regarding cloud visibility from the survey:

  • 87% of respondents expressed fears that a lack of cloud visibility is obscuring security threats to their organization.
  • 95% of respondents said visibility problems had led them to experience an application or network performance issue.
  • 38% cited insufficient visibility as a key factor in application outages and 31% in network outages.

Interestingly, 99% of respondents identified a direct link between comprehensive network visibility and business value. This shows IT performance contributes directly to the business bottom line. Here are the benefits respondents cited regarding visibility:

  • Monitors and ensures application performance (60%).
  • Enables better threat identification (59%).
  • Helps to identify security indicators of compromise (57%).
  • Helps identify performance degradation.
  • Enables threat protection tools to identify malicious traffic by source.
  • Enables security monitoring tools to detect indicators of compromise.
  • Enables the monitoring of traffic at every link of their network.

A full 86% of respondents also stated visibility was important for network and application performance monitoring, and 93% stated it was valuable for security. Cloud consumers said predicting application performance was a key challenge.

Still, the lack of perceived visibility isn’t holding back public cloud adoption, with 84% of organizations having increased their cloud usage in the past year. While 3% of those surveyed had a moderate decrease in cloud usage and 13% remained unchanged, 63% experienced a moderate increase and 21% experienced a significant increase.

As organizations engage in digital transformation efforts and continue to turn to public clouds, organizations can’t afford to lose visibility. This is crucial for all of the business benefits of cloud traffic visibility the survey respondents cited, such as attaining superior application performance, meeting SLAs and shrinking the time it takes to detect and remedy security relation issues.

But here’s an unpopular opinion: There’s not much of an excuse for having poor visibility into cloud workloads anymore. There once was—that’s for sure—but today there are many tools made available by cloud service providers and third-party security vendors.

Today, it’s a matter of will and finding the right toolsets, putting them into place and making sure that security and operations teams have the software controls and the training they need to use them, so the organization can attain the level of visibility necessary.

— George V. Hulme

Filed Under: Blogs, DevOps in the Cloud, DevOps Practice, Leadership Suite Tagged With: application management, cloud management, cloud performance monitoring, cloud visibility

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The Automated Enterprise

The Automated Enterprise

“The Automated Enterprise” e-book shows the important role IT automation plays in business today. Optimize resources and speed development with Red Hat® management solutions, powered by Red Hat Ansible® Automation. IT automation helps your business better serve your customers, so you can be successful as you: Optimize resources by automating ... Read More
« Effective Cloud Security Requires a Cloud-Native Mindset
Sauce Labs Combines Functional and Performance Testing »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

VSM, an Ideal Framework for Continuous Security Dashboards
Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
LIVE WORKSHOP - Accelerate Software Delivery With Value Stream Mapping
Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT
10 steps to continuous performance testing in DevOps
Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

GitHub Brings 2FA to JavaScript Package Manager
August 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard
CREST Defines Quality Verification Standard for AppSec Testing
August 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard
IBM Unveils Simulation Tool for Attacking SCM Platforms
August 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard
Tech Workers Struggle With Hybrid IT Complexity
August 9, 2022 | Brandon Shopp
Open Standards Are Key For Realizing Observability
August 9, 2022 | Bill Doerrfeld

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

Most Read on DevOps.com

Recession! DevOps Hiring Freeze | Data Centers Suck (Power) ...
August 4, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Developer-led Landscape & 2022 Outlook
August 3, 2022 | Alan Shimel
Palo Alto Networks Extends Checkov Tool for Securing Infrast...
August 3, 2022 | Mike Vizard
Orgs Struggle to Get App Modernization Right
August 4, 2022 | Mike Vizard
GitHub Adds Tools to Simplify Management of Software Develop...
August 4, 2022 | Mike Vizard

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.