Reusable design patterns and automated workflows can cut costs and speed deployment. Here’s how to get started.

1. Digital Systems & Technology
Accelerating Time-to-Value
Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
Reusable design patterns and automated workflows can cut costs and speed
deployment. Here’s how to get started.
Executive Summary
In search of lower costs and greater operational agility,
businesses are hosting ever more workloads on virtualized
compute, storage and network resources in the cloud.
By 2020 more than 90% of enterprises will use multiple
cloud services and platforms, according to market
researcher IDC. 1
More than half of those surveyed by
cloud management software provider RightScale plan to
use hybrid (public/private) clouds that can offer greater
control and security for critical data or applications.2
But without the proper tools and processes, moving
to the cloud can saddle the business with a sprawl of
expensive, hard-to-manage and insecure assets. Getting
the most value from a move to the hybrid cloud requires:
❙ Proper end-to-end provisioning of workloads across
the enterprise to assure they are sized, priced and
managed to fit the needs of the business.
❙ A common management platform to give the
organization a comprehensive view of price,
performance and security across cloud providers.
❙ Agile and automated provisioning of workloads using
standard design patterns (organization approved
configurations for platforms such as Web servers
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
September 2019

2. and database servers) to cut the time and cost
moving workloads to the cloud.
❙❙ Consistent, centralized and automated security
controls, such as hardening, patching, anti-virus
and intrusion detection/prevention.
Manually performing all these functions for each
cloud deployment can eliminate the very cost
and agility benefits organizations hope to gain
from this computing model. While public cloud
services have automated much of their internal
provisioning processes, they have failed to
extend such automation to their customers’
systems and processes, or to workload migration
and management across multiple public and
hybrid clouds.
In our work with leading enterprises, such
“customer-side” automation have cut deployment
times from weeks to hours, slashed total cost of
ownership by as much as 40%, and provided cross-
cloud monitoring and management through a
single platform as well as a real-time dashboard that
revealed the types, quality and cost of the cloud
services users consume.
This white paper describes how automating hybrid
cloud migration and management can deliver
lower costs and greater flexibility. This results in the
following business benefits:
❙❙ High levels of automation and standardization
across infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and
platform as a service (PaaS) environments to
significantly reduce infrastructure provisioning
times.
❙❙ Average time to provision a new server can be
reduced from as long as 12 weeks to as little as
one hour for simple patterns and less than a day
for more complex patterns, making new servers
available more quickly and reducing the cost of
provisioning and charging for them.
❙❙ Faster development and deployment cycles for
products and services to increase organizational
competitiveness.
Finally, we provide actionable tips for getting
started.
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
2 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation

3. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
3 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
Where cloud automation falls short
Leading public cloud providers have taken most
of the manual work out of tapping their compute,
network and storage resources. With a corporate
credit card, any user can quickly create and use
internet-based web, application or database
instances, such as those needed for e-commerce
or for DevOps (combining development and
operations functions to speed applications and
services to market) along with the storage and
networks they require.
Public clouds offer predetermined “T-shirt sizes” for
commonly requested combinations of resources,
as well as robust tools for defining and monitoring
cloud workloads. For example, Google’s Cloud
Deployment Manager lets customers specify the
resources needed by an application using the
YAML3
language to create configuration files. AWS
CloudFormation provides a common language
for describing and provisioning infrastructure
resources in the cloud. Azure Monitor provides
performance and utilization data, activity and
diagnostics logs, and notifications from Microsoft’s
public cloud platform.
But such tools fail to automate much of the
work businesses must perform in their own
environments to make the most efficient use of
the cloud. This includes integrating their internal
systems and processes for authenticating users,
securing assets, tracking expenses and monitoring
system performance with hybrid clouds. Nor do
public cloud providers make it easy to bring their
own management functions to the hybrid clouds
most enterprises are adopting.
In addition, each provider’s automation tools are
proprietary and do not easily interoperate with
those used in other public clouds or in hybrid
clouds. This means making use of multiple clouds
or automating deployment across landing zones
within a single cloud provider. These approaches
require expensive integration efforts or entail
managing multiple clouds through different user
interfaces. Either path makes it much harder
to get a holistic view of everything from cost to
performance to security.
This lack of automation imposes real costs on
enterprises. RightScale survey of cloud users found
that only a minority have implemented automated
policies to optimize cloud costs, such as shutting
down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost
clouds or regions.4
Conversely, a lack of automation
impacts organizational agility, potentially resulting
in business disruption from competitors.
Public clouds offer predetermined ‘T-shirt sizes’ for commonly
requested combinations of resources, as well as robust tools for
defining and monitoring cloud workloads.

4. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
4 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
How automation can help
Hybrid cloud customers can use automation in
many ways to reduce costs and maximize agility.
They can automate pre-provisioning workflows
such as budgetary and security approvals,
determining if a user has the right to access the
requested resources and assuring the resources
provisioned in the cloud meet all applicable
business and technical requirements. They can
also automate post-provisioning tasks, such
as integrating the cloud with directories that
track users and other assets, system monitoring,
patching and accounting systems, and third-
party security monitoring and penetration testing
tools and services. To make the cloud as easy and
inexpensive as possible to use, they can deliver
cloud resources as an easy-to-consume item in
their service catalog (see Figure 1).
Each provider’s automation tools are proprietary and do not easily
interoperate with those used in other public clouds or in hybrid
clouds. This means making use of multiple clouds or automating
deployment across landing zones within a single cloud provider.
Figure 1
How automation reduces cloud management cost and effort
Manual steps eliminated by automated hybrid cloud management.
SINGLE USER
INTERFACE
CURRENT/TRANSFORMED STATE ~ THREE DAYS
PREVIOUS STATE ~ 45-60 DAYS
PROCESS
WORKFLOW
COMPLEX TASKS
AUTOMATED
POST
PROVISIONING
ONE-TOUCH AUTOMATION
Service Catalog >ARM/CloudFormation Template > PowerShell > Puppet >IaaS/PaaS
ServiceNow
triggers tasks to the
approvers (with
SLAs, escalations &
reminders).
ServiceNow,
ARM/CFN/VRA
triggers automation
in cloud platform.
End user fills a
cloud IaaS
Provisioning
Service Catalogue.
PROVISIONING
AUTOMATION
PowerShell
Bootstrap script joins
the device to domain
and installs Puppet.
POLICY
AUTOMATION
Puppet/GitHub
Automates all post-
provisioning tasks.
WORKFLOW
AUTOMATION
INFRASTRUCTURE
DEVOPS
Process
Completion
Emails the user
the details &
sets the ticket
status to be
resolved in Service
Now.
End user fills a
non-standard
request.
Set the ticket
status to resolve in
ServiceNow.
TSR gets
created and
assigned to a
queue.
Team chases
for all the
required
approvals.
Team
creates new
request to
cloud team
once all
approvals
are in place.
Cloud
operate
team does
the
provisioning.
L1 L1 L1 L3 L1 L3 L1
End user
raises
multiple new
requests to
get access.
Platform
team works
on post-
provisioning
tasks.
Email the
ticket
requestor
with the
details.
Decision to be taken leading to additional
activities in sequence

5. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
True customer-side automation would:
❙❙ Allow users to choose and integrate their choice
of commercially available and proprietary
application monitoring, management,
provisioning and metering tools.
❙❙ Provide automated end-to-end self-service
provisioning that masks the dozens of required
steps (such as the choice of the proper security
zone and enforcement of server naming
conventions) behind a single click.
❙❙ Create and maintain an automation catalog that
offers users a range of preconfigured design
patterns (see Figure 2) designed to meet various
business needs.
❙❙ Address critical needs for security and ongoing
cost management.
Services
Provisioned Cloud platform(s) Automated processes.
Server
Azure Single VM
Deployment
Automatically provision a VM (Windows, RHEL, CentOS,
SLES) across multiple regions, meeting required SLAs.
Azure High Availability
(HA) and DR
Automated provisioning of two VMs connected to an
internal load balancer with ASR.
Azure Oracle DB
(Active/Passive) on
IaaS
Oracle DB in Azure VM (one in each region) with Data Guard
to achieve near-real-time data replication across databases.
AWS HA instances
across multiple
regions
A set of EC2 instances provisioned on both regions
connected via separate load balancers within the region.
HA across regions achieved via a global traffic manager.
Network AWS Load Balancer Automated provisioning of AWS classic, network, and
application load balancers.
Figure 2
How cloud design patterns speed applications & services to market
5 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation

