Nuances In Cloud Economy | Cloud Managed Services

Digital transformation challenges the way we manage Information Technology (IT). IT is looked as an enabler, which drives innovation, enhances competitive advantage, and reduces cost. Businesses are demanding IT to have a service-centric approach, which makes IT operating models obsolete and requires them to reinvent themselves. Cloud technology plays a key role in enabling most of current IT demands. While Cloud computing provides infrastructure and software services on a subscription model, it brings in different sets of challenges. Here we will discuss few of the nuances to leverage Cloud while managing IT systems successfully.

Cloud supports ITIL processes and brings significant optimization on every pillar. For example, enterprises need not carry an elaborate exercise on infrastructure sizing part of the planning stage. Also, we can eliminate demand management process as infrastructure is scalable on requirement without any prior planning.

Nuances of managed services in a cloud economy

Figure 1: IT4IT reference architecture.

We will cover some of the key nuances of managed service in Cloud ecosystem, which falls under ‘Request to Fulfill’ (Deploy) and ‘Detect to Correct’ (Run) from IT4IT reference architecture.

Request to Fulfill (Deploy):

Request to Fulfill (Deploy) focus on repeatability, optimization and scale. This pillar concentrates on an interactive self-serviced portal for the service catalog for repeatability and service broker for optimization and scalability.

Below are four points that one should consider while deploying cloud:

Avoid vendor lock-in: Increasingly, enterprises are opting for multiple Cloud services to avoid vendor lock-in to manage cost and mitigate availability risks. Devise a strategy to distribute workload acrossmultiple Cloud and regularly cross provision workload. Cloud pricing model is complex, provides various discounts and changes frequently. Also, every service provider has a different method of pricing – from per minute to per hour. Public Cloud offers a market place to choose various services and some third-party software, which provides a nified window to manage multiple Cloud environments.

Cloud technology plays a key role in enabling most of current IT demands.

Setup is not everything: While dynamic scaling is the need of the hour, one needs to keep an eye on budget spend options that are available. Cloud offers various purchase options like reserved and on-need. It also provides various deployment models like SaaS, PaaS, Server-less or using IaaS. Each model has its advantages regarding cost and service levels. It is recommended to keep upgrading the deployment and maturity model.
Give agility to the developer: Rollout of SLA management is optimized by having service catalog with an efficient administrative model, budget based auto approvals and auto provisioning.
Performance management: Cloud offers various choices on Core, Input Output throughput, Input Output Busts, etc., which need to match application performance expectations.

Detect to Correct (Run):

Detect to Correct (Run) phase focuses on increasing efficiency, reducing the cost, minimizing the risks and driving continuous service improvements. We will cover few of those concerning cloud.

Storage: In an era where data is equivalent to money, storage needs are growing. Cloud offers various storage options based on the frequency of access and speed of access. One must define data lifecycle to keep the data storage and performance optimal.
Runtime optimization: Each unutilized processor time wastes money. There is a need to apply the right strategy on provisioning and de-provisioning – be it development, testing or production. Data synchronization between production system and disaster system needs to be carefully set based on business needs and cost of running.
Auto-remediation: Cloud provides various methods to set alerts and trigger necessary actions that are useful for notification and remediation. Below table summarizes various traditional IT environment processes againstmodern Cloud IT environments

Figure 2: A summary of the various Traditional IT Environments processes against Modern Cloud IT Environments

About the author

Balaji Thanigaiarasu, Lead Architect, Wipro- He has more than 18 years of experience in implementation and consulting of Cloud technologies and integration technologies and on domains like private banking, investments, life/health insurance risk management, foreign exchange, online market places and underwriting. He is involved in migrating enterprise applications to cloud and hosting on cloud as-a-Service model.

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