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Cross Functional Services: HCL

ITSM Approach for Clouds

Table of Contents
1.

Introduction ................................................................................................. 4

1.1. Emergence of Cloud Computing .................................................................... 4


1.2. Changing landscape of internal IT Infrastructure ............................................. 4
1.2.1.

Mainframe based Infra ....................................................................................... 4

1.2.2.

Heterogeneous Server based Infra....................................................................... 4

1.2.3.

Heterogeneous and distributed DC Infra ............................................................... 5

1.2.4.

Virtualization: Pre-cloud Era ................................................................................ 5

1.3. Changing Needs of IT Service Management .................................................... 5

2.

1.3.1.

Growing Complexity of Service Management equations .......................................... 5

1.3.2.

Growing Service Management needs.................................................................... 6

Cloud in Enterprise it Landscape .................................................................. 7

2.1. Internal/Private Cloud .................................................................................. 7


2.1.1.

Service Management Equation in private cloud ...................................................... 7

2.2. Hybrid Computing with One Cloud ................................................................. 8


2.2.1.

Service Management Equation in Hybrid model ..................................................... 9

2.3. Hybrid Computing with Multiple Cloud ...........................................................10


2.3.1.

Service Management Equation in Multi Cloud .......................................................10

2.4. Community Cloud and Service management Equations ...................................11


3.

HCLs ITSM approach for clouds ................................................................. 12

3.1. Foundation: HCL Best Practice .....................................................................12


3.2. Using HCL Gold Standards ...........................................................................12
3.3. ITIL background.........................................................................................13
3.3.1.

How ITIL updated with technology ......................................................................13

3.4. ITIL is applicable ........................................................................................14


3.5. Transforming ITIL Processes for Clouds.........................................................15
3.6. Process Engineering....................................................................................15
3.6.1.

Understanding process design ............................................................................15

3.6.2.

Same process across multiple vendors ................................................................15

3.6.3.

Multiple Processes across multiple vendors ..........................................................16

3.7. Process Integration.....................................................................................17


3.7.1.

4.

Process integration framework ...........................................................................17

Cloud and ITIL implementation.................................................................. 19

4.1. Preface to ITSM approach to cloud ...............................................................19

PROPOSAL

4.2. Service Delivery Chain in Cloud ....................................................................19


4.2.1.

Service Based view ...........................................................................................19

4.2.2.

Layer based view..............................................................................................20

4.3. Holistic picture with HCL Cloud Computing Architecture...................................21


4.4. Service Management Scheme and architecture: .............................................22

5.

4.4.1.

Key questions to ask .........................................................................................23

4.4.2.

Importance of Managed Object ..........................................................................23

Illustration of scheme and architecture ..................................................... 24

5.1. Business situation ......................................................................................24


5.2. Service scheme overview example ...............................................................24
5.3. Service Management architecture Example....................................................24
5.4. Process Design and Implementation Example ................................................25
6.

Typical scenarios debated .......................................................................... 26

6.1. Whose Incident it is? ..................................................................................26


6.2. About Continuity ........................................................................................26
6.3. Proactive Problem Resolution .......................................................................27
6.4. Service Economics......................................................................................27
6.5. Change management .................................................................................27
6.6. Service Level Management ..........................................................................27
6.7. Compliance and control ...............................................................................28
6.8. Application Operation..................................................................................28
6.9. Business Service management.....................................................................28

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1.
Introduction
PROPOSAL
1.1.

Emergence of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing grew out of the concept of utility computing. Essentially, utility
computing was the belief that computing resources and hardware would become a
commodity to the point that companies would purchase computing resources from a
central pool and pay only for the amount of CPU cycles, RAM, storage and bandwidth
that they used. These resources would be metered to allow a pay for what you use
model much like you buy electricity from the electric company. This is how it became
known as utility computing.
The fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud"
i.e. that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static
place(s). This is in contrast to the traditional computing where the processing takes
place in one or more specific servers that are known. However, it must be noted
that, the server location, place and controls are still known to someone who is a part
in service delivery chain.
Nonetheless, cloud computing is still a complex and dynamic IT Service production
and distribution system where different layers of service producing infrastructure are
controlled and managed by different entities.

1.2.

Changing landscape of internal IT Infrastructure

1.2.1.

