What is our primary use case?
The main use case that we are having right now for the organization is that we are using CloudAware for maintaining visibility across various multi-cloud platforms that we include, including AWS, Azure, VMware, and SaaS. We are using it for auto-discovering and normalizing the inventory for eliminating security risks and for automating tasks across various service catalogs across different cloud platforms. Through this, we are definitely strengthening security and resolving issues faster.
We are using multiple types of assets including AWS and Azure, which are primarily used for mapping farmers' skill development and training activities. We have millions of farmer data stored in our AWS that is extremely critical for mapping various training-related activities for us. Through this, we are checking on various parameters and metrics for improving yield and productivity across various stages for our farmers, and we are running a lot of awareness programs on sustainability and climate-resilient agriculture through CloudAware. There is complete visibility for us, and we are running a lot of other kinds of standardized certifications through this multi-cloud management software, which is helping us improve employability in the formal and informal sectors across agriculture.
What is most valuable?
For our organization, it is extremely important to have centralized cloud governance and security control management systems in place, and CloudAware is helping us with cost optimization across various multi-cloud environments. We have been using it for the past five years now, and it has been a great experience so far with the platform.
Regarding the various features that we are using in CloudAware, all of it is helping us formalizing the SOPs in place, putting all the data inventories at a single place, and that is actually helping us to have strengthened cloud governance. We are using a single inventory of CMDB, through which all our on-premises and different cloud environments are getting segregated at a single place, and we are automatically discovering and normalizing the resources in our one centralized system. This is helping us eliminate any kind of IT-related issues. With so much data stored, we now have real-time asset discovery and visibility where the system continuously runs and discovers the cloud resources for us, and we no longer face configuration challenges. We now maintain a real-time, accurate view of the infrastructure dependencies, leading to faster troubleshooting and very positive impact analysis for the organization. Due to this, our cloud costs across various environments have certainly been optimized and unnecessary spending has reduced significantly. We can now track and forecast our cloud spending in a much more advanced way, and the billing data is also centralized, saving a lot of unused spending and there is a significant reduction in wastage.
Regarding faster troubleshooting and real-time discovery, this has actually led us to have a single unified real-time view of the infrastructure, changes, and workings across different stack systems due to the multiple cloud environments where different teams work on different stacks. Unified visibility means a single source of truth because we are working on approximately 20 different clouds simultaneously, and consolidating all cloud assets in a central CMDB system has given us more unified visibility, showing the relationship between applications, servers, networks, and the people working on them. This is helping us reduce time spent searching across multiple software, tools, and environments. We now have a real-time change tracking system that tracks every configuration happening in GCP, Azure, and AWS, identifying what has changed, when, and who changed it. This helps us quickly see modifications, incidents, and facilitates faster root cause identification. There is more visualization for any kind of misconfigurations, with an automated flagging and alerting system that flags duplicate or root cause issues in a very proactive manner, helping us detect deviations from approved configurations and streamline our systems.
Our experience with CloudAware has had a very positive impact on our organization because we have been able to reduce a lot of wastage and unnecessary expenditure on our cloud management systems. We are now saving a lot of money by checking various resources we manage. The auto-discovery of assets is leading to very reduced risks, and we definitely need better operational excellence. Earlier, we did a lot of things standalone, but now, after integrating our configuration management database, we have a free movement of information and ideas from one system to another. This has eliminated interdependence on people, and a system is handling everything for us, providing on-premise visibility and multi-cloud environment visibility that helps us make better cloud management decisions. This has led to improved optimized cloud spending, uniform cloud cost management, with normalized cloud billing data, and it enables us to track resource owners and changes in management databases. Vulnerability management, critical for us, helps us contextualize, rank, and remediate security vulnerabilities at scale, and assess any kind of risk or security threats. Everything is working great for our organization, improving our operational excellence greatly.
Regarding cost savings, we are seeing significant impacts from CloudAware, which has directly led to reduced cloud waste and improved operational efficiency. The system identifies idle, unused, over-provisioned, or under-provisioned resources, helping us eliminate unnecessary cloud spending, and we centralize billing across all cloud providers. We are allocating costs to applications, teams, or business units much faster, improving budget control and forecasting by right-sizing workloads. This helps us save by avoiding overpaying for unused capacity, matching storage sizes to workload demands, and reducing waste from unused commitments or licenses. Any cost spikes or anomalies are detected proactively in real time, preventing unexpected billing overdues. Furthermore, time-saving comes from faster issue resolution and incident resolution due to having a single view of all cloud assets, which leads to continuous tracking. We have reduced manual reporting efforts significantly with automated workflows and dashboards replacing Excel-based systems, saving several hours and days in reporting while automating cloud governance and faster incident and change analysis. Everything is automated, helping us save a humongous amount of time.
CloudAware has indeed helped us reduce cloud costs rapidly, improving operational efficiency and security posture management while minimizing manual interventions across multiple cloud environments. We have reduced cloud spending by identifying unused, idle, and over or under-provisioned resources, leading to right-sizing of storage and reserving instances. Typically, we are seeing a ten to thirty percent reduction in cloud waste, which has improved budget accountability. We have also saved a lot of time due to faster troubleshooting with thirty to seventy percent reduction in incident resolution time, thanks to automated reporting and compliance structures eliminating manual reports. Strong compliance with ISO and CIS frameworks has reduced audit penalties and improved our compliance status.
What needs improvement?
CloudAware offers great features, but we look for stronger AI and predictive analytics to improve anomaly detection and help prevent sudden cloud cost spikes with proactive bug fixes. We need improved systems for faster root cause automation to eliminate dependencies on manual investigation of incidents. A deeper native integration would also be beneficial; we are in discussions with their business team about this, and we seek more customizable dashboards.
We need enhanced security intelligence and a simplified user experience, as we face integration or navigation issues when managing all cloud servers. We certainly need to reduce this complexity and improve onboarding for new users, who often struggle with navigation. Introducing guided workflows and enhancing FAQ and tutorial sessions for faster adoption by non-technical team members is important for a better user experience.
There are multiple areas needing improvement. We require smarter FinOps recommendations related to cost optimization because sometimes costs become distressful. We also need improved mobile and remote access for mobile dashboards for incident response, as current approvals and alert handlings are lacking in mobile applications. Additionally, we desire better support for reporting automation, as auto-generated reports are not always useful for leadership. Overall, more simplified, unified cloud-neutral controls should be added for strengthened governance.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in the respective field for almost seven years. We are using CloudAware for the past five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
CloudAware is stable with impressive uptime. We have not faced any issues, as it is equipped to manage eighty to one hundred types of multi-cloud environments simultaneously without reporting outages in day-to-day operations. We have used it for five years and have managed small and large cloud performance with reliable cloud asset discovery, compliance monitoring, and cost management, all while maintaining a stable setup with no downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
CloudAware is highly scalable for enterprise and multi-cloud environments, continuously discovering and managing various cloud assets. It handles increasing complexity across expanded cloud usage effectively, storing and managing millions of cloud assets and handling high volume reporting and large dashboard queries efficiently, all while adhering to strong compliance frameworks.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is very enterprise-focused, operating twenty-four seven and assisting with issues via email-based support within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They provide dedicated customer success accounts and chatbot systems, along with a technical escalation pathway for critical issues, which highlights significant improvement compared to earlier assistance.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did a pilot with an in-house product that is not in the market for about a year before directly switching to CloudAware.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been smooth; the initial licensing was under five hundred dollars for one subscription, and we renew the agreement yearly with necessary changes and customizations. Overall, the initial setup cost was also under nine hundred ninety-nine dollars, so it has been a very smooth onboarding experience without significant issues.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Initially, we chose to try VMware, previously known as CloudHealth, along with ServiceNow cloud management and DataDog. However, our GC and board decided to switch to CloudAware due to its long-term commitment and stronger security posture management, which built trust throughout the process.
What other advice do I have?
CloudAware governance and security are top-notch, providing enterprise-grade governance and a robust security control system for multi-cloud environment management. There are no compliance or risk reduction problems. The centralized cloud governance management system helps us maintain cloud assets and track relationships among infrastructure, applications, and services. Policy enforcement is strong, enabling organizations to have strong governance policies with better resource tagging and security configurations. CloudAware has a double layer of access control and change management governance system where every configuration is tracked in real time with audit trails. The compliance management is also strong, supporting compliance with global frameworks such as SOC two, ISO twenty-seven thousand and one, and CIS benchmarks, which reduces manual audit efforts for our organization.
Regarding accuracy and reliability concerning CloudAware, these are two crucial aspects where they are performing excellently. The asset discovery accuracy is extremely good, enabling automatic discovery of cloud resources across Azure, AWS, GCP, and our hybrid systems and facilitating real-time inventory improvements with API integrations. Configuration and change accuracy provides proper visibility on configuration changes, reducing ambiguity in incident investigation. We have accurate billing data across cloud providers with good tagging discipline, leading to effective security and compliance accuracy in detecting misconfigurations based on defined policies and benchmarks. CloudAware has a very strong compliance framework, designed for large-scale multi-cloud environments, helping us achieve mission-critical operations with real-time data processing capabilities, consistent incident reporting, and a twenty-four seven chatbot system for alerts and troubleshooting.
I advise others interested in using CloudAware to first assess their organization's needs before trying a trial version. There is no need for a credit card to start the thirty-day trial; you should take advantage of the trial to understand its utility and alignment to your organization before making a decision.
CloudAware is one of the most structured, enterprise-grade cloud management software available today, and I strongly suggest my peers to look into its multi-cloud governance and CMDB management system before adopting it. I would rate CloudAware an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other