Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. Cloud Brokerage Makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality

Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. Cloud Brokerage Makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality

Table of Contents 3 Demand for IT-as-a-Service Figure 1: Current IT Service Request Model 4 Turning it Around, Leveraging the Cloud Service Brokerage Figure 2: Cloud Services Broker: IT-as-a-Service 5 The Gravitant Cloud Services Brokerage Figure 3: Gravitant cloudmatrix platform 6 Customer Case Study: The State of Texas 9 Approaches to Implementing a CSB Figure 4: Cost comparison of three approaches 10 Speed Considerations Figure 5: Solution lifecycle 10 Getting Started Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 2

Demand for ITaaS Cloud computing is already having a profound impact on the way IT is done in Enterprises today. In many cases, cloud is proving to be a disruptive force. Smart CIOs are leveraging this disruption to enable a streamlined IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) model. ITaaS is a new business and operation model that allows IT to become a service provider and technology manager orchestrating all IT services cloud-based, virtual, hybrid, and internal dedicated services from one central location. The ITaaS model provides both business units and IT with several advantages. Business users gain the ability to easily and quickly provision a range of vetted services, both internal and external, via an integrated service catalog that supports chargeback and billing. Meanwhile IT gains several advantages, including the ability to continuously meet business demand through multi-sourced delivery models, optimize costs, manage security, and regain control of enterprise IT. The service broker role requires CIO s to pro-actively understand what a business needs to drive revenue and then to setup a catalog of chargeable services (internal and/or external) for business and IT consumption. The CIO organization s new role will transition to focus more on marketing services, cloud provider management, security, and governance. Over 70% of Executives want ITaaS According to 2012 IDC survey, over 70% of IT executives want ITaaS. However, they are held back from reaching this goal because they do not have sufficient tools and processes in place and the IT framework prevalent in most enterprises (as shown in the graphic below) is almost impossible to adapt to successfully operate in the complex cloud ecosystem. As a result, CIOs are experiencing a loss of control of IT governance and expenditure. A symptom of this is the rising amount of Shadow IT (as high as 30% in some companies) where individual departments or business units bypass IT and go straight to the public cloud. Results in Long lead times for new solutions (months to years) Significant leakage due to lack of control Large upfront capital investments Figure 1. Current IT Service Request Model Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 3

Turning it Around: Leveraging the Cloud Service Brokerage The Cloud Services Broker model is designed to deliver IT-asa-Service (ITaaS) centered around the concept of an Enterprise App Store as the new IT front office. The self-service storefront enables business users to match business requirements, craft solutions, match the right providers, provision services and control them. The Broker platform uniquely helps IT managers control complexity, interoperability and total cost of ownership trade-offs. The IT department can continuously meet business demand through multi-sourced delivery models while optimizing cost. This provides a balanced approach to standardizing and automating IT management and operational processes required to manage hybrid cloud portfolios. The best chance of success for transitioning to the modern IT organization is by engaging business users and helping meet their needs in the cloud. Key entry points: Figure 2. Cloud Services Broker: IT-as-a-Service Provide control and management of cloud assets: Business users who have already gone to Amazon (IaaS, PaaS) or any other SaaS cloud are worried about cost, security, billing and account management. IT can automatically discover and centralize the management of these assets to reduce risk for the enterprise. This very quickly establishes cloud governance (GovOps) processes and trust with users. Selecting the right clouds to solve business problems: Predict business needs and source the cloud providers to be on contract and in the enterprise store. Craft value added solutions by combining cloud services and make them available on the catalog/enterprise store for business consumption. This sets a new relationship model where business now looks to IT as a trusted advisor. Provide ability to quickly build and deploy apps across hybrid clouds: Use this opportunity to automate development, testing and deployment using choice of Iaas and Paas platforms. Enable quick solution configuration around apps for network, security, monitoring and centralized store access by automating Solution Ops. This effectively streamlines solution delivery using multi-sourced clouds using a single cloud management platform while managing complexity, interoperability and vendor lock in. Strategic enterprise planning: Use modeling and analytic tools to analyze what workloads and business transactions are a best fit for cloud and build roadmaps for cost optimization. Build predictive business demand profiles and optimize sourcing decisions to dynamically control demand and supply. As CIOs analyze investments, ITs emerging role as a service broker and provider, and not merely a technology manager, needs to be a central consideration. An IT framework that can deliver on ITaaS looks and operates very differently than the current IT framework. Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 4

