Cloud services are the foundation of business operations today. In fact, 94% of enterprises use them, and 67% of enterprise infrastructure is now cloud-based. The global cloud computing industry’s market size ballooned to $445.3 billion in 2021 and continues to grow at a CAGR of 16.3% through 2026.
With businesses across every industry and sector adopting cloud-based applications, infrastructure, and services, cloud service providers (CSPs) have their hands full. CSPs are responsible for delivering a cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, and storage services for clients, and to keep track of and optimize an expanding number of cloud assets, they must continuously create and maintain up-to-date technical documentation and cloud architecture diagrams – for multiple clients.
Thorough documentation of the cloud infrastructure is essential for a number of reasons:
- CSPs must comply with numerous industry and vendor regulations, and satisfying audit requirements necessitates complete and accurate information about their own cloud assets and their clients’.
- Having detailed, up-to-date documentation also helps to mitigate the risk of a cyber attack by clearly outlining the processes and procedures necessary for a swift and effective response.
- In the event of an outage, detailed technical documentation can help reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR), providing a single source of truth for teams to reference as they troubleshoot and fix root-cause issues.
- Having a complete picture of all assets under management helps CSPs optimize the cloud infrastructure and realize faster and better ROI. With visibility across the cloud environment, it’s much easier to make informed decisions about where to invest, what to update or upgrade, and how to effectively allocate resources and budget.