Mainframe based Infra

Enterprise IT infrastructures formal first generation started with mainframe era.


Those IT Infrastructures were based on local data center in large corporate office.
Hardware of early computer systems was complex to operate and maintain, and
required a special environment in which to operate. Many cables were necessary to
connect all the components and methods to accommodate and organize these were
devised, such as standard racks to mount equipment, elevated floors, and cable
trays (installed overhead or under the elevated floor). Also, old computers required a
great deal of power, and had to be cooled to avoid overheating. Security was
important computers were expensive, and were often used for military purposes.
Basic design guidelines for controlling access to the computer room were therefore
devised.

1.2.2.

Heterogeneous Server based Infra

With the advent of client-server computing, during the 1990s, "servers" started to
find their places in the old computer rooms. The availability of inexpensive
networking equipment, coupled with new standards for network cabling, made it
possible to use a hierarchical design that put the servers in a specific room inside the
company. The use of the term "data center," as applied to specially designed
computer rooms, started to gain popular recognition about this time.
The boom of data centers came during the dot-com bubble. Companies needed fast
Internet connectivity and nonstop operation to deploy systems and establish a
presence on the Internet. Installing such equipment was not viable for many smaller
companies. Many companies started building very large facilities, called Internet data

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centers (IDCs), which provide businesses with a range of solutions for systems
deployment and operation. New technologies and practices were designed to handle
the scale and the operational requirements of such large-scale operations. These
practices eventually migrated toward the private data centers, and were adopted
largely because of their practical results.

PROPOSAL
1.2.3.

Heterogeneous and distributed DC Infra

Contemporary IT Infrastructure of enterprise includes wide range and variety of


servers, storage devices, network devices, security devices and software
components. Large enterprise will have multiple sets of data centers connected
together over variety of technologies such has dedicated link, VPN links, MPLS etc.
Datacenter design, build and operate has become a specialized discipline.

1.2.4.

Virtualization: Pre-cloud Era

Virtualization helps reduce complexity by reducing the number of physical hosts but
it still involves purchasing servers and software and maintaining your infrastructure.
Its greatest benefit is reducing the cost of that infrastructure for companies by
maximizing the usage of the physical resources.
While virtualization may be used to provide cloud computing, cloud computing is
quite different from virtualization. Cloud computing may look like virtualization
because it appears that your application is running on a virtual server detached from
any reliance or connection to a single physical host. And they are similar in that
fashion. However, cloud computing can be better described as a service where
virtualization is part of a physical infrastructure.

1.3.

Changing Needs of IT Service Management

Changing IT Infrastructure landscape led towards changing needs in IT Service


Management landscape. A formal help desk, for example, came only in late 80s and
early 90s.

1.3.1.

Growing Complexity of Service Management equations

I am using the terminology service management equation as the state of relational


equilibrium between the service producing systems and the people (organizations
and groups within) in the service delivery & support chain. It will always be
multidimensional. This term shall become increasingly significant as we talk about
service management for clouds. Further, it is important to understand the difference
between service delivery and service support the two disciplines described in ITIL
V2 books very clearly.
Client server computing also brought the huge surge in application portfolios.
Practically anything and everything could be computerized. Number of vendors also
grew rapidly. Variety of service started getting outsourced.
With the growth IT service portfolio, growth of users and growth of service providers,
the complexity of IT Service grew steeply. One element in the service landscape
could unknowingly impact the service from other element.

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PROPOSAL

1.3.2.

Growing Service Management needs

As the complexity of service management equations grows, the need to manage


those equations for the purpose of managing the services becomes even more
urgent and imperative. For example growing number of products and services is
creating a strong need of managing the compatibility matrix among those
components. While product compatibility matrix is very well understood and
analyzed, the service compatibility matrix in its real meaning has rarely been
appropriately analyzed.
The basic flaw in IT Service Management world is that technology management
is deemed as service management and thus the deployment of tools to manage the
technology is deemed as the process implementation. This Flaw is even more
expanded with clouds as more and more tools are coming in to manage clouds.
Technology management is a part of service management as it is the core part of
producing the service; however, it is not the service management. Does FedEx
focuses on cargo aircraft fleet management alone to manage the service? A true
service management will focus on managing the outcome, viz how a customer
(individual and organization) is realizing the benefit from the technology and will
continue to realize benefit so long as service is active or contracted.
The purpose of this document is to explain HCLs approach on IT service
management for Clouds.

