What is CloudFormation and How it Benefits Your Business?

Cloud computing has long since been one of the best solutions for businesses of all sizes. With so many options on the market, there are major brands jockeying for position to become the best. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular brands on the market.

One of their programs they offer is CloudFormation. In this guide, we’ll go over what makes it one of the best tools to use for your business. The benefits you’ll experience will be better than you expect. Let’s dive right in and talk more about the program.

What exactly is AWS CloudFormation?

AWS CloudFormation is offered by Amazon Web Services. It’s an Infrastructure-as-Code or IaC tool - which means it is designed to automate the setup and deployment of any Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution that is supported by AWS. This means you can use it to configure any workloads that utilizes other tools within the AWS ecosystem. 

With this in mind, CloudFormation is used exclusively on AWS. Meaning you won’t be able to use it on other cloud computing platforms like Microsoft Azure and others.

What are the benefits of AWS CloudFormation for your business?

Now that you have a basic understanding of AWS CloudFormation, let’s discuss what benefits it offers for your business. AWS as a platform is proven to be one of the most reliable on the market for almost every industry, small or large. Let’s take a look now at the benefits you may get to enjoy with CloudFormation:

Automation and consistency

First, let’s discuss the automation and consistency benefits. CloudFormation will automate provisioning and configurations of the infrastructure. Using IaS, it can help eliminate any errors that happen manually while maintaining consistency across the many environments you may be operating in.

Automation will make it easier for deployment while saving you time. That’s time that you can use to invest in other business priorities. It also means no configuration drift that may exist between environments like development, testing, and production.

Scalability

Cloud computing makes the idea of scaling a lot easier. Especially when it comes to determining the amount of resources you use. You may use less or more - which can determine how much you spend on the service per month.

AWS CloudFormation will allow you to scale your infrastructure based on the policies and updated templates that you plan on using. One of the great things about scalability is you can scale up if you experience a large increase in demand (and scale down when things get quiet). Either way, it is important to have a program that will scale on demand with little to no disruptions.

Cost optimization

Of course, cost optimization is another great feature to have for cloud-based tools. As mentioned before, scalability and cost-effectiveness go hand-in-hand. With CloudFormation, you can design an infrastructure that won’t eat into your business finances.

You will be able to set up the parameters based on your own business needs. You’ll have more control over your resources while keeping in line with your budget and preferred costs. Meaning you won’t have to spend an unnecessary amount for the usage if you don’t want to.

It’s never a bad idea for a business owner to make sure the solutions they use are cost-effective. Investing in the operations of a business will be more important than anything else. Yet, it is important not to overspend on the things you may not need or ever use in terms of resources. And cloud computing services like CloudFormation will make sure of that.

Resource management and visibility

As a business grows, so may your demand for resources that you need to use. However, CloudFormation will make it simple for resource management so you will be able to use the amount you need accordingly. At the same time, you can be able to centrally control your stacks for monitoring, modifications, or if needed, deleting them. This can help increase visibility so administrators can understand the overall system architecture, resource relationships, and dependencies.

Speed and agility

What makes CloudFormation excellent is that it has the ability to provide you with speed and agility - something that no traditional infrastructure offers. With the use of CloudFormation, you’ll be able to respond to any rapid changes that may arise along with the ability to enhance any deployment cycles.

At the same time, you can also use new features, updates, and environments without a lot of effort. In a business setting, you need solutions that offer this feature so you can be able to make the necessary changes and updates with little to no disruption. It will also make things a bit less time consuming too.

Security and compliance

Of course, security and compliance are two things that need to be addressed accordingly in a cloud computer setting. CloudFormation has the ability to adhere to the Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies put together by AWS. Which means that you will be able to define and enforce the security measures based on the templates you use.

At the same time, CloudFormation will also help you comply with industry standards and regulations. It’s all thanks to the AWS Config rules that will help you keep in mind the industry specific regulations that you must follow to prevent any legal issues that may arise due to violations. One more good reason why CloudFormation might be the best tool to rely on.

Oamii Tech - Your go-to place for all your cloud computing needs

Whether it’s CloudFormation or any other cloud computing service, Oamii Tech has the experts on hand to help you out with whatever you need. Businesses can rely on cloud computing for so many different purposes and operations. In today’s digital age, it makes things a lot easier since you won’t need to use a lot of physical structures and resources.

If you need more information on whether or not CloudFormation can work for you, we can help. Contact Oamii Tech today and we’ll be happy to get you set up with your cloud computing needs.