6. Hybrid clouds can’t begin cutting your organization’s costs
and increasing its agility until workloads are migrated and
integrated with existing management, security and chargeback
platforms and processes.
6 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
Automation: Getting started
Hybrid clouds can’t begin cutting your
organization’s costs and increasing its agility
until workloads are migrated and integrated with
existing management, security and chargeback
platforms and processes. Automating these
processes requires understanding and meeting the
full range of management, financial and security
issues the cloud raises for customers.
Based on our work with leading organizations
worldwide, our recommendations for embracing
automated hybrid cloud management include the
following actions:
❙❙ Create reusable automated workflows for
common processes such as approval and
access control.
❙❙ Minimize the number of blueprints and
canned images included in common cloud
workloads to optimize management and
governance overhead. This might involve, for
example, limiting the number of Linus blueprints
to include only RHEL, SUSE Linux and CentOS,
and limiting Windows blueprints to Windows
Server 2012 and 2016. Other required functions
or features can be easily provisioned in a
modular fashion on the base image.
❙❙ Use automated tools for provisioning and
configuration of all management agents
during the “post-provisioning” stage.
For example, install monitoring, antivirus,
backup and patching agents, and associated
configuration activities, using a configuration
management tool. Similarly, automate
activities for service account creation,
assigning permissions, etc. as part of the overall
provisioning request itself.
❙❙ Create an efficient pipeline to reduce
the time required to create, deploy and
manage infrastructure as code. In a client
situation, we used the GitHub code repository,
the Jenkins open source automation server,
Artifactory repository manager and the Puppet
software configuration management tool that
uses “infrastructure-as-a-code” principles to
provision infrastructure in an agile fashion.
❙❙ Automate processes not only within your
organization but with third parties such as
cloud providers. For example, use API calls to
integrate with third-party providers responsible
for role-based access control and network
provisioning.
Cognizant 20-20 Insights

7. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
7 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
Cutting costs, increasing agility
for a UK energy utility
Our Automated Platform, an integrated automation ecosystem, helped a UK-based utility
increase its agility and cut its costs to better compete with nimble, digital-only competitors.
The company had been restrained by the lack of a single management platform across
its multiple private and public clouds and the manual effort required to create, manage,
secure and troubleshoot thousands of servers and platform-as-a-service instances.
We migrated and digitally enabled roughly 130 business services, freed IT personnel from
routine functions through automation and a simplified converged infrastructure,
and enhanced security through managed controls and services across the public and
private cloud. Our Automation Platform enabled greater agility and faster turnaround
through automated builds and approval workflows, automated deployment of
monitoring, and configuration and security controls, as well as complete high availability
and disaster recovery.
This allows the utility to:
❙❙ Cut operating costs and manage spend more efficiently and proactively by monitoring
multiple clouds in real time through a single platform with advanced analytics of
performance and chargebacks.
❙❙ Reduce downtime and support costs through automated incident creation.
❙❙ Reduce time-to-market for new services and increase application reliability by allowing
users to create their own cloud instances with a single click from more than 35 fully
automated standard design patterns.
Quick Take

8. Endnotes
1 ‘IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2018 Predictions’ Oct 2017 - IDC FutureScape – Doc #US42014717, https://www.idc.
com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=US42014717.
2 2 RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report, https://www.suse.com/media/report/rightscale_2018_state_of_the_cloud_
report.pdf.
3 3 YAML is a human-friendly data standard for data serialization, which translates data structures into a format that allows
them to be stored, transmitted and reconstructed in different computing environments.
4 4 Op cit. RightScale 2018.
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Getting the most from the cloud
Organizations move to elastic, on-demand cloud
environments to cut costs and speed new products
and services to market. But without proper
automated tools and processes, they can find
themselves spending too much money and time
managing a mix of on-premise and public clouds.
Automated workflows and standard system images
not only cut management costs, but allow users
to provision their own systems while meeting
corporate cost, security and other requirements.
8 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation

9. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
9 / Accelerating Time-to-Value Through Hybrid Cloud Automation
About the authors
Mohit Mehta
Vice President, Cloud and Infrastructure Services
Mohit Mehta is a technology thought leader in Digital Systems & Technology, and currently heads
Cognizant’s Cloud & Infrastructure strategic business unit in the UK and Ireland. Mohit has extensive
experience in managing, structuring and advising on business transformational initiatives within digital
systems and technology, including enterprise cloud transformation. His previous experience includes
incubation and growth of Cognizant’s Technology, Media & Communication business in UKI and serving as
a market maker for large transformation deals for another global services company. Mohit can be reached
at Mohit.Mehta@cognizant.com | www.linkedin.com/in/mehtamo/.
Sreekanth Sreekumaran Nair
Associate Director, Enterprise IT Automation
Sreekanth Sreekumaran Nair is an automation evangelist at Cognizant, with primary experience in
consulting, architecture and design of public cloud, cloud automation, ML/AI platforms, service assurance
and application performance management tooling solutions. With 14 years of experience in digital systems,
technology and automation, he has a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering
from Kerala University, India. Sreekanth can be reached at Sreekanth.Sreekumar@cognizant.com |
www.linkedin.com/in/sreekanthsreekumar/.

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mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
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