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2.
Cloud in Enterprise it Landscape
PROPOSAL
2.1.

Internal/Private Cloud

Internal or private cloud emulates cloud computing on private networks. Private


cloud (also called internal cloud or corporate cloud) is a marketing term for a
proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services to a limited number
of people behind a firewall.
Advances in virtualization and distributed computing have allowed corporate network
and datacenter administrators to effectively become service providers that meet the
needs of their "customers" within the corporation.

Marketing media that uses the words "private cloud" is designed to appeal to an
organization that needs or wants more control over their data than they can get by
using a third-party hosted service such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) or
Simple Storage Service (S3).

2.1.1.

Service Management Equation in private cloud

There is a little change in the service management equation in this environment over
the legacy service management schemes. The little change would be more little or
less little depending upon what cloud offers internally. If it is a IaaS/PaaS cloud
then most probably application developer will be the cloud customer and this will
warrant some adjustment/variations in equations with that group only. If it is SaaS,
then the service delivery mechanism to end user will change. However, noting that
end user will still use the same end points, change could very well be invisible to
customer. We believe that the support mechanism will not change and internal IT
service Desk will remain unchanged.

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PROPOSAL

2.2.

Hybrid Computing with One Cloud

Rather than abandon the existing data centers and use the public cloud exclusively,
or, conversely, rely on private cloud only, and ignore the public cloud, the enterprise
may consider using a combination of private and the public cloud. This is called the
hybrid model. This allows a company to keep control of its key IT services while
leveraging cloud computing in places where it makes sense. For example, many
companies have found it economical to use Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) to
store things like images, videos, and documents. The hybrid model also lends itself
to an incremental approach.

Even if you think it makes sense to move most or all of your applications to the
cloud, it might seem too risky to move everything all it once. With a hybrid model,
you pick the low hanging fruit (like file storage) to move to the cloud first. Then after

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you become more comfortable with that deployment model, you can move more
significant parts of your application to the cloud.

PROPOSAL
2.2.1.

Service Management Equation in Hybrid model

There will be appreciable change in the service management equation.We are adding
one additional set in the existing service equation. I am using some modified ITIL
terminology to explain this impact.
EU SLA: The SLA between the IT and the business within the enterprise. Ens user
services will be governed by this SLA
SLA: SLA between a managed service provider and IT Organization. It may be same
as EU SLA in full IT outsourcing
UC: The contract between a product and product support vendor and IT organization
Internal OLA: OLA between internal groups within IT organization to support EU-SLA
External OLA: OLA between internal groups and groups of Managed Service provider
to support EU-SLA

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2.3.
Hybrid Computing with Multiple Cloud
PROPOSAL
This is an expanded version of Hybrid model where the cloud service providers are
more than one. It could be a common situation that
Enterprises are using the IaaS/PaaS service from Amazon for its application
management group
Same organization is using Salesforce.com for CRM applications that it being
used by its end users
Same organization is using E-Mail services for its end users from Google

2.3.1.

Service Management Equation in Multi Cloud

Service Management Equation dramatically scales up in complexity although the


basic rules remain the same.
When multiple companies are part in the service delivery chain then multiple groups
in different companies will be actors in customer owned service delivery processes.
It is not unusual that some of the service delivery processes are partly internal and
partly external and therefore the process ownership could be heterogeneous.
Multivendor ecosystem in traditional IT Service environment has been in existence
since long. As we move towards the cloud, this ecosystem will by default exist and
would be even more complex because vendors could be unknown and hidden behind
opaque layer.

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PROPOSAL

2.4.

Community Cloud and Service management Equations

A community cloud may be established where several organizations have similar


requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the benefits of
cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but
more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but may offer a higher level
of privacy, security and/or policy compliance.
Since it is a scaled down version of public cloud, same service management
equations apply.

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3.
HCLs ITSM approach for clouds
PROPOSAL
3.1.

