A primary reason enterprises move to the cloud to scale quickly. But the complexities of managing layer after layer of cloud services can make scaling quite expensive.

Hoping to help businesses get more value out of cloud computing is nOps Inc., a startup integrating DevOps best practices to create a CloudOps model that sniffs out unused resources and unnecessary costs on Amazon Web Services. While DevOps ensures continuous operations, CloudOps ensures those operations remain seamless across workload migrations and hybrid cloud management.

“We help companies to make sure all their workload, every single resource in the cloud is aligned with the business needs,” said JT Giri (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of nOps. “So, we do a lot of cool things — bringing accountability, mapping and working across teams.”

Giri spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, in advance of the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event. They discussed the capabilities of the nOps platform, how it can reduce costs and increase the efficiency of the cloud, and how it handles compliance and security aspects. (* Disclosure below.)

Finding workloads owners

When nOps starts working with a company, the first step is to ensure each resource belongs to a workload, according to Giri. nOps then analyzes all the business metadata and defines some workloads to assign to owners, who will be responsible for managing the budget and ensuring security, for example.

Companies often have different people across disparate teams who provision resources in the cloud — and some organizations may have hundreds of teams doing this. What happens is that the cloud becomes a “black box” with countless, unallocated and unmanaged resources, Giri noted.

“Once you are done, every single resource has clear definition. Is this a compliant, HIPAA workload? What are the run books? What is this for? You [will] have full visibility and clear understanding of the purposes of these workloads,” Giri explained.

Accountability is key

By defining and assigning ownership of resources and workloads, nOps helps enterprises improve accountability. Through its platform, teams can see if the cost of their workloads is increasing, and can rightsize or terminate unused resources to manage those costs. nOps uses machine learning to process enterprises workloads and enable real-time detection and alerts of cloud billing anomalies, ranging from networking costs to unattached Amazon EBS volumes, which can add up quickly.

This process of understanding and processing resources and workloads also allows for continuous real-time notifications of security risks and non-compliance with industry standards such as SOC 2 or HIPAA, as well as detailed audit trails, according to Giri. The business can build its own customized risk profile for each workload.

nOps bets on CloudOps as an evolution of traditional cloud management, and in addition to giving visibility to the environment, it seeks to identify the cause of problems and solve them.

“You’re looking for what changed, what the root cause is, who did it, what happened, because it’s totally normal for someone to provision maybe a thousand or even a million containers, but how many of those got shut down? What is the delta?” Giri asked. “And if there is an anomaly, what is the root cause and how [do] we fix it?”

Partners leverage nOps

Because of the complexity of the cloud, enterprises are increasingly relying on managed service providers and partners to handle their IT infrastructure, according to Giri.

“And a lot of the partners, a lot of the consulting companies are leveraging nOps to deliver value to their customers,” he said. Business can also sign up for the platform’s services directly, under tier model pricing.

“We pay attention to what customers are looking for, where are the next sort of challenges customers are facing in a cloud environment. We’re super obsessed; we’re trying to figure out how to make sure every single resource is aligned with a business value without slowing companies down,” Giri stated. “That really drives us. We’re constantly working with customers to stay true to our mission.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase:  New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event on September 22. (* Disclosure: nOps Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither nOps nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE