Part of the cloud is automation. An example is PuppetLabs, and here is a blog post on the topic.
“Automation extends to the software layer, where complex systems can be configured once and then rolled out on the fly as needed, using cloud automation tools. Intelligent systems architecture can balance the load among compute, network or storage resources, bringing systems online or offline as demand dictates.
This infrastructure-as-code approach to the modern, increasingly complex data center requires advanced cloud management tools, and cloud automation answers that need. The same software-defined approach to managing private cloud architecture works equally well for managing public clouds. Bonus: By abstracting away the differences between clouds, sophisticated cloud automation software makes it easy to provision the resources the business needs at any given moment, without getting bogged down with where the servers actually sit.”
There are tons and tons of companies that have cloud automation tools. But, how many people spend time addressing the availability of the automation control system. ??? This may seem obvious, but a control system needs to have a higher availability than the services it is managing. Otherwise the service will go down when the automation control system goes down.
And, this may mean you need a backup to the automation system when it goes down during an outage.
As Cloud environments get bigger and bigger, automation is a part of the solution, but have you thought about what happens when the automation system goes down.