Cloud Service Brokerage: A Better Way to Manage and Deliver Cloud Services

Transcription

1 Cloud Service Brokerage: A Better Way to Manage and Deliver Cloud Services Enabling IT as a Service with the cloudmatrix TM CSB Platform from Gravitant Solution 2012 Neovise, LLC. All Assessment Rights Reserved. Published February 5, 2014

2 Summary Cloud services promise benefits such as agility, resource optimization, and cost reduction for all kinds of organizations, including businesses, government agencies, universities, non-profits and service providers. Unfortunately, too many of these cloud adopters fail to realize the rewards or, worse yet, spend excessive time and resources on cloud projects and management solutions that ultimately fail. Choosing the right solution to manage your cloud services can be difficult, especially for firsttime deployments. Uncoordinated or impulsive first attempts can result in a portfolio of complex, expensive, and difficult-to-use cloud services. When financial visibility and control falls short, cloud projects are quickly cancelled. Fortunately, as more organizations adopt cloud services, they are discovering a new, more comprehensive cloud service management option based on the concept of cloud service brokerage (CSB). The right CSB solution can help cloud adopters plan their cloud trajectory, procure and deliver the most valuable services, and make optimal spending decisions. Figure 1. The Cloud Service Broker Model Cloud Service Management Challenges IT organizations don t always get the benefits they expect from cloud computing. As they add more cloud services whether software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) they soon encounter planning, procurement, management, governance, financial and complexity challenges. What they ultimately need is a solution that enables a comprehensive approach to delivering IT as a service Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

3 Context: IT organizations often use cloud services from multiple providers. Research done by Neovise in 2013 showed that 74% of IT organizations that use IaaS use more than one IaaS cloud. In these instances, IT organizations want to view and manage all their cloud services from a central point of reference in order to maintain visibility and control. IT resources are now sourced both internally and externally. IT staff members are designing, ordering, provisioning and controlling IT services using resources from public, private and hybrid clouds, in addition to their existing data center environments. Traditional IT follows a request and wait model. IT users request a service and then must wait for a response acknowledging their request. They may wait hours, days or even weeks for their request to be fulfilled. What they really need is rapid, on-demand access to services. Impact: As IT organizations start using cloud services from more than one provider, complexity increases. If their cloud management solution lacks openness, flexibility or governance capabilities, IT quickly loses control. Without tools that help them view and manage all their services, they can t effectively align service consumption with business goals and budgets. As organizations grow and consume more services, the ability to aggregate and compare offerings becomes critical. For instance, when users fail to find and use the right services internally, they may pursue alternatives that exceed the budget, are incompatible with other services, or simply aren t approved by IT. Agility is one of the key benefits sought by most cloud service adopters. Yet, without a central point for accessing multiple services, the benefits of rapid, on-demand cloud service are diminished. Slow access to IT services results in missed business opportunities and enduser dissatisfaction, problems that cloud services are supposed to help overcome. Gravitant cloudmatrix TM CSB Platform Gravitant cloudmatrix CSB lets users compare cloud offerings; manage budgets, contracts and billing; and view and manage all their services from a central point of control. These brokerage capabilities make it easy for organizations to adopt multiple cloud services from an array of providers and confidently reap the related benefits. Please see Figure 2 on the next page for an overview of cloudmatrix Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 2

4 Figure 2. Gravitant cloudmatrix Overview Capabilities and Benefits: cloudmatrix provides planning tools for migrating and deploying applications to the cloud. The Application Screener utility asks customers a series of questions about their application and correlates responses with the Gravitant knowledgebase to determine whether they are ready for deployment or whether potential benefits justify using cloud services. cloudmatrix makes it easy for users to order services by helping them compare offerings from multiple providers, showing them the estimated monthly cost of their services, and taking them through the procurement process. Public cloud service pricing is kept up to date, and cloudmatrix uses a patented algorithm to compare pricing models between services. cloudmatrix provides advanced management capabilities for an organization s entire portfolio of services and resources. IT staff members can establish virtual data centers across multiple service providers and automate the provisioning and deployment of resources based on workflow. cloudmatrix also offers advanced visibility and control features, letting administrators see which services are being utilized the most, how they are performing, and where costs are growing. cloudmatrix compares these metrics against an organization s predefined goals to automatically optimize costs and resources. cloudmatrix gives customers powerful tools for monitoring and managing cloud spending. Billing management tools provide them with an estimated bill of IT and allow IT administrators to define a budget and related controls for how their customers order services Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 3

