A PRAGMATIST S VIEW OF IT PLANNING BEYOND THE CLOUD

Transcription

1 A PRAGMATIST S VIEW OF IT PLANNING BEYOND THE CLOUD

2 page 2 After several years of market confusion, IT professionals are emerging to aggressively and effectively apply new virtualization and network technologies to achieve new gains in corporate productivity, cost reduction and risk mitigation that respond directly to the actual needs of those corporations. This white paper examines a proven methodology designed to identify and document the current state of IT deployment, apply the real requirements for future growth, and arrive at the best possible plan for deployment of a new environment that will support growth for years to come. Cast the clouds aside and talk about real IT Service Management. Executive Summary Yes, you can save money and increase service levels using cloud computing. By now that has been accepted as fact by most business professionals. This white paper, therefore, is not an attempt to compel you yet again about why you should move any of your IT operations to a cloud-based strategy. Instead, this white paper will focus on the all-important how. Corporations seeking to enjoy those benefits need to identify a pragmatic approach to determining how to select which IT functions to move based on the specific business objectives of the company. Sound business practice requires us to assure that they can be safely moved without impacting other functions, and intelligent planning is informed by projecting what overall operational and financial impact will come from the move. Starting out by carefully and thoroughly examining the current state of your information management environment, defining what the business objectives are and how that environment needs to adapt to support them, the methodology described here will assure that the transition is as transparent to the enterprise as possible and achieves the defined business objectives. Goals & Audience The goal of this white paper is to help you establish a pragmatic, real-world approach to effectively evaluating cloudbased information technology (IT) services that can bring real value to your company and dispelling the misconceptions that have been created by all the hype that surrounds cloud-computing. After reading this, you should be prepared to identify the best resources to help construct a truly viable and worthwhile plan to take best advantage of the many cloud-delivered services that are available without wasting time and budget on illusory claims and frivolous offers. You are likely deeply involved in trying to figure out how to identify worthwhile cloud services and figure out how to integrate them most effectively into your current IT infrastructure. There is no reason to think you need to perform wholesale upheaval of your existing environment to enjoy the best cloud-services have to offer. In fact, the approach we recommend starts by evaluating what you already have in place and determining how to best select and integrate cloud and on-premises functionality to arrive at the most effective and cost-efficient solution.

3 page 3 The Pragmatist s View of the Cloud Challenge Technology managers will usually find themselves working in one of two overarching use case environments. The first is the greenfield. You have a new application to address a new need or challenge. You can turn it on as a cloud service instead of building more on-premises infrastructure for it. This will help preserve your budget, avoid adding new administrative burden for rudimentary tasks, and eliminate the need for new capital investments. Turn it on and go. Listening to cloud service providers, one might think this is the usual and customary case. The reality is that we all live with enterprise and legacy systems. Like most heavy objects these have become embedded in the fabric of our IT environments. Through time and experience either we have adapted them to work well with us, or we have learned and adopted as standard many ways to work around their shortcomings and idiosyncrasies. Those with fiduciary responsibility to the enterprise read about the elimination of capital investments and reductions in operating expense would have us move all of these legacy systems to the cloud without delay. The marketed promises of increased agility and sustainability enthuse executive management as well. It becomes critical for IT management to look deeply into the ramifications of moving these legacy systems to a cloud environment, especially the subtle and often hidden potential catastrophes that can be inherent in such a move. Deep Knowledge of the Current State This should never be confused with intrinsic knowledge of the current state of the infrastructure environment, which system administrators, IT managers and IS managers usually gain from working with them. If you ask them for accurate recorded documentation of the current state and they cannot produce it immediately, you do not have what you need to determine your readiness for the migration of anything. Show Me the Documentation Even if they can produce a document for you to review, it is critical that you approach it with heightened skepticism. The reality is that most IT environments are a combination of formal and informal systems, processes, and procedures. Some are developed according to accepted best practices and are thoroughly documented. In some cases that documentation is even maintained fairly well. Many are created organically to remedy a sudden problem or meet an immediate need. What may start out as a jury-rig or a kludge often remains in place permanently without any documentation. As time moves forward other systems are added that depend upon these. Like bones in the bedrock, these fossils remain and become a necessary, though invisible, part of supporting much of the environment. Your documentation of the current state is no longer current.

4 page 4 The deliverables of an eplus Pre-Engagement Discovery provide excellent insight into the documentation required to move forward on any cloud-transition initiative. If, in the course of this discovery, we cannot locate any of the following, our consultants set out upon producing them to complete the required information inventory: 1. Network Topology Diagrams 2. Data Center Floor Plans 3. Processor/Server Inventory 4. Storage Inventory 5. Application Inventory 6. IT Organization Charts 7. Disaster Recovery Plan 8. Service Level Agreements 9. Database Architecture 10. Operational Practices and Procedures 11. Enterprise Policies: a. Data Security b. Asset Lifecycle c. Disaster Recovery d. Backup/Recovery e. Service Management f. Active Directory 12. Operational Costs a. Data Center Physical Costs b. Power Costs c. Personnel Costs d. Infrastructure Costs This comprehensive list of documents assures that every subsequent step in the process of any cloud migration will be achieved with minimal delay and with optimal results. They Are Not There Anymore You cannot depend upon institutional intelligence. In today s IT market it is more likely than ever that the person or people who put these informal systems into place have long since moved on to work with some other company s systems. You may still be able to contact them, but the most they ll be able to give you are clues based on distant remembrances of systems they frankly no longer care about.