Foundation: HCL Best Practice

HCL has methods and techniques that have consistently shown results superior to
those achieved with other means. Our best practices are designed to achieve highest
performance level in industry, we use these as a standard to equal or exceed
industry standards
Our best practice is derived from well established and proven industry framework
such as ITIL V2 and V3, CoBIT, CMM etc. These Frameworks are not the best Out Of
the Box.
There is, no practice that is best for everyone or in every situation, and no best
practice remains best for very long as people keep on finding better ways of doing
things. Value added implementation of the industry recognized framework
constitutes HCL best practice
Everybody has access to these frameworks but what makes out best practice the
best is the implementation. In HCL approach there is a huge focus on process
management. Processes are treated as the assets; because entire service outcome
rely on processes poor process will produce inconsistent services; inefficient
processes produce costly service and amateur process fail to produce professional
service.

3.2.

Using HCL Gold Standards

HCLs Gold Standard is a practical, strategic, and modular methodology for the
positive transformation of IT Service Management. One thing is certain. Tomorrows
IT will not look like todays IT. Tomorrows IT will move steadily toward the
insulation of customers from the complexity of the IT infrastructure. To achieve this
level of infrastructure abstraction you require automation, integration, and above all
else, an intelligently designed and managed flow of processes.

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PROPOSAL

HCL Gold Standard addresses all the three aspects of service viz Operate,
Governance and Technology.

3.3.

ITIL background

There are varieties of IT service management frameworks available in the market


and ITIL is among the most prominent and popular.
ITIL V1 was born was GITMM (Government Information Technology Management
Method) in 1986-87 but really became popular when V2 was published in year 2001.
It was a technology independent service management framework and was
addressing the needs of IT service management where all IT operations were
managed by in-house IT departments.
IT Outsourcing to managed service provider became popular and increased rapidly
after 2001and thus changing the legacy organization structure. Most of the
guidelines on ITIL implementation are based on single enterprise having multiple
silos.ITIL process and functions are applicable across different towers. ITIL is
definitely binding those silos with one process.
IT Organization has multiple suppliers for managed services. Although ITIL has
capability to bind the silos across different companies, but implementation of ITIL is
difficult in such situation because of lack of implementation guidelines for such
business situation.

3.3.1.

How ITIL updated with technology

Lifespan of service is hugely longer than the lifespan of technology. In relative term,
service does not change but technology changes; however, the technology impacts
the notion of service as it impacts the manner in which the service is delivered. ITIL
has kept itself current with the emerging technology trend.

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ITIL Ver 1: Mainframe era. Technology class oriented guidance


ITIL Ver 2: Internet era and distributed/client server computing. Guidance
organized around service management discipline
ITIL Ver 3: Ubiquitous computing era. Guidance organized around service
lifecycle state

PROPOSAL

In next section we shall clarify how ITIL is applicable for clouds.

3.4.

ITIL is applicable

Cloud computing grew out of the concept of utility computing. Essentially, utility
computing was the belief that computing resources and hardware would become a
commodity to the point that companies would purchase computing resources from a
central pool and pay only for the amount of CPU cycles, RAM, storage and bandwidth
that they used. These resources would be metered to allow a pay for what you use
model much like you buy electricity from the electric company. This is how it became
known as utility computing.
The fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud"
i.e. that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static
place(s). This is in contrast to the traditional computing where the processing takes
place in one or more specific servers that are known. However, it must be noted
that, the server location, place and controls are still known to someone who is a part
in service delivery chain.
Nonetheless, cloud computing is still a complex and dynamic IT Service production
and distribution system where different layers of service producing infrastructure are
controlled and managed by different entities.
On the other hand ITIL books document best practices for managing the complex
and dynamic business of delivering IT services. They are not a theory nor a
standard, nor a detailed how-to, but a collection of what actually works.
In other words, the core guidance and concept of ITL can be tailored to design the
Service Management processes for IT Service management environment of clouds.
HCL knows how to apply ITIL for cloud. HCL best practice includes several aspects
and guidance for implementing ITIL in CCE and multi vendor environment.
Just because you have cloud, does not mean that things are not going to go wrong.
And if they do go wrong, what processes are you going to use to fix them? Are you
going to call them something different from incident management, from problem
management? Do you make changes in cloud? Are you not going to call it change
management?
The argument that ITIL does not apply to the cloud, is in fact a cop-out from the
people who are developing cloud solutions to basically get rid of controls because
this is a new technology not realizing that ITIL is technology independent
framework.
Cloud will of course demand strong built-in controls around Event management and
that is again prominently defined in Operation part opf ITIL V3

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3.5.
Transforming ITIL Processes for Clouds
PROPOSAL
ITIL for Cloud vary in scale and complexity as one logical process span across one or
more systems.
In order to transform the service management processes that were designed for
legacy IT Infrastructure based service, two basic techniques are used and those are
described here.
Process Engineering
Process Integration

3.6.

