More and more organizations are tapping into public Cloud services to accelerate their digital transformation. But managing those services as part of a hybrid cloud environment can be challenging.

For many organizations, adopting managed cloud services is the most efficient and effective way to make the most of these hybrid environments. By using managed cloud services, you can leverage your provider’s expertise to take advantage of new and continuously evolving public cloud technologies, keep cloud spending under control, and free your team to focus on developing innovative applications.

But what do you need from a managed service? The right offering will enable service providers to easily administer a potentially large, diverse landscape that includes public and private cloud environments. At the same time, that offering will give your organization tools to readily access resources and gain the insights you need to maximize the value of the cloud.

Managing a Diverse Cloud Landscape—Consistently

Using a platform designed for hybrid clouds, service providers can do more than administer the public cloud resources you are using. They can reach across a wide variety of environments, including the private clouds you run within your own data center and any other software-defined environments you use, wherever they are located. They gain visibility into everything you authorize them to see—from the Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud environment to the specific workloads you are running on-premises.

With the right platform, service providers can consistently manage all the functions required for deploying and operating your applications. They can schedule deployments and scale resources as requirements change. They also can implement all patches and updates, and continuously monitor performance to help ensure you are meeting the service-level agreements you’ve established with your users. And they can standardize processes across your environments to maximize efficiency and reduce errors.

The optimal software platform for managing hybrid cloud environments is intelligent and automated. It spots problems, identifies emerging issues, and makes automatic adjustments. And it delivers this functionality transparently, making you aware of only those changes or processes you choose to see.

Directly Accessing Cloud Services

Some organizations are eager to hand over the majority of cloud management functions, allowing service providers to manage everything within the software layer. Others will benefit from collaboration. For example, you might need a cloud managed services platform that will let you work with your service provider to optimize environments, fine-tune governance policies, and plan for the future. The right platform will also give you direct, self-service access to the cloud resources you need so you don’t have to submit requests and wait in queues.

A collaborative approach and self-service capabilities are especially useful when you are using the cloud to support your software development efforts. Your team needs to model applications in the cloud and connect to development environments to test code. When the development effort is complete, you need a seamless handoff to your service provider, who can manage and maintain the application going forward.

No matter how you are using the cloud, a managed services platform must offer simple, intuitive ways for you to access and manage cloud resources. And the platform must be flexible enough to accommodate your preferred tools.

Meeting All Your Requirements with CenturyLink Cloud Application Manager

CenturyLink developed its Cloud Application Manager as a platform for delivering managed services across any cloud environment or software-defined infrastructure. Cloud Application Manager combines experienced administration and expert guidance with simple tools for users to gain direct access to cloud resources.

Learn more about how Cloud Application Manager can help your organization advance its digital transformation and fully capitalize on cloud benefits while keeping your team focused on innovation here.

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