5 page 5 It is more than likely that you cannot even find the source code for much of what these departed team members added to the network. Add to that the fact that you may not even know what you don t know until much later. Often functions are added to a system to handle a remote circumstance that may only occur once every few months or years. Only then do you find out that you broke that system months ago when you moved that other function to the cloud. Avoiding Jenga Jenga is that wonderful game where players attempt to pull blocks out without toppling the entire tower. This is an excellent metaphor for trying to pull an application out of your environment and moving it to a cloud provider without disrupting the rest of your systems. The only effective way to avoid Jenga is to begin by carefully and thoroughly document your actual complete and total current state. Kludges and all. There Is No The Cloud If someone is asking you, or if you are asking yourself should we move to the Cloud the universal answer is categorically no. There is no one single entity that can be referred to as the Cloud. It can be argued that the entire internet is considered to be a cloud because it s impossible to document, but the reality is that cloud computing consists of many facilities that deliver specific services over the internet. We call these facilities data centers. It is highly unlikely, unless your company is a cloud provider itself, that you still want to be in business of operating data centers. This is not what your customers celebrate you for, or any part of the reason they buy from you. As a general rule companies invest most in that which perceptibly differentiates them from their competition. Nobody advertises buy our widget because we run our data center better than the other widget manufacturers. Even companies that develop software solutions are no longer running their own data centers. Cloud-based development platforms offer them far more flexibility and agility, and enhanced ability to support team development activities. The software that enables your company s sales team to find opportunities faster and exploit them more fully absolutely contributes to the joy of stakeholders, but the systems that software runs on are still completely invisible. You will not be rewarded if your data center fails to perform well, and you will not be rewarded if it performs flawlessly. The driving reason for moving functions to the cloud is that it allows you to get out of the data center business. But go slowly. The greenfield opportunities to create new functions in cloud facilities are simple to achieve, like pressing the Staples Easy Button. Unfortunately, that s not usually going to be your button.

6 page 6 Clouds Defined Emerging from those early organically grown networks many companies achieved great consistency and excellent production gains when their networks were designed, deployed, and supported using standardized IT Service Management (ITSM) methodologies. Early in the development of business data centers, some network managers noted that some of the services they were producing for one corporation from their own on-premise data center could just as easily be produced in a separate data center. Not only that, but the same service could be produced for a large number of different corporations using the same infrastructure if it were located in an independent data center. This would allow them to deliver a better, more focused service and, owing to the economies of scale created by producing the service for a much larger consumer group, they could actually charge each customer less to deliver better service. This gave rise to, and is truly the definition of cloud services. Services that can be provided more productively from a remote data center and delivered at much lower cost thanks to economies of scale. Cloud Services Are Part of Your IT Solution - Not a Solution Unto Themselves The most important thing to take away from this discussion is that anyone who is trying to sell you on the idea that you need to move to the cloud is probably giving you bad advice. Very few if any companies will benefit from the business disruption that would likely result from such a major transition performed all at once. Most companies have sound fiduciary reasons that they cannot make such moves without carefully proving them out. It s simply not a sound strategy. Better to consider cloud-delivered services as alternatives for the way you are currently doing things. Carefully compare the current on-premises solution to the cloud-service under consideration. Seek ways in which the new approach might provide a higher service level, and ways in which operating costs might be reduced. If you can t find these readily, you may not want to move this service at this time. Begin with the End in Mind Desired Business Outcomes Technology does not exist in a vacuum. That is to say that we don t deploy technology for the sake of deploying technology. We deploy technology to enable the successful creation of specific business outcomes, specific results the business needs to achieve. Since the world of opportunity is constantly expanding we will continue to enjoy new greenfield opportunities to deploy new systems in new cloud-based environments. In the world powered by legacy applications and systems we need to be more circumspect. We need to begin by carefully documenting the current state of those systems that have sustained us and then project how we can continue to expand and extend the functionalities of this system by moving them carefully to a new and more effective platform. We want to find ways to achieve economies by enabling divisions within our own organizations to share architecture rather than duplicate it. This requires careful multi-tenancy, multi-vendor strategies.

