How Cloud Operations Centers Can Support Your Business

The cloud offers new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. It can also present several challenges. The shift to the cloud means IT professionals must think differently about their operations and how they support users.

If you’re currently using the cloud or planning to do so in the future, stay ahead of the game by learning how your business can leverage it with a Cloud Operations Center (COC). A COC helps you manage several challenges, from a shift to cloud services.

It will streamline support, increase uptime, reduce costs, and more. Let’s look at COC and how it can benefit your business.

What is a Cloud Operations Center?

A Cloud Operations Center is a dedicated team of IT professionals and service management specialists that provides operational support for cloud-based applications and services. The term “operations center” might seem slightly misleading since it does not manage hardware.

Instead, it manages the apps and services that run on cloud-based hardware, including SaaS apps, IaaS services, PaaS tools, and more. In short, a COC is a support team for your cloud-based applications and services. A COC usually uses a ticketing system to track support issues. It can also provide analytics and metrics.

This helps you track everything from the health of your applications to the effort and time it takes to resolve tickets. It also enables you to avoid blind spots in your operations by logging unexpected outages or performance issues. You can even use the COC to monitor your service level agreements (SLAs) compliance.

Why is a COC Important?

A COC can help you overcome several challenges of cloud operations. It will streamline support, increase uptime, reduce costs, and more. Let’s look at each challenge and how a COC can help you overcome it.

Firstly, managing cloud-based services can be more complex than managing support for on-premises systems. This is because you have to track tickets across various external services. You may not even know the right person to talk to. You also may not know where to send tickets when they are resolved.

A COC can help you track and route support tickets, as well as track resolution times. You can route tickets to the right people and track progress without needing direct contact with the providers. This makes it easier to support cloud-based applications.

 

What Does a Cloud Operations Center Do?

A COC is responsible for monitoring and managing your cloud-based applications. It can monitor the performance and health of applications such as analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools, SaaS applications, and more.

A COC can also help you manage risks and security threats across your cloud-based applications and services. A COC can also help you manage your compliance efforts. You can use it to help track SLAs and ensure you meet them. It can also help you identify and correct outages.

This can save your organization both time and money. You’ll be able to respond faster to outages and resolve them more efficiently.

Key Benefits of a COC

When implemented correctly, a COC can provide a wide range of benefits. These include reduced IT costs, improved uptime, streamlined support, and more. Let’s take a look at each of these benefits in more detail.

Reduced IT costs

A COC can help you reduce your IT costs by helping you meet SLAs, improving your capacity planning efforts, and more.

Improved Uptime

A COC can help you prevent outages, which means increased uptime. You can also resolve outages more efficiently and quickly, increasing uptime.

Streamlined Support

A COC can help you improve customer satisfaction by providing more efficient support. This means reduced wait times and better response times.

How to Build Your Own COC

If you’re working with a managed cloud service provider (CSP), the provider may offer a COC as part of its services. However, you’ll have to build your COC if you’re managing your cloud operations in-house. Making your own COC is not accessible, but it is possible. There are several ways you can go about it.

First, you’ll need to select a ticketing system. You can use an existing system or build your own. Once you’ve selected a ticketing system, you’ll need to choose an SLA management tool. This can help you meet your SLAs by setting targets and tracking progress. There are also tools you can use to manage compliance.

There are also tools that some tools can help you manage your risks and security threats. These tools can also help you identify and correct outages.

Conclusion

A Cloud Operations Center is a system that helps you manage your businesses on the cloud in these challenging times. Not just streamlining support and optimizing cloud operations, Cloud Operations Center goes beyond traditional functions and offers multiple benefits. The key is identifying the vendor that fits your business’s requirements and planning for successful implementation.