The Gravitant Cloud Service Brokerage Gravitant makes IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) a reality for enterprises of all sizes through cloudmatrix, the most effective and production-hardened Cloud Services Brokerage and Management Platform in the market. cloudmatrix enables our customers to move from a slow service-request (trouble ticket) model to an agile design-to-order model. The results: improved time-to-value from months to minutes for new IT solutions as well as IT costs slashed by up to 50%. Effective use of the Gravitant cloud service brokerage can deliver savings in IT cost of up to 50%. Gravitant s cloud services Business Unit Organizations brokerage platform provides: Business CSB Roles Business Unit Head Business Users IT Procurement Managers R & D Sales & Marketing IT Organization Demand Operations Gravitant CloudMatrix CSB Platform Design Order Provision Control IT CSB Roles CIO IT Architects Systems Managers A single consumption interface for any combination of private, public and virtualized infrastructure. Model- driven design for applications across any combination of public and private clouds ERP IT Supplier Organizations Enterprise Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) Role: Co-ordinate and manage IT demand IaaS SaaS PaaS Managed Services ublic, Private & H brid Clouds P y Design and aggregate best fit IT solutions by using myriad of services Source and procure best value IT services to optimize tech spending Efficiently co-ordinate service provisioning, fulfillment and support across internal and external providers Control cost, SLA s & cloud/it resources and prioritize investments Continuously align the performance of demand & IT supply organizations Figure 3. Gravitant cloudmatrix Platform The ability to optimally consume cloud resources based on cost, capacity, capability, and security A reduction in skill requirements of staff using cloud services through a single portal The ability to choose the lowest cost infrastructure/ cloud provider for their applications Elimination of vendor lock in through choice Future proofing as cloud technology evolves Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 5

Customer Case Study: The State of Texas The State of Texas has an enterprise scale IT environment with an annual IT spend of over $6 Billion to support over 250 state agencies. The State CIO was eager to reduce costs and improve agility and saw cloud computing as an opportunity to achieve this. Multiple State of Texas agencies wanted to expand their opportunity to use cloud services, including comparing cloud offerings, architecting cloud solutions, and contracting and managing cloud services. Additional requirements included aggregating services from multiple providers, integrating existing technologies, enforcing audit and approval requirements, providing customization, consolidating billing, and managing costs. Plus, the agencies had to overcome pressing issues like vendor lock-in, VM sprawl, cost uncertainty, and procurement challenges. To find a solution, the agencies launched an ITaaS initiative in 2012 that enable the agencies to design, order, provision, and control all of their cloud services, including public, private, and hybrid. During the initiative s first year, State of Texas agencies were able to simulate cross-provider provisioning and estimate costs prior to deployment. The portal also allowed agencies to establish complete command and control of their cloud IT. The net result was saving 20 to 40 percent in IT costs, and improving agility by a factor of 5. The pilot program was so successful that it has now been extended to all 260 agencies at the State of Texas. Public Cloud Texas Cloud Service Portal Before cloud services platform: 9 month cycle time to deliver IT solutions Limited vendor and middleware options Frustrating and lengthy service request process Difficult to decipher cloud provider bills Unexpectedly high final costs After cloud services platform: < 1 month cycle time to deliver IT solutions 40% savings on cloud spend Choice of cloud vendors, PaaS, and services Visual cloud solution design with real time costing before provisioning Virtual Private Cloud Cloud Management Services Private Cloud cloudmatrix powered by: Managed Services Architecture & Migration Services servicematrix Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 6

