---
title: What is cloud operations (CloudOps)?
url: https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-operations
description: Learn about CloudOps, the practice of managing the delivery, tuning, optimization, and performance of workloads and IT services.
---

# What is cloud operations (CloudOps)?

Cloud Operations (CloudOps) is the practice of managing the delivery, tuning, optimization, and performance of workloads and IT services that run in cloud environments, including [private cloud](https://www.vmware.com/topics/private-cloud), [multi-cloud](https://www.vmware.com/topics/multi-cloud), [hybrid cloud](https://www.vmware.com/topics/hybrid-cloud), [data centers](https://www.vmware.com/topics/data-center), and the [edge](https://www.vmware.com/topics/edge-cloud). CloudOps codifies procedures and best practices for cloud-based operational processes, much as DevOps codifies the same for application development and delivery processes.

CloudOps teams leverage automation to orchestrate complex workflows, from provisioning infrastructure and deploying applications to monitoring performance and remediating issues quickly. By automating routine operations, organizations reduce human error, accelerate service delivery, and free IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business value.

Cloud Operations relies heavily on analytics to enhance visibility of elements of the cloud environment, providing the insight needed to control resources and run services efficiently.

For some organizations, CloudOps has replaced the network operations center (NOC) as IT operations have shifted from on-premises to [cloud-based infrastructure](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-infrastructure). Just as the NOC monitored and managed the data center, CloudOps monitors, instruments, and manages [VMs](https://www.vmware.com/topics/virtual-machine), [containers](https://www.vmware.com/topics/containers), and traditional or AI workloads that run in a cloud. Developers, IT operations, and security all collaborate using CloudOps principles to meet business and technology goals.

## Why CloudOps is important

Organizations are steadily increasing their use of private and public clouds for an ever-growing list of applications and services. As workloads run across the data centers or the cloud provider, the need for CloudOps will grow in concert.

DevOps and CloudOps teams can coexist and share best practices, since they both promote:

- Improved efficiency and utilization of cloud resources
- Growth of an agile work environment for cloud workloads
- Automation of security and availability processes to support 24/7 operations
- Improved customers' user experience
- Lowered the overall costs of delivering cloud services
- Enhanced productivity of teams working with migrated applications

## Benefits of cloud operations

CloudOps offers a long list of benefits to organizations, including:

- **Accelerated automation:** [Automation](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-automation) powers efficient CloudOps. Organizations use automation to provision infrastructure instantly and enhance reliability with continuous monitoring that triggers automated remediation before users are impacted. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enforces compliance automatically, while eliminating repetitive manual tasks that slow teams down. This automation-first approach enables CloudOps teams to focus on innovation while significantly improving deployment speed and operational efficiency.
- **Efficient operations:** Seasonal or growth demands can be met with instant capacity increases, usually via a self-service portal. Provisioning new virtual machines, physical servers, storage, and even network bandwidth can all be done by the push of a button, enabling organizations to be more agile and meet demands head-on as they occur.
- **Enhanced security:** Major hyperscale cloud providers utilize the industry’s best physical security and constantly monitor their infrastructure to help prevent against cybercrime or data exfiltration. Nearly every organization realizes security improvements when migrating to the cloud, keeping in mind that cloud security falls as much on the organization as it does on the cloud provider.
- **Improved recovery:** Backup and data recovery were the initial use cases for the public cloud and continue to be a strong driver for [cloud migration](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-migration). Backup and replication strategies can lower the recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) to near-zero, helping to ensure availability around the clock for an increasingly global user and customer base.
- **IT cost savings:** Since cloud services are pay-as-you-go, their large capital expenditures are eliminated, along with the need to purchase service contracts and constantly upgrade data center hardware to meet changing user demands. Additionally, eliminating data center infrastructure saves facility costs such as power, cooling, and even real estate.
- **Anywhere access:** Organizations can access cloud applications and resources any time, using nearly any device, from anywhere with an internet connection.
- **Non-disruptive upgrades:** Infrastructure and software can both be upgraded or updated seamlessly, without service disruption, enabling fixes to be applied or new functionality added while normal business operations continue.

![cloudops-final-diagram.png](https://www.vmware.com/media/blt8c9a8aaca0ffd4ac/blta79a3f7ce2e9e489/69bc46da0fbeae0d8d21bd3b/cloudops-final-diagram.png)

## DevOps vs. CloudOps

Both [DevOps](https://www.vmware.com/topics/devops) and CloudOps are based on collaborative relationships between different groups in the organization.

DevOps practices deliver continuous improvements in processes that enhance collaboration, which leads to enhanced visibility throughout the software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) and helps reduce incidents that can disrupt IT operations or impact development schedules.

DevOps improvements can bubble throughout the organization, helping to bring more reliable software applications to fruition faster, which leads to improved performance for the organization as a whole. Ultimately, DevOps helps improve the user experience for employees and customers alike.

CloudOps encompasses cloud platform engineering principles, combining elements of cloud architecture, IT operations, application development, security, and regulatory compliance to enable organizations to manage cloud-based applications and services.

