As more businesses embrace digital transformation, cloud computing is becoming more relevant each day. Cloud technology provides the flexibility, scalability, and agility modern organizations need to stay competitive, transforming everything from daily operations to customer experiences. However, as companies expand their use of the cloud, managing these complex environments is proving to be a real challenge.
Hybrid and multicloud environments
Cloud infrastructure monitoring
Benefits of using cloud monitoring software
1. SolarWinds Observability (Free Trial)
Best practices for cloud monitoring
The shift to cloud computing has made advanced cloud monitoring essential. By using the right tools and strategies, organizations can keep a close eye on their cloud systems to:
- Prevent issues before they escalate
- Make better use of resources
- Protect against security threats
Effective cloud monitoring helps companies maintain high performance, reduce costs, and safeguard critical data, ensuring that technology remains an asset, not a liability.
In this guide, we’ll explore cloud monitoring, its importance, the challenges of hybrid and multicloud environments, best practices, and the most popular tools available today.
What is cloud monitoring?
In simple terms, cloud monitoring involves overseeing and managing cloud-based resources and applications to keep them running smoothly. It’s like a regular checkup for your cloud ecosystem. This process includes tracking performance metrics, resource usage, availability, and security risks.
As cloud environments become more complex, organizations need successful monitoring strategies to maintain their digital assets.
Cloud monitoring tools aggregate data from multiple sources, giving teams valuable insights to address issues proactively. For instance, imagine an online retail business that experiences unexpected downtime during peak shopping hours. With effective cloud monitoring, IT teams can receive real-time alerts, allowing them to intervene and minimize revenue loss. By using cloud monitoring, businesses can improve service reliability, boost user experience, and save costs associated with downtime or unnecessary capacity reductions.
Hybrid and multicloud environments
Hybrid and multicloud environments are central to modern IT strategies, giving organizations more flexibility and enhancing operational quality.
By integrating on-premises (on-prem) infrastructure with multiple cloud providers, businesses can optimize based on key factors, such as cost, performance, and location. This approach ensures sensitive data and legacy applications are securely stored in private clouds or on-prem systems for compliance. Meanwhile, less critical workloads move to public clouds, enhancing sustainability and improving cost efficiency.
One of the key advantages of using hybrid and multicloud approaches is avoiding vendor lock-in. Organizations can choose from multiple cloud providers, which lets them capture the best capabilities of various platforms. This adds flexibility to quickly scale without being tied to a single infrastructure model.
Hybrid cloud
Hybrid cloud merges private, public, and on-prem infrastructure to ensure organizations can safely handle sensitive data while capitalizing on the public cloud’s scalability advantages. It involves keeping the most challenging information in private clouds or physical systems while shifting less sensitive tasks to public clouds for cost savings and scalability.
The flexibility to adjust workloads across environments optimizes resources based on specific needs. However, maintaining a hybrid cloud infrastructure introduces challenges, including:
- Managing data integration complexities
- Maintaining consistent governance and security
- Ensuring regulatory compliance as data moves across systems
Despite these challenges, the hybrid model is well suited for modern IT needs, offering a balanced approach to control scalability.
Multicloud
A multicloud strategy involves using several public cloud providers to spread workloads. This gives businesses the freedom to avoid being tied to a single vendor and pick the best services for their needs.
Unlike hybrid cloud, which mixes public and private clouds, multicloud focuses entirely on public clouds. This approach helps organizations avoid reliance on one provider, boost reliability by spreading workloads across different platforms, and tailor performance to specific tasks or locations.
However, managing multiple cloud services can be tricky. Challenges include managing security, data integration, and smooth performance across various providers.
Cloud infrastructure monitoring
When we discuss the fundamentals of cloud monitoring, particularly initiatives in performance tracking, the focus tends to be on the resources that deliver the cloud services. These may include storage, servers, or even network parts.
These resources are the essential components for cloud environments where applications and services are available, responsive, and secure. Availability, response time, latency, and resource utilization are key performance indicators in cloud infrastructure monitoring.
While monitoring these metrics, businesses gain vital insights into the status and operational performance of the infrastructure, enabling them to identify and troubleshoot problems before they affect end users.