Similar to the State of Texas, Gravitant customers have found that the Cloud Service Brokerage gives back control to IT in six important ways, including: centralized management and governance, centralized services procurement, interoperability among disparate services, data security, cost containment, and strategic planning through analytics and modeling. 1. From Shadow IT to Clear Blue Skies Among the primary drawbacks to cloud-based services is the lack of centralized visibility and control, because different business units are using different services, and often multiple services. Owing to the lack of centralized visibility and management, this phenomenon has been dubbed shadow IT. But what s also lurking in the shadows is a multitude of problems, because shadow IT purchases circumvented IT controls and put critical information at risk. What s more, the business units come to IT when they require support for their rogue purchases. To deliver ITaaS, IT needs a centralized way to discover, manage, and govern IT and cloudbased services to reduce risk across the enterprise. To wrangle them into one centralized view, CSB provides a portal with a single view of cloud-based services from internal or external providers. Further, the CSB portals have dashboards that provide centralized views of everything from cost trends, to cloud utilization, to capacity summaries. This provides visibility, control, and management of all cloud assets, virtual assets, hybrid assets, and internal IT services. 2. From Cloud Sprawl to Single Contained Storefront When no one is in control of which cloud-based services are purchased and by whom within a corporation, the potential to experience cloud sprawl and unnecessary cost is high. What s needed is to contain the services available within the enterprise in a way that allows every business units needs to be met, but that keeps these services balanced against overarching issues of security, interoperability, and cost management. CSBs deliver a solution store or service catalog containing all available service options offered within an enterprise, including virtual, third-party, and internal services. What s more, this solution store also delivers the ability to rapidly build solution configurations and deploy services quickly. Cloud Service Brokerage as a Bridge from Old IT to New IT While cloud adoption is rapidly growing, Gravitant understands that most enterprises will have mixed or hybrid IT environments. To handle IT operations in these hybrid environments, new ITSM capabilities and/or critical extensions will be required including: Enhanced Self-service Cloud Business Management Process Hybrid Operations Management Processes Hybrid Governance - new decision-making framework Gravitant s cloudmatrix integrates with current ITSM systems from vendors like HP, BMC, CA, Cisco, VMware and IBM to help enterprises transition from current IT to cloud IT. By providing a common consumption framework, Gravitant enables a bridge from current IT to cloud IT. Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 7

3. From Bare Apps to Complete IT solutions Cloud computing is often used for devops and new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) platforms have improved the velocity of app development. But when applications run in production, many additional factors need to be taken into consideration. For example, ITSM services need to be added these include backup, disaster recovery, networking, load balancing, security etc. In other words, the bare app is not enough it needs to be wrapped with services to make it into an IT solution. Furthermore, IT needs to figure out the best place to run the app from a cost and SLA perspective. Both of these capabilities are provided by a cloud services brokerage platform. 4. From Insecurity to Security Security is a key concern when dealing with cloud computing. CIOs are worried about how secure the clouds are in which their data is stored. This is a legitimate concern as the security policies of cloud providers vary significantly. But there are other security issues to consider also for example, who in the company can access the data (no matter where it is stored), how secure is the data during transmission, and what kind of protection there is from hackers. A well designed cloud service broker serves as a security hub which can provide: Routing of sensitive data to the most secure clouds in the ecosystem Subscription and role-based access control Single sign-on VPN services SSH key management Firewall configuration support 5. From IT Leakage to Cost Containment A key aspect of lowering cloud computing cost with a cloud service brokerage is the use of arbitrage. The CSB platform allows for the easy and normalized comparison of different cloud providers so that the customer can see the best cost for their particular application and workload needs. But even when the lowest cost provider is selected, there is a risk of further cost leakage in the chosen cloud provider environment. There are many ways that the adoption of public cloud services are creating cost inefficiencies including underutilized assets, inefficient sourcing, shadow IT, billing complexity, hidden costs, and lack of cost visibility. By employing a CSB model, IT can take back command and control of internal IT, external IT, and virtualization services to manage costs, charge backs, usage, and more. CSBs provide two critical centralized cost management capabilities: 1. An aggregate point for viewing and managing costs 2. Governance tools, including usage monitoring, billing management, payment processing, cost analysis. Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 8

