Statista data indicates that the global public cloud computing market continues to grow and is expected to reach approximately $675 billion by 2024.
As more enterprises rely on the cloud to host their technology solutions, it is essential to develop and implement standards and governance policies that simplify the use and maintenance of cloud services. In this context, the use of landing zones is critical.
What is a landing zone?
A landing zone is a standardised and secure environment that serves as a starting point for deploying workloads, such as applications, data and cloud services.
To illustrate its importance, we can compare it to building a house: before putting up the walls and roof, a solid foundation needs to be built. In the cloud context, the landing zone is the foundation for everything that will be built later.
Without it, there are serious risks of facing structural problems that hinder the management of critical services, resulting in financial waste, security vulnerabilities, among other challenges.
Aspects to consider when building a landing zone
To create a landing zone in the cloud, it is necessary to consider both technical and business requirements. In addition, planning must take into account the long-term growth and use of the cloud. The landing zone must be flexible enough to evolve and be continuously updated.
Use case in Brazil
At Telefónica Brazil, we have the habit and good practice of documenting the landing zones of all the cloud providers we use, and we also perform regular reviews on their structures, modifying them as our cloud strategy is updated.
Having been involved in the processes of creating and updating our landing zones, I see that, regardless of the cloud provider, some essential points need to be addressed in the planning, among them:
Security Controls
Establish strong security policies, including access control, data encryption, continuous threat monitoring and regular audits.
Scalability
Plan an infrastructure that keeps up with demand growth, ensuring consistent performance even in situations of sudden increases in consumption.
Business Policies
The landing zone must be aligned with the organisation’s business and compliance policies, such as region-specific provisioning, security standards and data retention requirements.
Cost Management
Implement practices to monitor and control expenses, utilising budgets, identifying unused resources and optimising costs on an ongoing basis.
Account and Tenant Standardisation
Create a logical structure to organise your workloads in your account and/or tenant, maintaining a clear separation between resources. In addition, use tags and labels to easily identify the origin of resources in the cloud, ensuring consistent management.
Monitoring
Use efficient monitoring solutions to quickly identify problems, track infrastructure performance, detect failures and monitor availability metrics.
Automation
Automation is essential to ensure consistency and efficiency in the management of the landing zone, encompassing configuration, provisioning, upgrades and maintenance of resources.
To facilitate the set-up process, it is recommended to consult the best practices offered by the main cloud providers, who provide documentation to assist in the implementation of landing zones.
Consequences of a poorly structured landing zone
The lack of a well-structured landing zone in the cloud can lead to a number of problems, such as:
- Lack of organisation and standardisation of services, making it difficult to identify and resolve problems;
- Inconsistencies in security policies, which can result in critical vulnerabilities;
- Difficulties in cost management, generating unforeseen expenses and an increase in the cost of cloud workloads;
- Scalability issues, making it difficult to adapt to changing business needs.
Setting up and maintaining a landing zone in the cloud is an ongoing process. It is critical to follow the recommendations of cloud providers and map the specific needs of the business. These elements are essential to ensure your cloud is efficient, secure and aligned with the demands of your organisation.