Key benefits of cloud infrastructure monitoring
Cloud infrastructure monitoring is essential—no question. Here are a few of the benefits IT teams gain from it:
- Detecting bottlenecks: Identifying points of failure or slow performance helps prevent outages and maintain service quality. For instance, if a particular server is consistently underperforming, it can be scaled or replaced before it leads to larger issues.
- Optimizing resources: Understanding usage patterns enables better resource allocation, reduced waste, and optimized costs. By analyzing how resources are consumed, organizations can make informed decisions about scaling up or down based on demand.
- Facilitating capacity planning: By examining resource usage trends, organizations can make conscious choices about scaling their infrastructure to meet future demands. This foresight is crucial for maintaining performance during peak usage times.
- Enhancing security: Cloud monitoring aids organizations in identifying and responding to threats faster, ensuring any vulnerabilities are addressed before they can be exploited. Ongoing surveillance of cloud environments safeguards against cyberattacks and unauthorized access, strengthening overall security posture.
- Ensuring compliance: Regular monitoring helps organizations meet industry-specific regulatory requirements by providing necessary data and audit trails. This reduces the risk of non-compliance and helps build trust with stakeholders and customers.
- Proactively resolving issues: Cloud monitoring software provides real-time alerts and automated responses, allowing teams to catch and address issues before they affect users. This proactive stance minimizes downtime and ensures reliable service, keeping business operations smooth and uninterrupted.
- Enhancing collaboration: Cloud monitoring software centralizes data, fostering seamless collaboration across IT, DevOps, and security teams. With shared visibility, teams can resolve issues faster and maintain a healthier, more efficient cloud environment.
Effective cloud infrastructure monitoring also includes alerting mechanisms that notify teams of issues in real time. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and enhances overall operational efficiency, allowing organizations to deliver better service to their customers.
Benefits of using cloud monitoring software
Implementing cloud monitoring software brings a plethora of benefits to organizations. Let’s explore some of the key advantages:
- Enhanced visibility: Monitoring tools provide real-time insights into cloud operations, allowing teams to detect and troubleshoot issues quickly. This visibility is vital for ensuring systems run smoothly and efficiently.
- Cost efficiency: Optimizing resource utilization helps organizations reduce costs associated with underutilized or overprovisioned resources. For instance, a company might discover it has been paying for additional storage it doesn’t use. This information allows the company to act and gain significant cost savings.
- Improved security: Continuous monitoring helps identify potential threats and vulnerabilities, ensuring data and applications remain secure. Maintaining a strong security posture is essential in a world where cyber threats are constantly evolving.
- Better performance management: By tracking application performance and user experiences, organizations can identify areas for improvement and implement necessary changes. This leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Regulatory compliance: Besides performance and security concerns, many industries have specific regulatory requirements regarding data management. Cloud monitoring plays a crucial role in helping organizations stay compliant. By providing necessary reporting and audit trails, cloud monitoring ensures businesses meet these regulatory standards.
- Future-proofing the infrastructure: As businesses expand, cloud monitoring helps them scale. Monitoring tools allow resources to scale up or down seamlessly based on real-time usage, preventing overloading or shortages. This flexibility ensures high performance during peak times, reduces downtime, and accommodates new applications or services as they go live.
The benefits of cloud monitoring software contribute to a more reliable and efficient cloud environment, leading to better business outcomes.
5 Best cloud monitoring tools
For a seamless cloud environment, having a dependable monitoring solution is key. Here are five powerful tools to make that possible:
1. SolarWinds Observability (Free trial)
©2025 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.
SolarWinds® Observability offers flexible deployment options and comprehensive full-stack observability for cloud and self-hosted infrastructure. SolarWinds delivers a robust observability platform with a user-friendly interface that gives deep visibility into complex IT environments. By unifying data from applications, servers, networks, databases, and cloud infrastructure, it enables proactive identification and resolution of performance issues, security threats, and other challenges. SolarWinds Observability enables users to monitor and observe their IT environment, whether spread across their premises or on the cloud, in a single, seamless, familiar, and easy-to-use user interface.
2. Datadog
© Datadog 2024
This powerful monitoring tool offers a wide range of integrations and features. It allows teams to visualize and analyze their entire stack from a single platform. The real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities Datadog offers help teams quickly respond to performance issues, ensuring a seamless user experience.
