To provide a robust configuration and compliance management process, automate and remove the need for manual intervention wherever possible. People, process, and tools must be in place to support the overall process. Evolving the configuration and compliance management process takes time and effort—work on maturing processes in stages rather than taking on the challenge as a whole in a single step.

Initially, the challenge is to define, document, maintain the following.

Over time, vCloud organizations mature and become more vCloud service-focused. As a result, automated collections, reports, and remediation are necessary to help vCloud providers meet the required levels of standardization and compliance. These efforts are initially manual, but as processes mature, tool automation can be introduced and expanded so that future standards and compliance policies can be implemented with minimal manual interaction. Automation possibilities must be evaluated to identify other configuration and compliance scenarios that can be made more efficient.

Configuration and compliance management processes should also include collection and reporting of specific vCloud KPIs to key stakeholders showing the overall state of the environment. Examples might include percent of non-compliant configuration items or services, time to remediate non-compliant systems, or percent of services made compliant through automated remediation.