6. From Cloud Utilization Hindsight to Foresight Among the strategic capabilities of a CSB is the ability to use analytics to model cost and usage performance and look at a variety of projections such as utilization, cost, and forecasted versus available capacity. This gives IT the ability to bring strategic enterprise planning to cloud-based services. Using the CSB portal, IT managers can use analytics tools to determine what workloads and are a best fit for cloud and build roadmaps for cost optimization. They can build predictive business demand profiles and optimize sourcing decisions to dynamically match demand and supply. They can simulate cloud adoption scenarios using predictive analytics for business applications and infrastructure resource needs. They can also forecast and establish demand, capacity, cost (TCO), and ROI baselines for each cloud solution and the internal and/or external cloud service platforms used. These reports can be provided to users across the enterprise and to vendors to align all parties on goals and implementation activities. Approaches to implementing a CSB You can get to a cloud service broker model in a number of different ways. Manual processes Leverage people and manual process to simulate the broker functions Integrating a bag of cloud management tools Leverage a number of different tools, infrastructure management, billing, procurement, service tickets etc and integrate the connection points between to try and automate the process A Turnkey platform (Gravitant cloudmatrix) Purchase a single tool that integrates all the business process and technology management capabilities into a single tool; Gravitant cloudmatrix You should also consider the time it takes to get each option up and running. 1. Manual Process: ~9-12 months 2. Integrating additional tools: 4-6 mo. 3. Gravitant cloudmatrix: ~1 month Gain insites from comparing the cost per service request against the three different models: Approach Cost Considerations Manual Process Integrating cloud mgmt. tools + custom dev $6000/svc request* $5000/svc request* Hard to find skills Slow, error prone Not transformative High custom R&D opex Maintenance burden Hard to find skills for custom dev work Multi-vendor Interoperability issues (weak APIs) Support issues (finger pointing) Gravitant cloudmatrix Figure 4. Cost comparison of three approaches <$2000/svc request* Turn key solution Proven platform, production hardened Lowest cost, fastest TTM alternative Experienced team behind it Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 9

Speed Considerations Another important consideration is the speed upon which a request can move through the entire application infrastructure lifecycle. For example, the diagram below compares a typical virtualization deployment timelines, a manual hybrid cloud management deployment timeline compared to a CSB compared with Gravitant s automated approach: Today s Enterprise with Virtualization > Nine Months Design > 3 months Order > 3 months Deploy 4 weeks Provision 6 weeks Changes 1-3 weeks Enterprise with Today s Hybrid Cloud Management ~ Six Months Design > 3 months Order 2 months Hours to days Hours to days Changes 1-3 weeks < One Month 2 weeks Days to weeks Hours to days Hours to days Hours to days Weeks Saved = More Revenue Earned An ideal broker compresses the entire lifecycle and automates the management of the cloud supply chai n Gravitant Cloud Service Broker Figure 5. Solution Lifecycle Getting Started Gravitant provides customers with a foundation for IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) transformation. We can ensure an effective and fast scale-out of enterprise-class cloud service in any enterprise organization and provide a comprehensive suite of services* including cloud strategy development, business assessment, service portfolio and catalog design, and organizational assessments. Other capabilities include: Workload identification and prioritization Work with you to develop ROI and TCO models to help identify and prioritize what workloads to move to the cloud., and develop an overall roadmap for migration to the cloud Design Access, Usage, Chargeback and Billing Policies Work with you to adapt and integrate your current policies and processes for the cloud. Combined with Gravitant s cloudmatrix platform, these services can help make IT as a Service a reality. For more information, contact us at sales@gravitant.com * Partner delivered in some cases Cloud Brokerage makes IT-as-a-Service a Practical Reality Copyright 2013 Gravitant, Inc. 10