3. New Relic
© 2008-24 New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved
A leader in application performance monitoring, New Relic helps organizations gain deep insights into their software and services. Its robust analytic tools provide valuable data to guide development and optimization efforts, ultimately enhancing performance.
4. Dynatrace
© 2024 Dynatrace LLC. All rights reserved.
Renowned for its AI-driven insights, Dynatrace provides automatic monitoring and analytics, making it easier for teams to identify issues before they impact users. Additionally, its intelligent algorithms learn from data patterns, enabling proactive issue resolution.
5. LogicMonitor
© Copyright 2024 LogicMonitor Inc.
This cloud-based monitoring solution offers a comprehensive view of hybrid IT environments. It allows teams to proactively manage performance and optimize resource utilization. LogicMonitor offers customizable dashboards and reporting capabilities, which make it easy to track the key performance indicators that matter most to your organization.
Each tool has unique features that cater to different business needs, so it’s essential to evaluate them based on your specific requirements.
Best practices for cloud monitoring
Organizations should adopt several best practices to maximize the effectiveness of cloud monitoring.
- Set clear objectives: Set strategic monitoring objectives aligned with your organization’s goals to support key initiatives. For instance, if customer acquisition is a priority, focus on such metrics as page load time and error rates to avoid data overload, streamline investigations, and enable effective improvements.
- Leverage automation: Automate monitoring processes to reduce manual overhead and improve efficiency. Automation streamlines alerts, reports, and issue resolution, freeing valuable resources. It also enhances operational efficiency and reduces the risk of human error.
- Regularly review metrics: Continuously assess and update metrics to keep them relevant and actionable. This helps teams focus on critical performance aspects and adapt to changing needs.
- Foster collaboration: Encourage communication and collaboration among teams to share insights and address issues quickly. Cross-functional collaboration enhances problem-solving and fosters a proactive culture.
- Plan for scalability: As your cloud environment evolves, your monitoring solutions scale accordingly. Ensure your tools can handle increasing data volumes and complexity. Scalability is crucial for maintaining performance as your organization grows.
- Invest in training and skill development: Ensure your team has the necessary skills and knowledge to successfully monitor and manage cloud environments. Provide ongoing training and development opportunities to sharpen their skills and stay ahead of industry trends.
- Embrace a holistic approach: Don’t limit your monitoring to the infrastructure. Dive deep into application performance, user experience, and security. This comprehensive view ensures you can quickly pinpoint and resolve issues, preventing downtime and maintaining a seamless user experience.
- Make security monitoring a top priority: Stay alert to risks, spot threats in real time, and act quickly to prevent costly breaches.
By following these practices, you can build a robust monitoring strategy that supports your organization’s cloud initiatives and boosts operational efficiency.
Additional guidance
Consider exploring additional resources, such as case studies, webinars, and community forums, for further insights into cloud monitoring strategies. By engaging with industry experts, you can provide valuable perspectives that help your organization stay ahead in the ever-evolving cloud landscape. Participating in industry conferences and training sessions can further enhance your team’s skills and knowledge, strengthening your cloud monitoring efforts.
Another constructive approach is to build a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage your teams to regularly evaluate their monitoring practices and identify areas for enhancement. This mindset will help your organization remain agile and responsive to changing technology, business needs, and landscapes.
Conclusion
In technology’s dynamic landscape, effective cloud monitoring is a cornerstone of operational excellence. By adhering to these practices, you can optimize performance, minimize downtime, and ensure the long-term health of your organization’s cloud infrastructure.
With the right tools and strategies in place, you can navigate the complexities of cloud computing and ensure your business’s digital assets are secure, efficient, and poised for future growth.
Cloud monitoring is more than a technical practice; it’s a strategic imperative. By fully embracing cloud monitoring technology, you safeguard your organization’s infrastructure and pave the way for innovation and long-term success in an increasingly competitive landscape.
This post was written by Bayo Herbert. Bayo is a technical writer with expertise in distilling complex technical information into clear and concise language for a non-technical audience. He has experience creating user manuals, technical guides, and online help documentation for software applications, besides writing white papers, case studies, and blog posts on various technical topics. He is also proficient in utilizing several authoring tools and style guides to ensure consistency and accuracy in his writing.