7 page 7 The Proper Partner Can Prepare You Appropriately Your senior executives are not living in a vacuum. Every day they re encountering more information, and some misinformation, about cloud computing. Inevitably they will come to you asking what their company, and you, are doing about cloud computing. Not only do you need to be prepared to answer these questions effectively and meaningfully, you really need to prepare to get out in front of these questions and start posing them to senior executive management yourself. Increasing service levels while reducing costs are two of the best ways to positively impress management. Assuming that your primary business is not information technology management, you will want to consider availing yourself of a consultancy that specializes in the pragmatic application of different approaches to create optimum IT solutions. Here s what to look for: 1. Remember that your executives will want everything you tell them to translate to significant contribution to the bottom line. Don t talk about features and functions. Worry more about process improvements and cost reductions. Drive to real and tangible results that can be measured. 2. Your consultant will want to begin with a careful and thorough examination of where you currently are. The current state of your IT environment is where you ll find opportunities for improvement. Understand how the current state does and does not fulfill the strategic objectives it was designed to achieve. 3. As you proceed, the primary goal is to establish a happy and productive marriage of your technology infrastructure with the specific outcomes and results the business must produce. 4. The right professional consultant will earn your respect through their participatory approach to working with you and your team. They will be there to evaluate, not to pontificate. If they begin prescribing new solutions immediately before they ve thoroughly learned who you are and where you re current at, end the meeting and the engagement quickly. 5. Beginning with the end in mind, remember that whatever you are doing with the infrastructure must be based upon its impact on your company s earnings-per-share more than on unmeasurable concepts such as business agility. That s nice to have, but profits are a requirement. The primary reason to engage a consultant is that they should be experts in Enterprise Architecture Disciplines. Anyone claiming to be a Cloud Expert is likely not to be the partner of choice. Their perspective is too limited and you will not be able to benefit from the value of someone who has the broader perspective that encompasses all available approaches, on-premise as well as remotely cloud-delivered.

8 page 8 You ll know you re speaking to the right professional when they talk more about Discovery, Needs Analysis, definition of requirements, thorough documentation of your infrastructure s current state and desired end state, and performing a proper gap analysis of the path between the two. As you begin to move services to a data center other than your own you will find yourself adopting a Service Oriented Architecture approach (SOA) to IT. You will stop seeing servers, workstations, routers and switches and begin seeing services to enable your people and processes to deliver better bottom line results. The eplus Cloud Service Management Consultation combines the ecloud Methodology with other industry best practices to deliver strategic cloud-transition guidance including Planning, Information Architecture, Governance, and IT Service Management (ITSM). Objectives of this engagement include: Map the current baseline of your environment -- including server hardware, storage, database, virtualization, and management tools Identify key business drivers relating to cloud services Identify and analyze the top workload targets for migration Prioritize workload and service migration Impact analysis of migration on business critical applications Perform gap analysis and develop migration strategies Develop Service Management requirements for Planning, Governance and Delivery of Cloud Services Perform ROI and TCO cost analysis The eplus Enterprise Consulting Methodology Discovery Analysis Execution Needs Analysis Current State Assessment Alternative Identification & Evaluation Gap Analysis Implementation Strategy 1 Future State Definition Migration Roadmap 3 We begin by focusing our efforts on Discovery. Where we invest the time in earning the right to advise by analyzing out customers needs and establishing an accurate view of the current state. The second phase of the methodology builds on the discovery foundation by engaging in an iterative Analysis process that evaluates and measures a range of alternatives bringing the best solution forward. 2 Finally, in the third phase we deliver a strategy that is actionable by ensuring implementation steps are built in to the deliverable.

9 page 9 This engagement results in the creation of several highly useful preliminary deliverables that will inform the entire balance of the cloud-transition process: Executive Summary Current State Assessment o Stakeholder Identification o Application Portfolio (high level) o Organization Structure (high level) o Topologies (macro) o Production Server Inventory o Disaster Recovery Policies Future State o Alternative identification and analysis o Target architecture specification Gap Analysis Recommendations Building The Business Case Remember that all of IT is about achieving a better return on your investments. If replacing an on-premise service with one delivered from a cloud data center increases revenue and/or reduces costs so well that it pays for itself in a reasonable period of time and keeps on benefiting the company, that s an excellent investment. Proper and thorough analysis of the current state of the network system and how well it serves the business goals and objectives is the foundation of building an effective business case. Carefully identifying the best choices of functions and services to improve, migrate to a cloud-approach, or otherwise change is the process that is required, with thorough documentation of the service improvements and cost savings available. Armed with a clearly defined projected return on investment and an accurate evaluation of the costs involved you will help your company avoid al the cloud hype and truly take best advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.

10 page 10 GETTING STARTED It s easy to get started exploring the possibilities the eplus Cloud Readiness Consultation Program offers your organization. Simply contact your eplus representative. We ll be able to deliver meaningful responses in minutes instead of months and have you enjoying the benefits of a Cloud Readiness Consultation as soon as you re ready. Contact us today to learn more about our Cloud Readiness Consultation Program ecloud@eplus.com