Cloud Governance vs Cloud Management – What’s the Difference?

In today’s digital world, where technology is replacing most of the traditional processes, Cloud is making them more dynamic. It is largely making everything need-based and on-demand, right from collaborating with team members across the globe to keeping your business applications up-to-date. It also allows enterprises to instantly share crucial data and deploy applications whenever needed.  

Even during the pandemic, it was the cloud that kept most of the large organizations up and running. Just a few months into the pandemic, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company had seen two years of digital transformation in two months as its customers started adopting cloud solutions.  

However, cloud adoption comes with its own set of security challenges that can’t be avoided at any cost. Organizations need to define cloud management and cloud governance to manage cloud infrastructure, operations, applications, and security more efficiently. But what’s the difference between the two and how to use them to gain maximum benefits? 

But first, let’s get the basics straight! 

Also read: Cloud Security: Top 8 Best Practices to Follow in 2022 

What is Cloud Governance? 

Cloud Governance refers to the set of rules, policies, and systems adopted by the companies for direct control and activity monitoring of the cloud services in the company. The goal is to enhance data security, manage risk and enable smooth operations of cloud systems. It also provides authorized access and modification of the data to avoid operational and financial loss.  

Some governance rules could include: 

• Defining management roles and responsibilities
• Compliance with industry standards
• Identity and access management
• Data management and encryption
• Disaster recovery

Why is Cloud Governance important? 

With growing complexity in the cloud environment, especially in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies, cloud governance only becomes more important. It helps to put the required framework in place to let team members easily access cloud resources within compliance and budget constraints. 

Cloud governance is not about executing the above-mentioned rules but about structuring them for smooth operation. It is more focused on operations, cost, and security rather than just the management of resources. Here are a few key benefits that cloud governance offers to an organization: 

• Cloud governance makes it easy for organizations to manage cloud resources. 
• It helps to curb shadow IT and improves cloud security issues. 
• Reduces administrative overhead and risk. 
• Also reduces labor. 

Also read: 4 Benefits of Securing your Cloud with Azure Sentinel 

What is Cloud Management? 

Cloud management is the process of maintaining and monitoring administrative control in the cloud. It oversees all the aspects of cloud computing including services and products deployed in public, private, or hybrid cloud. It also manages cloud usage and cloud resources, allowing IT managers to move workloads through different clouds.   

Cloud management practice requires different software products and technologies to deliver a cohesive management strategy that aligns with the business goals. It also assists them to manage resources across the multi-cloud and multi-vendor landscape, ensuring the strategic and operational objectives of the business are met. 

Some common responsibilities that come under cloud management are: 

• Organizing and steering corporate resources 
• Ensuring compliance is being followed 
• Maintaining data security 

Why is Cloud Management important? 

Deploying applications into the cloud environment help business reduce their up-front investment in IT infrastructure. With its on-demand availability of data storage and computing power, businesses can handle high volumes of data and the growing demand for flexible access to applications and services.  

However, deploying more applications into the cloud requires a cloud management strategy in place. This enables organizations to: 

• Monitor their cloud-based applications for compliance and security. 
• Facilitate workflow automation. 
• Make a timely and informed decision about when and how to use cloud-based services. 
• Make sure that their use of the cloud is economical. 

What is the difference between Cloud Governance and Cloud Management? 

Cloud Governance is generally used in a sense to include both governance and management, however, there’s a distinction between the two. Cloud management promotes cloud adoption as it provides easy access to specific cloud environments whether private or public.  

On the other hand, cloud governance help organizations to control and optimize cost in a cloud lifecycle environment while providing security, chargebacks, and access control. It focuses on the layer above cloud management that includes policy-based automation and self-service to end consumers within the organizations.  

Cloud governance sets the cloud computing direction and establishes an enabling system in the organization while cloud management uses the system to execute on the direction set by governance. Though these both are separate terms when brought together, they ensure cloud-service objectives are aligned and realized.  

Moreover, they offer benefits such as automated workflows, innovative opportunities, optimization, change management, and profitability. 

You might also find helpful: Why Work with an AWS Partner Company? 4 Benefits & Advantages 

Ready to get started? iLink can help. 

Though cloud governance and cloud management can work wonders for businesses, it’s better to first analyze assets and performance and then plan accordingly. Also, each company has its business objectives and level of the cloud journey.  

iLink understands this and serves solutions that cater to the industry’s everchanging needs. Our team of experts understands security policies and how they will impact cloud adoption before drawing a roadmap for building a cloud framework. We can handle governance, management, and audit-related tasks to establish best practices for the cloud.  

Talk to our experts today!