Process Engineering

Process engineering technique breaks the core of processes into multiple sets of
tasks surrounded by key characteristics input, output, rules and roles
Tasks are mapped to roles across different organizations, input and outputs of the
tasks are governed by the OLA where input becomes the right of the task
performer and output becomes the obligation of the task performer
If the process runs in the multiple systems then rules govern the protocol of data
and action sharing

3.6.1.

Understanding process design

In order to design a process first gain an understanding of basic process components


such as
Task: An assigned piece of work often to be finished within a certain time. Do
not confuse with activity. For example In Incident Management Process one task
is register customer call is a task
Input: Something (information/event/data etc) that is fed in for the purpose of
transformation into another form or characteristic. Trigger is a special kind of
event input that initiates the task execution. For example in Incident
management process Customer call or e mail (trigger), Incident data (issue
description, symptom etc are input
Output: Something that is transformed from input by virtue of the task
execution. For example Ticket number is out put of the task explained above. The
final output of Incident Management Process, however would be a resolution.
Rule: Prescribed guide for regulating the task execution. This includes policy A
guide for thinking. Rule is mandatory prescription and policy is non mandatory
direction. Ticket can not be created without a valid badge ID is the rule and
Severity value of ticket will be governed by SLA document is the policy
Role: Part played by the task performer. Do not confuse with title or designation.
In above example the person who created the ticket, performed the role of Help
Desk Analyst

3.6.2.

Same process across multiple vendors

If a same process runs across multiple vendors then a task output will be the point of
entry for the vendors part for the next task.

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PROPOSAL

Task connection points will be the handshake


measurements will be done along these lines.

3.6.3.

between

two

vendors

and

Multiple Processes across multiple vendors

Connection points as stated above will break and connected via a separate process
altogether.

SLA/OLA
Measurement for
Vendor 2

SLA /OLA
Measurement for
Vendor 1

Vendor

Vendor

Vendors will be measured by individual processes.

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3.7.
Process Integration
PROPOSAL
Process Integration is one of the key techniques to implement multi vendor ITIL.
Process Integration is a technique of attaining close and seamless coordination and
interaction of processes.
Integration makes connection of two or more processes in harmony and logical
manner as the tasks within the process are connected in logical manner.Process can
share the data and even actions with each other. Integrated Processes are
significantly more effective than sum of individual process in isolation.

3.7.1.

Process integration framework

HCL has established a process integration framework based on the process


relationship defined in ITIL. The driving theme of the framework is
Each process is obligated to deliver some input (trigger or data) to other process.
For example in many conditions, if Incident is resolved with a work around,
Problem management process ought to be triggered. Incident management is
obligated to provide this trigger along with the data of symptom, diagnosis and
observation about the incident.
Is process has right to expect some input from other process to be effective. For
example capacity Management process must receive utilization data from Event
management process.

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In the above diagram the named connection defines the input and output interface
between the processes. Each process creates and maintains the data during its
operation a, that can be shared with other processes.

PROPOSAL

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4.
Cloud and ITIL implementation
PROPOSAL
4.1.

Preface to ITSM approach to cloud

In ITIL there are two different kinds of approaches for IT service management. I
will call first approach as service factory approach which is a prominent theme of IT
IL V2. You can think of data centers as IT service manufacturing factory where
variety of machines and gears are used to produce IT service. This service is
delivered to consumer station via network pipes.
You simultaneously follow two
sets of processes to produce the service and support the service and that is how
service delivery and service support disciplines are described in ITIL V2 books.
The service life cycle approach talks about the states or phases in cyclic manner and
focus on the process to manage the state. This is what is prescribed in ITIL V3.
In order to implement IT service management for cloud we combine this two
approaches and add a pragmatic implementation focus.
Cloud eco-system is by design a multi-vendor and multi-service provider. Therefore,
all the basic principles that we described in multivendor ITIL do apply here as well.

