What is env0?

env0 (pronounced "env zero") is an automation platform for cloud environments based on infrastructure-as-code templates. env0 combines an easy to use interface with powerful governance tools and cost control so that you, or any member of your team, can quickly and easily deploy and manage environments in the cloud. In addition, env0 provides insights as to how cloud resources are consumed in your organization, and by whom.

By integrating env0 into your processes you gain visibility, predictability, and better governance of your organization's cloud usage.

env0 is vendor-neutral and works with these cloud platforms.

Infrastructure-as-code and environment-as-a-service

Infrastructure-as-code is the management of infrastructure with a software tool (i.e., Terraform) which uses a model stored in configuration files to build a cloud environment. With this, you can automate the provisioning of infrastructure. This is now a key part of building a CI/CD pipeline.

The real idea behind Infrastructure-as-code, more than just deploying to staging/production, is to implement a mechanism that allows users to create fully functioning sandboxed environments outside of the CI/CD pipeline, for development, testing demos, etc.
This is called environment-as-a-service.

How does env0 help in managing environment-as-a-service?

By properly structuring your infrastructure-as-code configuration, you can design it to support the CI/CD pipeline, as well as to create environments for other purposes.

env0 provides a management layer above the infrastructure-as-code software. This allows the administrator to supply environment templates (based on the infrastructure-as-code configuration), manage variables and cloud credentials, and define policies for access control, environment time-to-live, and budget limits for users.

The users get an easy-to-use interface to self-provision and manage their environments, within the policies defined by the administrators. If necessary, they can also customize deployments, according to what the policy allows, and view their deployment history and logs.

In addition to defining policies, env0 allows administrators to track environments created by users. It collects usage and cost metrics, and provides insights as to how the cloud resources are used and by whom.

Why build your environment-as-a-service with env0?

It saves effort
The ability to adapt your infrastructure-as-code configuration to any type of environment is only part of an environment-as-a-service solution.
The other part is building user flows on top of it, to make it accessible to users. While it is certainly possible to build it yourself, implementing env0 is fast and easy, and can provide rich flows that you won't have to develop or maintain.

It's easy to use
The user flow is simple, quick to learn, and does not require a deep understanding of the underlying technology. Test it yourself to see how easy it is.

It reduces cloud spend, significantly
A big portion of organizational cloud costs is unoptimized.
env0 helps you save in 3 ways:

• It tracks cloud spend by user and purpose, not just resource consumption. When you know who uses what, and why, you can think about improving your cloud spend.
• it allows you to limit the environment lifetime, having it automatically stopped when the time limit is reached. A surprising amount of money is being spent on environments that are no longer in use, but which have not been stopped.
• It allows you to limit cloud spend by user, team, and project.

It gives you control
Self-service is great. It saves time and eliminates dependencies and frustration.
But, as the organization grows, it is harder to track what is going on, but you probably want to exercise some control, while keeping it self-service.
env0 allows you to do exactly that. By setting policies, getting a real-time view of running environments, and gaining insight into cloud usage patterns, you can get all the control you want, without compromising the flexibility you give your users.