Executive Brief Automate Service Delivery September, 2010 addressing today s problems while setting the stage for an agile infrastructure Automating service delivery for the dynamic data center of the future Brandon Whichard Product Marketing Manager, Virtualization and Service Automation we can
Laying the groundwork for an agile infrastructure Organizations today are often finding themselves at an internal crossroads, where they are simultaneously faced with the immediate need of facilitating self service for the majority of IT and business service requests and also with the long-term goal of developing an appropriate roadmap for their cloud technologies. On the surface, the two requirements are completely unrelated. But dig deeper, and one finds that automation is crucial to provisioning and orchestrating resources across the total environment including any physical, virtual and cloud-based infrastructure to fulfill strategic, operational and tactical demand. The primary objective of most IT departments in moving to a Dynamic Data Center is to automate 80% of existing requests so that they can be fulfilled with minimal staff intervention and ensure that the other 20%, which are typically more complex and custom, can be given the attention and expertise they deserve. Automating such routine tasks as server provisioning and configuration management can make the IT department as a whole entirely more productive. Moreover, removing the human element where it is unnecessary significantly increases user satisfaction and speed of delivery and reduces risk because it decreases the manual errors, heavy redundancies and painful time lags synonymous with email- and ticket-based systems. And, while many enterprise IT departments have implemented an underlying service catalog technology, a comprehensive solution for service requests, subscription, delivery, cost allocation and measurement remains mostly elusive and an aspiration. But if automating self service for a traditional IT infrastructure is an ongoing goal, it is an absolute necessity for those seeking to evolve to one that includes a mixture of physical, virtual and cloud platforms. Only then can they address demand management across the entire environment and ensure that their resources are appropriately supporting that demand. The key is to fully automate service delivery today and leverage that foundation as an integral part of the infrastructure one where self-service extends to any and all technologies, including private and public clouds in the future. As a result, organizations can successfully optimize resources across the operational environment, freeing up additional working capacity to support ongoing and increasing business demand. To that aim, they must: 1. Centralize requests and automate delivery and tightly integrate the underlying technologies 2. Ensure process automation across the enterprise including departments, domains and systems 3. Automate fulfillment channels of business demand across multiple functional domains, including security, asset management and infrastructure management 4. Incorporate the service delivery strategy into the overarching cloud strategy in order to ensure a dynamic infrastructure 01
Four steps to the Dynamic Data Center Automating and integrating service catalog and service request delivery While a service catalog publishes standardized IT s offerings, it is only as effective as the technology and processes it supports. Too often, enterprises are marred by multiple request portals and inconsistent procedures that leave internal customers confused and frustrated. Systems backed by email communications and ticket applications feel like black holes because there is no visibility into status for users and an abundance of redundancies and time lags on both sides. What s more, this lack of standardization creates a situation where every request is treated as entirely new, leading to a tendency to reinvent the wheel and an IT environment where inconsistency and unapproved configurations are the norm and the cost of delivery is high. The answer is to first empower users with self-service capabilities that create necessary structure and enrich the overall experience in such areas as: Incident management Knowledge management Support automation Labs on demand Service requests/subscription and request fulfillment and provisioning Ensuring process automation across the enterprise Once the comprehensive underlying service technologies are in place, companies can cross business units and domains in order to orchestrate processes beyond IT and into the departments and functions necessary for execution. All necessary tasks, communications and status can be facilitated, managed and viewed throughout the enterprise from a centralized location, delivering a single version of truth and helping to coordinate and control work efforts. This reduces the time it takes to provision physical server and virtual machines and provides the necessary foundation for orchestrating service delivery across complex environments consisting of the cloud, service providers, suppliers and customers. Automating fulfillment channels of business demand across multiple functional domains Such a highly orchestrated environment also helps to connect the silos within an organization such that they no longer exist in terms of user experience and enterprise procedures. With automated service delivery, for instance, a single action can seamlessly trigger multiple actions and tasks across an organization s domains and without any additional human intervention necessary. 02
Incorporating the service delivery strategy into the cloud strategy Done right, a comprehensive cloud strategy addresses the specifics of what will be provisioned, as well as how it will be delivered. For instance, a private cloud might provide capacity for typical IT services and a public cloud might be employed when a specific operational group requires a quick, finite burst for a special project. If both technologies have been incorporated into the Dynamic Data Center, users can automatically provision these options as easily as they currently consume physical and virtual resources. This, in turn, facilitates the agility attracting enterprises to the cloud to begin with, essentially delivering on the promise of the technology. Moreover, the flexibility helps minimize overall IT complexity by allowing organizations to use a single tool to manage virtualization and cloud technologies from various vendors. Companies that have fully implemented CA Technologies service delivery automation solutions enjoy: A self-service web site for user IT requests and subscriptions Automatic enforcement of security and compliance policies Customizable policy-based fulfillment options covering: Self Manual Semi-automated Automated User visibility into status requests The ability to track resources and costs Optimization of resources to focus on the right things at the right time 03
About the solutions from CA Technologies CA Service Catalog, CA Service Desk with CMDB, CA Automation Suite for Data Centers and CA Workload Automation come together to deliver self-service and automation of IT request fulfillment, thereby reducing costs, better equipping users and improving overall customer satisfaction. More important, they help companies to: Centralize and consolidate request management systems for greater efficiency Provide transparency and visibility for service function, performance, cost and consumption Automate request SLA reporting and reduce manual efforts, errors and costs Standardize service definitions in business terms for better IT alignment Automate provisioning and de-provisioning of physical, virtual and cloud-based systems Automated workloads and manage processing dependencies CA Technologies service delivery automation solutions have helped organizations increase customer satisfaction ratings by as much as 80% while decreasing individual service requests costs from $78 each to $4 each. Contributing to this success are such unique capabilities as: A top-down view of business SLAs rather than bottom-up operational metrics A service catalog that uniquely automates service request, delivery, cost and measurement A 360-degree view of cost, quality and assets via out-of-the-box process and data integration, service request automation and incident, problem, change and asset management Enterprise-based cost allocation that is highly scalable and can calculate and show usage-based consumption across a multi-tenant global organization 04
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