4.2.

Service Delivery Chain in Cloud

4.2.1.

Service Based view

Typically Cloud Service Delivery Chain will include the following


Service Creator
Service Aggregator
Service Delivers
Service Consumer
Service bill payer

This chain can be more complicated as shown below because


Within the Service Aggregator role, there could be one or more service integrator
(Or Aggregator can also do some level of integration)
Within Service Deliverer role there could be Service integrator role (Or Deliverer
can also do some level of integration)

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Within each role there could be possibility of outsourcing, For example Service
deliverer may outsource the service support

PROPOSAL

The situation is analogous to product business where there are different roles like
designer, manufacturer, distributor, stockist, dealer, retailer etc; however the big
complexity is because of difference between product and service.

4.2.2.

Layer based view

If we stack the layers in service deliver infrastructure in cloud computing, regardless


of the location just view from the logical abstraction the view will be as shown
below-

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PROPOSAL

4.3.

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Holistic picture with HCL Cloud Computing Architecture

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4.4.
Service Management Scheme and architecture:
PROPOSAL
The picture is very complicated but we will create a picture of services in the
ecosystem to develop the service management scheme that will lead to the service
management architecture. Some process lifecycle will be local and some will be
global. Service Management scheme is derived from a good understanding of Service
Equation as defined in section 1.3.1
Scheme will provide the ecosystem approach for all the processes for all the role and
architecture will be elaborated for specific set of processes applicable to specific role
Generic Approach Consideration
The Service changes its form as soon as it crosses the boundary of a role
Service provided by creator to aggregator is different than the service
provided by aggregator to deliverer and so forth
Component up view of service will start from creator and will gradually fade as
it passes the boundary of role likewise the Service Down view will fade
towards creator

Sample Example
Service Creator
IaaS, PaaS or SaaS creator would
create respective offering.
Their
critical success factors would be
Event, Incident, Problem, Availability
and Capacity management
Their
CMDB
will
be
primarily
component based.
Self
help
portal
to
aggregator/deliverer will bring in
significant
efficiency
and
value
addition in service
Service Deliverer
All
operational
process
with
multivendor process management
will be critical success factor
IT
Service
Continuity
will
be

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Service Aggregator
Service
Architecture,
standards,
portfolio
and
service
catalogue
management will be the critical
success factors.
Service Continuity will be owned by
aggregator and would be most
complex because of distributed
supplier
CMDB will be service instance
based and a layer above that.
Supplier management will bring in
competitive advantage
Service Bill payer/Consumer
Business alignment and Service
Strategy would be critical success
factors along with organization
design, architecture standards and

contractual
obligation
and
underpinned
with
aggregators
contract
CMDB will be service based with no
visibility to components - In fact it
will be more a OMDB of Managed
Objects
Request
fulfillment
and
Access
control automation will bring in
significant
value
addition
and
efficiency

PROPOSAL

4.4.1.

policies.
Service Level management and
service catalogue Management will
be bring in values.

Key questions to ask

Before you develop any service management scheme you must have answers to the
following key questions
Who are the consumers/users of the service For example, the business
situation and the scheme and process considerations will be entirely different
when your customer is a Service Deliverer and further passing on(with value
addition) vs a customer who is using the service himself.
What is my role in Service delivery chain? You may have multiple role and the
scheme as well as the process scope will differ from role to role.
What exactly is the service? If you are able to define Service exactly with its
attribute, you will be able to understand what need to be managed. Often the
product is termed as the service, for example Virtual machine is not a service(it
is a product). To make it a service you need to bundle it certain level of
functionality, availability, performance, support response, resolution etc. A
complete bundle will be deemed as service by customer. However, if you are
creator then product is more closure to service by itself.
What are the primary and supporting processes I need?
What is the process boundary and ownership
What are the process interface

4.4.2.

Importance of Managed Object

Traditional ITSM has been relying on CMDB for effective service management.
However, in cloud environment, Managed Objects will become more important for
aggregator and deliverer role and OMDB will be the central focus.
A managed Object would be the abstracted representation of technical infrastructure
as seen by and for the purpose of management.
CMDB Manages CI. Focus is on CIs
administrative
attribute
and
administrative state.
Typical CI status are asset lifecycle
status

received,
deployed,
maintenance, retired

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OMDB manages Managed Objects. Focus


is operational management attributes
and operational state
Typical MO States are initializing,
running, hung, shutting down, off-line,
dead

5.
Illustration of scheme and
PROPOSAL
architecture

5.1.

