Organizations are running more workloads in the cloud than ever before, driven by dynamic business needs and unpredictable requirements. But cloud-based IT Automation resources —just like on-premises resources— often require costly installations.
IT Automation in the Cloud
In order to meet the growing demand for dynamic, flexible resources, IT Automation providers are listing more offerings in cloud marketplaces (such as AWS or Azure) than ever before. This is great for IT.
Obtaining IT Automation resources through a cloud marketplace means IT doesn’t have to spend time on installations, justify new perpetual licenses, or plan for new maintenance requirements, allowing IT to quickly procure new job schedulers and execution agents as needed, without making long-term commitments to the vendor.
This makes it easier for IT to create dynamic, hybrid environments that integrate, coordinate, and automate processes across disparate infrastructure resources, from a single point of control.
Benefits of IT Automation Resources in a Cloud Marketplace
- Minimize the need for software and hardware installations
- Reduce overhead and long-term maintenance costs
- Allocate workloads to elastic cloud resources
- Spend more time developing business solutions and less time updating infrastructure
Finding the Right IT Automation Solution
There are three common procurement strategies for deploying automation solutions in AWS Marketplace:
- OnDemand
- Bring-Your-Own-License
- Software-as-a-Service
Each plan has its own unique benefits while giving organizations the ability to create elastic IT Automation environments that better serve dynamic workloads.
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OnDemand
The OnDemand model, sometimes referred to as the subscription model, allows organizations to quickly scale resources to meet increased demand, without paying for a perpetual license.
This means that IT pays for a resource for a specified term —for example, hourly or annually— making OnDemand resources great for organizations that need to quickly scale additional resources to meet unpredictable workload demands.
Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL)
Bring-Your-Own-License allows organizations to apply on-premises licenses to resources in the cloud marketplace. For example, a license for an on-premises job scheduler can be re-applied to a job scheduler found on the AWS Marketplace.
BYOL enables organizations to seamlessly modify hybrid IT Automation environments by allowing licenses to be flexibly applied to either on-premises or cloud marketplace resources.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Software-as-a-Service is a relatively uncommon offering for IT Automation, with only 17% of organizations running workloads via SaaS. However, there is room for growth in this sector, with IT Automation vendors preparing new offerings that will provide more granular price plans.
SaaS offerings can, for example, enable organizations to pay by the workload or by the user. Users can also be on the lookout for SaaS platforms hosted by IT Automation vendors, separate from cloud marketplaces.
A List of Cloud Marketplaces:
- Amazon AWS Marketplace
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace
- Oracle Cloud Marketplace
- IBM Marketplace
- Google Cloud Platform
Marketplaces for cloud-based resources don’t differ very much. Deciding which marketplace to purchase from depends on what cloud services will best serve the needs of your organization. But that’s a discussion for a different article.
