Managing the performance of traditional applications hasn't been a strong point for the majority of enterprises over the years, even among global 2,000 companies. This task has become even more difficult as companies begin to integrate cloud computing technologies, which are supported by virtual infrastructures that are by their very nature painstaking to manage.

The importance of managing cloud computing – and the inherent challenges that come with it – are discussed in Alcatel Lucent's (News - Alert) recent addition to its white paper library, "The 2011 Cloud Networking Report." The document also details a number of new solutions that can help enterprises take firm control over their cloud applications and services.

According to a survey included in the report, greater than half of IT organizations feel that it is very important or extremely important to do a better job managing their private cloud computing solutions. A similar percentage also agree that it is very important or extremely important to better manage their application performance, which, as discussed, is even more complicated in a cloud computing environment.

Needless to say, enterprises need to step up their efforts to manage cloud computing and are actively looking to do so.

Key management tasks

Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) polled hundreds of enterprises to pinpoint a few important management tasks that are being utilized today. Unsurprisingly, root cause analysis came out on top.

Getting better at identifying the root cause of degraded application performance was deemed to be the most important management task facing IT organizations. This is most likely because the majority of enterprises rely heavily on just a handful of applications, which handle nearly all their business-critical processes.

Another chief concern for IT organizations is getting better at identifying the key components of their infrastructure that support their most critical applications and tasks. Being more effective at managing internal SLAs is also a focus for most companies, but not quite as high up on the list.

Management challenges associated with cloud computing

Managing applications and services is rather complex in any environment because it is extremely difficult to recognize the end-to-end path that a packet with take across a network. Unfortunately, this difficulty is increased significantly in a cloud computing environment because the apps and services are being dynamically moved between servers that are in and out of the data center.

Another issue is the fact that cloud computing makes the network topology much more complex, creating three separate management domains for public and hybrid clouds: the enterprise, the WAN service provider and the cloud communication service provider (CCSP).

In fact, Alcatel-Lucent found that cloud computing makes troubleshooting application performance one order of magnitude more difficult.

Cloud management solutions are available and being utilized

Cloud networking services are beginning to become popular among enterprises. These services, which have traditionally been delivered via an organization's internal IT infrastructure, are now being managed by CCSPs.

In fact, Alcatel-Lucent found that more than one quarter of enterprises will either likely partner or will partner with a CCSP on security or network management services. Another 20 percent will tap a CCSP for application performance management.

Another tool that helps in cloud management is a route analytics appliance, which helps mitigate the aforementioned concern of identifying the end-to-end path that a packet with take across a network. Route analytics appliances help IT organizations identify, analyze and diagnose issues that occur in complex networks.

Alcatel-Lucent also points to DNS/DHCP/IPAM solutions, which can integrate with virtual server management systems and provide a number of advantages, including the ability to automate IP addresses for newly-created VMs and automatically allocate subnets for new VLANs.

A technique called service orchestration is another option. Orchestration engines can allow enterprises to automate various manual tasks for provisioning and managing virtualized services.

Wherever your enterprise is in regard to cloud solutions  — consideration, early phase deployment, or examining future initiatives — a review of the entire white paper, “The 2011 Cloud Networking Report,”  is a good place to gain insights as to what to consider, what to do and options about what to do next.