Cloud orchestration: digital agility architectures

In today’s digital scenario, with companies having to deal with increasingly complex infrastructure, as well as the continuous need for agility, cloud orchestration has emerged as a key strategy to ensure operational efficiency, control and scalability.

Cloud orchestration is a discipline which as well as ‘tidying up’ IT components, also enables the construction of a coordinated, intelligent and reactive infrastructure.  In a context dominated by multicloud and hybrid architectures, this process permits the harmonisation of distributed services, resources on-demand and modular applications.

What exactly is cloud orchestration?

Cloud orchestration goes beyond traditional automation as it is not limited to enabling specific tasks, such as provisioning a virtual machine or backing up a database, to be carried out independently, rather it is able to combine these tasks into coordinated flows, with rules, dependencies, decisional logic and ingetrated management policies.

In other words, it is able to define ‘symphonies’ of operations, which can include the deployment, configuation, interconnection and monitoring of services and applications distributed in heterogeneous environments.

At the heart of this aproach is coordination intelligence: an orchestrated system is able to react to events (such as a peak in traffic or a system error), by re-allocating resources, carrying out automatic repairs, redistributing loads or launching new containers.  All this is done without any direct human intervention.

The technological context which makes orchestration necessary

In recent years, cloud systems have evolved from simply hosting resources on remote infrastructures into articulated ecosystems which include public and private clouds, edge computing, containerisation, microservices and DevOps.  Every company now has to manage a range of environments, suppliers, standards and applications.

Without a centralised orchestration system, the complexity becomes too much, with the risk of incoherent configurations, information silos, duplications, human error, weaknesses in security and inefficiency.  Furthermore, the capacity for rapid scalability, to respond to emergencies and deliver innovative solutions increasingly depends on the ability to organise resources more flexibly.

There are many benefits of introducing an efficient cloud orchestration system, not only associated with the technical aspect.  They have an impact on governance, business strategies, time-to-market and resilience.  The most relevant are:

• optimisation of costs and resources: orchestration allows for a more efficient use of cloud resources, reducing wastage, overloads and under-use. Automatic ‘on demand’ provisioning helps to avoid over-provisioning, while workloads can be distributed according to criteria such as prioritity, performance or cost;
• increased operational agility: companies can launch new services or test environments in minutes, reducing development times and accelerating innovation. DevOps and CI/CD cycles integrate perfectly with orchestration platforms, allowing an automated pipeline from code writing to production;
• reduction in human error: with pre-defined, validated workflows, the margin of error associated with manual configurations is reduced. This is especially important in critical environments, such as banking, healthcare or industry;
• improved compliance and governance: security policies, access rules and regulatory requirements can be implemented as part of the orchestration, ensuring integrated, verifiable compliance;
• maximised resilience and availability: orchestrated systems are designed to identify system failures and automatically activate recovery actions or failovers. This increases both uptime and service continuity.

Orchestration and automation: fundamental differences

The two terms are often confused, however there is a substantial difference between them.  Automation involves a single process (for example a script for creating a cloud procedure), while orchestration coordinates the entire cycle (provisioning, configuration, connection to the database, updating of the load balancer, integrity tests and notification of the development team).  It is therefore a ‘higher layer’, which includes automation but expands its capacities.

A helpful analogy is to compare the workings of such a system to a symphony orchestra.   Each instrument, like each IT process, can be played individually, but only the conductor’s direction ensures that the orchestra performs with harmony, rhythm and meaning.

Currently, many tools are available to support cloud orchestration, each with its own special features.  One of the most well-known is Kubernetes (for container management), Terraform (infrastructure as code), Ansible, CloudFormation and tools by leading providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).  They all cater to different needs, but aim to simplify infrastructure management and make it replicable.

More mature companies use a combination of tools, thereby facilitating communication between different environments: on-premise, public clouds, edges and legacy environments.  This requires a clear strategy and the integration of APIs, connectors and centralised monitoring tools.

Cultural and organisational challenges

Implementing an orchestration strategy is not only a technical matter, as it requires significant cultural change.  IT functions must collaborate transversally, overcoming the traditional divisions between development, operations, security and governance.  The DevSecOps model, (which integrates security from the beginning of the development cycle), is an example of how orchestration can guide organisational evolution.

In addition, staff must be adequately trained.  Considering that orchestrated systems are powerful and complex, without up to date skills, there is a risk of over-reliance on particular suppliers or weaknesses in management.

Automating and orchestrating also means exposing critical points to potential attacks.  Credentials must be managed securely, APIs must be protected and modifications need to be traceable.  For these reasons, these processes must include security checks, audit trails, profile management and configuation verification.

Currently, the most advanced solutions offer ‘zero trust’ orchestration, segmentation of workloads and the integration of SIEM systems (Security Information and Event Management), thereby ensuring complete visibility and rapid intervention should a threat arise.

The strategic role of governance

With the increase in automation and distribution, governance assumes a central role.  It is not only a case of knowing what is being done, but why, by whom and according to which rules.  Orchestration can and must become a means of strengthening management via the introduction of explicit policies, flow validation and centralised reporting.

Looking to the future, it is clear that orchestration is destined to evolve towards autonomous, intelligent models, able to take decisions in real time thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning.  These systems will be able to learn from operational data and suggest improvements, thereby avoiding bottle necks and reducing inefficiency.

Translated by Joanne Beckwith