Business situation

ABC IT Organization has chosen external IaaS cloud service from a service deliverer
company XYZ. The Service Consumer is the Infra Group of ABC IT
Within ABC IT, Infra group prepares platform and thus becomes aggregator and
deliverer of PaaS to application management team
Application Operation Group operates and support applications and thus become the
service deliverer
For end user, it is not Cloud; it is local data center run service

5.2.

Service scheme overview example

Service equations will relate the following elements


ABC IT Organization: No Change in the equation, see section 2.1.1. They
continue to be accountable to business and responsible to end user for the same
set of service
ABC IT Service End Users: No Change in Equation. They continue to receive the
same set of service in same manner
Application Management Team of ABC IT: Change in the equation. Instead of
only internal OLA, they will deal with external OLA also. This additional burden
will be more than compensated by gaining flexibility and getting relieved on
platform capacity planning
Infra Team of ABC IT: Change in equation with respect to OLA but gains in
outsourcing the hardware capacity planning.
XYZ IaaS Provider: New entry in service equation
ABC organizations end users services will be governed by traditional ITIL processes.
IaaS will not be visible in Service catalogue but it will be in CMDB
Event management will be applicable to VM managed object and layers above
(applications)
For Incident management IaaS issue resolution owner will be ABC IT Infra Group
Capacity management will focus on Business capacity and application sizing
SLM will be governed by HCL multivendor SLA-OLA framework

5.3.

Service Management architecture Example

ABC IT Infra Group and external IaaS provider will have Service Deliverer and
Service consumer relationship. Service catalogue will have entry like
Provisioning instances
Provisioning images

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Provisioning storage
Managing assets in asset DB

PROPOSAL

Each delivered instance will become a service item


Each service item will have attributes like Instance name, IP address, Created date,
Running Duration, Status, Owner etc
Self Service Catalogue will be functional service list that will allow consumer to do
the management functions

5.4.

Process Design and Implementation Example

Self Service from IaaS provider will provide the following


Managing Instance
Change the name of the instance
Extend the expiration date
Reboot the instance
Delete the instance
Create an image based on the instance
Managing security keys
Managing IP
Managing VLAN
Managing Image
Provisioning Image
Account Administration
For CMDB of ABC IT, IaaS data will form a MDR and typical record will include
Name of the instance
Expiration information
Operating system of the instance.
The primary IP address associated with the instance.
The secondary IP addresses associated with the instance.
Server size of the instance.
Storage disk size of the instance.
Host name of the instance.
Image from which the instance has been created.
Date of creation of the instance.
Status of the instance.
Originator that requested the instance.
Price charged for the instance per UHR.
Running time elapsed since the instance has been provisioned (in hours).
Instance tags.
Notifications about the instance event.
Hardware profiles will not be the part of Service Asset and Configuration
Management (SACM) system

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6.
Typical scenarios debated
PROPOSAL
The debate is based on the questions that are commonly asked. I will draw some
analogy from other industries to make a point of view and opinion

6.1.

Whose Incident it is?

Scenario: We have a priority one outage. How do you check Clouds current
availability? Can your service desk operator open an incident ticket in their system or
must they hang on an 800 number? Can you open it right away so they look at it in
parallel with you or will they only accept it once your technical staff has traced the
problem out into the Cloud? Can your diagnostic systems open the incident ticket
automatically? How do you track the status of the incident? How much information
can you see? Who has it, what do they think, what are the estimated times Etc.
Answer
Cloud did not change any equation in these scenarios. Just think of your Telecom
service as Cloud and in fact they are. What do you do if the telecom service is down
and that is causing priority one outage in your organization?
In other words these are the questions to be asked not after you started using cloud
service but before you signed the contract. Every contract has some support SLA so
there will be one for cloud service as well.
The answer lies in the following
End to end Incident Management of end user organization and its Service Desk
Incident Management of Service Deliverer and its support center with defined
boundary and how it interfaces with process above and process below
Problem and Availability Management of Service Creator and its command center

6.2.

