At an organizational level, the popularity of cloud storage and computing has revolutionized work, helped root out corporate redundancies, improved departmental outputs, and increased the revenues and profits of companies. In its conventional form, however, cloud management has also come with its own crop of growing pains: some of which are wastage, inefficiencies and systemic redundancies.

With wasted cloud spend projected to hit $21 billion in 2021, organizations are now pivoting toward streamlining their cloud operation to be both lean and effective. CloudOps may be the solution, as it’s been touted as a practice that can complement — or even supplant — conventional cloud management operations.

“In the market right now, there are a lot of cloud-based tools and dashboards that show you the many issues you might be having and alert you on opportunities to fix them,” said JT Giri (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of nOps Inc. “We’re more focused on how do we take those issues from a backlog and fixing those issues. Our focus is more on operationalizing so your teams could actually own that, prioritize, and actually remediate those issues.” 

With the demand for cloud compute and storage costs increasing across the board, so have their costs. Consequently, as organizations grapple with increased data inflows, more attention must be paid to how that data is stored and acted upon for the sake of efficiency.

Giri spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event. They discussed the need for CloudOps as an essential business process, how it improves upon conventional cloud management practice, and how those improvements can benefit customers at large. (* Disclosure below.)

Setting a new standard in cloud

CloudOps is the process through which operational procedures are squarely defined and IT services are optimized within an organization’s cloud environment. In the eyes of many, it is when DevOps meets conventional IT operations management.

With the myriad of buzzwords that seem to be thrown around in the enterprise solutions space, it’s easy to dismiss this particular one as a passing fad. That couldn’t be further from the truth, however, Giri pointed out.

“Everyone knows that there are challenges in their cloud environment. But we focus more on the operation side; what are you really try to do with an issue, how do you actually fix that issue? How do you prioritize? How do you make the right trade-offs?” he stated. “Sometimes you might have to prioritize for costs; other times you might have to prioritize based on the SLA.”

Alongside helping organizations set the right priorities and operationalize their entire cloud setup, CloudOps also seeks to create internal accountability.

“I truly believe that if it’s everyone’s responsibility, then it’s no one’s responsibility. So what we do is we help, within the tool, to establish clear roles and responsibilities. And we show an audit log of people reviewing and fixing security and cost issues,” Giri explained.

nOps and AWS’ synergy

Companies of varying sizes partnering up to create solutions is nothing new. With nOps, however, the story is slightly different. The company started years ago and was around in the AWS EC2 era, providing migration services to organizations looking for a move over to Amazon’s cloud offering.

As a result of nOps’ standing as an AWS-certified solutions provider, it’s formed a synergistic relationship with AWS, built over many years, according to Giri. AWS and nOps also work closely, whenever possible, to glean insights into what customers want most out of new products.

One of the major success stories that has emerged as a result of nOps work is Uber Technologies Inc. The ride-hailing giant has come under fire in recent times due to its struggles with operations and achieving expected levels of profitability.

“So one of the things Uber did is they really embraced nOps’ way of managing infrastructure, building accountability, and sharing these dashboards with all the different teams. And it was incredible, because within the first 30 days, they were able to save up to 15% [in costs] in their autonomous vehicle units,” Giri stated.

As organizations accelerate their digital acceleration and transformation efforts, cost optimization will be a major benefit. nOps is helping companies to go to market, manage their existing clients and customers, and thrive in an increasingly complex cloud environment, Giri concluded.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE