Cloud Policy Engine for Event-Driven Lifecycle Governance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional systems lack efficient mechanisms for defining and managing policies to administer and automate cloud environment lifecycle activities, requiring unnecessary human expertise and leading to operational inefficiencies and cybersecurity risks.
Innovation Solution
A policy engine framework that simplifies policy definition and management through a user interface, supporting scheduling and event-driven policies, integrating with cloud administrators' tools like PeopleSoft, and leveraging AI/ML for anomaly detection and automated actions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual management of cloud environments is used, then human expertise can handle complex policies, but operational inefficiencies and cybersecurity risks increase
Solution Approach 1:
The policy engine enables automated self-service management of cloud environments by evaluating conditions and executing actions without human intervention. The system automatically monitors cloud resources, detects policy violations, and applies corrective actions, eliminating the need for manual security management while improving both efficiency and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The policy engine implements continuous feedback loops by monitoring cloud environment states, comparing them against defined policies, and automatically executing corrective actions when violations are detected. This closed-loop system ensures consistent security enforcement and operational efficiency without requiring manual oversight.
2Productivity
If automated policy engine is implemented, then operational efficiency improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The policy engine serves as an intermediary layer between cloud administrators and cloud infrastructure. It abstracts complex automation logic into simple policy definitions that administrators can create using intuitive syntax, while the engine handles the complexity of condition evaluation and action execution automatically.
Solution Approach 2:
The policy system divides governance into discrete, manageable policy definitions, each handling specific cloud resources or scenarios. This modular approach allows administrators to define and manage individual policies independently, reducing the perceived complexity while maintaining comprehensive automation capability.
3Adaptability or versatility
If comprehensive policy definitions are created, then governance coverage improves, but difficulty in defining and managing policies increases
Solution Approach 1:
The policy engine provides templates and examples of pre-defined policies that can be copied and adapted for specific needs. Administrators can start with template policies for common scenarios and modify them as needed, significantly reducing the difficulty of creating comprehensive governance coverage while maintaining versatility.
Solution Approach 2:
The policy engine implements a universal policy language and framework that can handle diverse cloud resources and scenarios through a single consistent interface. This multi-functional approach allows the same policy definition mechanism to govern various cloud services, reducing the operational difficulty while expanding governance coverage.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments govern cloud environments using a policy engine. A plurality of policy definitions for governing a plurality of managed environments can be received at a policy engine, each policy definition including one or more conditions and one or more actions, where the managed environments implement cloud based virtual machines that host cloud based applications. Events that relate to one or more of the managed environments can be received at the policy engine. Conditions for the policy definitions can be evaluated by the policy engine, where conditions for a first policy definition are triggered based on one or more of the received events. Based on the evaluating, one or more actions of the first policy definition can be performed, the one or more actions changing a first managed environment that is governed by the first policy definition.