This enables organizations to:

- Ensure the cloud platform, including hybrid and edge components, operates as a single platform
- Optimize application performance for a dispersed workforce regardless of access device
- Ensure reliability and that SLAs are met
- Maintain backups for [disaster recovery](https://www.vmware.com/topics/disaster-recovery) and business continuity
- Automate repetitive services and configuration management
- Ensure data and applications are secure end-to-end

## CloudOps best practices

Organizations looking to establish a CloudOps function should consider these practices:

- **Establish a migration strategy:** Each workload will have its own requirements, and the adoption of containerized applications and [microservices](https://www.vmware.com/topics/microservices) can put additional constraints on the way particular solutions are architected. For example, a microservices-based application may require access to services on multiple public clouds, leading to a hybrid cloud approach. Other workloads may access sensitive data that must remain on-premises in a private cloud for regulatory or governance mandates, and yet other applications may require the use of specific cloud providers to maintain data in a specific geography or to take advantage of a specific provider’s features.
- **Include all stakeholders:** Cloud migration is a change, and many organizations and departments are change-averse. Every stakeholder, from users to top executives, should be involved in migration planning to help ensure that business-critical processes do not fall through the cracks during migration. Instill the importance of taking a CloudOps approach and emphasize how it aligns with existing DevOps strategies.
- **Emphasize security:** While the cloud offers many benefits, it also presents a new attack surface, or multiple attack surfaces, for cybercriminals and other bad actors to use in an attempt to penetrate the organization’s defenses. Start by adopting a zero-trust approach to security, end-to-end encryption, and automating security monitoring and remediation to help ensure that little problems never have the opportunity to become expensive data breaches.
- **Automate to accelerate:** Adopt comprehensive automation strategies across the operational lifecycle. Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to define infrastructure through version-controlled templates that eliminate configuration drift and human error. Implement event-driven automation to remediate security vulnerabilities automatically. Enable self-service capabilities for common tasks within governed policies, and deploy automated observability to continuously monitor performance and identify optimization opportunities. Cloud migration is ongoing; automation enables CloudOps teams to continuously optimize processes, infrastructure, and connectivity at scale while controlling expenditures.
- **Include training in the plan:** [Cloud management](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-management) can require a vastly different skill set from on-premises data centers. The need for physical equipment maintenance vanishes, to be replaced with new troubleshooting, provisioning, and deployment skills. In a tight labor market, it may be beneficial to provide training for existing team members before the migration occurs to help ensure that all the proper skills are available when needed.
- **Start small:** To ensure a successful and scalable cloud migration, begin by selecting an application that can serve as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating the viability of a wide-scale move to the cloud for both operations and user teams. Simultaneously, develop an [infrastructure as code](https://www.vmware.com/topics/infrastructure-as-code) practice for storing configuration data, which will enable the rapid expansion, deployment, and on-demand scaling of new instances. Finally, ensure that this first, and every subsequent, migrated application has a clearly defined operating map of required tools, services, and data, as this will establish the dependency model for all future operations.

## Cloud economists

A cloud economist is an expert in cloud economics: principles, costs, and benefits. Cloud economists help businesses forecast their costs and savings for a new cloud solution. A TCO business case analysis from a cloud economist can serve as an invaluable decision-making resource.

Engaging with a cloud economist typically begins with a customer discovery process, in which they learn about your business objectives, IT pain points, and challenges. Next, they perform financial modeling based on your real data and industry benchmarks.

In a final TCO and ROI presentation, they can compare cloud solutions for you, highlighting pricing structures, costs, and savings (including capital costs versus operating costs), line-of-business impacts, recommendations, and next steps.

## How VMware products can help

An optimal IT infrastructure is characterized by its health and capacity to support a growing number of workloads over time and to manage real-time fluctuations in resource demands while sustaining peak performance. [VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation) facilitates the implementation of a unified cloud operating model at scale, thereby accelerating IT agility, increasing infrastructure scalability, improving security, and lowering the total cost of ownership.

[VCF Automation](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vcf-automation), a component of the VCF stack, simplifies cloud operations by accelerating and standardizing deployments and configurations across the entire private cloud environment. By embedding automated lifecycle management for the infrastructure, VCF Automation eliminates manual, error-prone tasks. This frees CloudOps teams to focus on strategic, value-add initiatives and ensures that the infrastructure remains consistently optimized and compliant, which is critical for supporting a growing number of diverse workloads.

Modern infrastructure requires effective fleet management that encompasses comprehensive lifecycle control, ensures cost transparency, and provides clear visibility into the overall security posture.

A key component within the VCF stack is [VCF Operations](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vcf-operations), which helps organizations build, operate, and protect their private cloud infrastructure by deploying and maintaining its fleet, providing unified visibility, enhancing performance across the workload and infrastructure stack, while helping stay compliant with regulatory and organizational requirements. Some of the benefits include faster time to value, improved resource utilization, reduced time to issue resolution, cost predictability, and a safe and compliant environment.

## Recommended for You

- [Cloud Automation](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-automation)
- [Cloud Operating Model](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-operating-model)
- [Cloud Management](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-management)
- [Cloud Orchestration](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-orchestration)

## Related Products and Solutions

- [VMware Cloud Foundation Operations](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vcf-operations)
- [VMware Cloud Foundation](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation)
- [VMware Cloud Foundation Automation](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vcf-automation)

## Also of Interest

- [What is Platform Engineering?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/platform-engineering)
- [VMware Cloud Foundation Operations](https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/cloud-foundation-operations)
- [What is a Cloud Operating Model?](https://www.vmware.com/topics/cloud-operating-model)