- Governance means different things to different people.
However, cloud application governance means
the placement of policies around the use of cloud resources,
such as storage and compute, as well as cloud services,
or application programming interfaces.
Many developers have yet to grasp the concept of governance
as it relates to cloud application development.
Missing is the understanding
of how to develop cloud applications
that can be effectively governed and managed,
also how to link applications with services and resources,
including governance tools.
The foundation of cloud governance includes
resource governance,
or the ability to govern the use of core cloud resources
such as storage and compute,
for instance, Amazon Web Services S3 Storage System
or Amazon Web Services DC2 Compute System.
Service governance are the ability to use an API
or application programming interface or web service
that may be part of a service-oriented application
or for other uses.
Security and governance are the ability to link
core governance capabilities,
such as policy processing and core processing
involved with maintaining security.
Compliance and governance used to ensure
that we're able to leverage governance
to keep a tight control on complying with laws.
Governance deployment, ensuring that we're able
to deploy applications into production in such a way
that we're not causing issues in other places.
The types of governance are a bit different
than the foundational concept.
Here are a few basic topics.
Resource governance.
Cloud resources such as storage and compute
need to be governed as well
and businesses can manage those resources
through interfaces by leveraging resource governance tools
such as CMP or cloud management platform.
CMPs are also governance and technology methodologies,
but they take a different approach from service governance
by focusing on the cloud resources themselves,
such as storage, compute, and database services.
And not just the interfaces into those resources,
such as services
or application programming interfaces or APIs.
Service governance provides the ability
to monitor and control specific APIs
or services and microservices.
These are just ways that developers can provide access
to very fine-grained surfaces
to carry out very specific functions.
The trouble seems to be that many architects
and other IT managers don't consider
cloud computing platforms as their architecture,
so they don't put mechanisms around those services
and manage change and enforce operational policies.
Security and compliance.
Most of the issues that we see around compliance
have to do with human errors.
Data is put in the wrong place
and is found in compliance audit,
putting the enterprise on the hook for a hefty fine,
for example.
There are governance tools that focus on compliance.
They use policies that control where the data can go,
who can see it,
and where the processes can act upon it.
Also note that these tools can support
a few core patterns such as passive and active.
Active refers to the tool's ability to carry out governance
using an automated framework
that carries out governance tasks
without human intervention.
Passive has to leverage humans to correct issues.
The trend has been toward active,
automated governance tools.
While planning is not often fun for any technical project,
it's needed here to ensure
that we have a solid cloud governance approach in tooling.
Get that right and you'll find that governance
is no longer an issue.