5 Financial visibility tools show IT organizations the trends in their spending by application and by category (including resource type, application type, and more). cloudmatrix also helps IT implement chargeback for billing internal customers or showback for simply providing detail spending reports to them. Both of these approaches influence the spending patterns of cloud service users. cloudmatrix comes with the MarketMaker Adminstrator portal for organizations that want to become cloud service brokers. The MarketMaker Administrator portal offers extra capabilities, including customer onboarding and deactivation, customer subscription management, service catalog management, pricing management, and more. The cloudmatrix portal offers an effective way for IT organizations to view and manage all their services. For example, automated provisioning enables continuous infrastructure optimization to maintain desired service levels. Similarly, workflow-based provisioning allows organizations to implement custom automation and integration. cloudmatrix offers a unique Collaborative Solution Design capability that allows customers to work with a solution architect to define their application infrastructure architecture. By leveraging a Customizable Service Catalog, architects can design a best-fit solution that includes multiple tiers of an application, different environments such as production, test and development, multiple clouds, and multiple cloud providers. They can also include managed services such as security, backup, and monitoring to complete the solution. cloudmatrix helps businesses fully prepare for the demands of IT as a service (ITaaS). Continuous cost comparisons help organizations proactively align services and goals in real time. Businesses can also greatly reduce the time it takes to plan and execute IT projects. Solution Assessment + By producing an integrated solution with service design and discovery, cost comparison, ordering and provisioning, and governance, cloudmatrix is leading the pack in terms of breadth of capabilities in a CSB platform. + Some of the most outstanding cloudmatrix capabilities include in-depth broker operations (including customer admin, command and control, and service provider admin), continually updated cost comparisons for cloud service providers, application migration assessment, and extensive financial visibility and control features. - Some features are specific to individual service providers, such as auto scaling for Amazon. Still, as other providers gain more capabilities, cloudmatrix expanding those capabilities Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 4

6 Recommendations: Organizations adopting cloud services should consider a CSB platform, such as cloudmatrix, to ensure successful alignment of services with their overarching IT and business goals. Organizations facing the challenge and complexity of integrating multiple services should also use a management solution, such as cloudmatrix, that lets users view and manage all their services from a single portal. Those organizations currently using or considering other CSB platforms should be aware that cloudmatrix goes beyond basic cloud service brokerage by also offering enhanced service planning, optimization, and management capabilities. cloudmatrix should be on the short list for the vast majority of enterprise organizations seeking comprehensive CSB capabilities. Conclusions: Choosing the right cloud services can be difficult, especially for first-time deployments and for organizations procuring services from multiple providers. Manually comparing services and providers is tedious and often forces IT staff into guessing games. To understand which services best align with business goals and which offer the most value, organizations need to accurately compare service costs, capacity requirements, and more. A cloud service brokerage solution can be a great way to address these challenges. The Gravitant cloudmatrix CSB platform goes beyond manual comparisons and guesses, offering a superior way to compare and procure cloud services. cloudmatrix also makes it easy to combine and manage services from multiple The Gravitant cloudmatrix CSB platform goes beyond manual comparisons and guesses, offering a superior way to compare and procure cloud services. providers, adding speed an agility to the process of delivering infrastructure and improving IT staff productivity. Importantly, cloudmatrix hides the complexity of cloud computing and improves the overall odds of success with cloud service adoption Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 5

7 About Neovise Based on independent research and analysis, Neovise delivers essential knowledge and guidance to cloud-related technology vendors, service providers and systems integrators, as well as business and IT organizations that purchase and use cloud-related services and technology. Our offerings include research, advisory and collateral development services that help our customers and their customers make optimal decisions and formulate winning strategies. Research. Analyze. Neovise. For more information, visit Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.