About Continuity

Scenario: You are preparing the disaster recovery plan (DR) for the new system
that includes IaaS. Do you have access to your IaaS's DR plan? Who do you talk to
and what is the process to dovetail their plan with yours? If either party changes
their plan what does that trigger?
Answer
This question is challenging the basic premise of cloud service. Cloud is one of the
emerging tools for DR itself. In fact there is no concept of DR for cloud because it is
by design disaster tolerant. You will base your DR plan based on granted fact that
cloud service provider is the right vendor in the business. Probably, what is
disaster in traditional term would be catastrophe in cloud context. For Cloud
Computing would rather be a catastrophe to impact your service and business does
not think of catastrophe, it is an implied risk in business all the time. (What if all the
doctors are sick in your hospital?)
The answer lies in the following
Your Service Strategy and your service sourcing strategy

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Your DR plan based on above strategy

PROPOSAL
6.3.

Proactive Problem Resolution

Scenario: The XaaS provider has a problem. They are fast running out of resources
and your service will be impacted within hours. How do they know who to contact?
How do they contact them? What will be your response?
Answer
This question is again conditioned by the mindset of traditional computing. There are
many things that might be happening in your data center but those things rarely
happen in cloud environment. And when those rare occasion come; cloud service
provider has established methods to deal with the. It is their business to deal not
yours.

6.4.

Service Economics

Scenario: Your organization wants to move from per-user cost allocation to pertransaction. Do the reports from the service provider tell you enough to do this?
What is involved in getting the reports changed?
Answer
Variety of cost models are available to pick from. The situation is very similar to
Telecom service providers who offer variety of service plans and switching option.

6.5.

Change management

Scenario: The service provider is planning a major upgrade of their SAN. Do they
need to notify you of the planned change? What influence should that have on your
forward schedule of change? What contingencies are required at your end? What
contingencies have they agreed to have in place?
Answer
Service providers will routinely upgrade their service delivery infrastructure and they
will routinely communicate about their plans to do so. For example telecom
companies have been upgrading the links and circuits and hubs. Airlines are
upgrading their aero planes with new entertainment systems routinely. WiFi on board
has been a routine upgrade. They planned these in such a manner that the service is
not impacted.

6.6.

Service Level Management

Scenario: Your customer wants an improvement in their service levels, e.g.,


increased availability or expanded support hours. How do you determine the knockon improvements required in your agreement with the service provider? How do you
negotiate that and what algorithm will they use to price it? XaaS is supposed to be
about increased flexibility but outsourcing has a history of decreasing flexibility at a
business level with situations like this. Sometimes the increased charges are

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prohibitive because the pricing terms for changes were never agreed up front, and
you have to go back to the customer to say you cant deliver.

PROPOSAL
Answer

This more a business/commercial question rather than service management


question. Service providers keep on rolling variety of promotions and you might as
well feel that you got stuck with old opportunity against new opportunity.

6.7.

Compliance and control

Scenario: The auditors are in town. They want to see the physical facilities. How
many sites will you need to show them? Can your auditors have access to the XaaS
providers buildings? What needs to be done to arrange this?
The Cloud may well spread your infrastructure to new countries. You will need to
check whether your existing auditors can service that. They will of course want to
know about the security, privacy, continuity and other capabilities of your XaaS
providers, too. Will ISO 20000 or other certification for the providers suffice? If not,
what information is required and are you confident of the availability, timeliness and
quality of the answers from the XaaS provider? They could fail your audit for you.
Answer
Different industry has different kind of compliance requirements. Services are
designed to meet those requirements. Many solutions are evolved as the new law
comes into force. Regulatory compliance requirement provide sufficient time to
redesign product/service to meet those requirements.
Products and service
producers are sensitive as well sensible to market needs. One example is acceptance
of electronic signature in financial industry.

6.8.

Application Operation

Scenario: A new version of the application is in stress testing. Your application


testers are getting a puzzling performance bottleneck. What tools are provided for
them to see into the Cloud? Who from the XaaS provider will work with them to
assist? What will it cost? What does it cost to generate really large temporary
datasets or transaction rates for volume testing?
Answer
During the application portability assessment, these questions are brought up and
addresses by the service providers

6.9.

Business Service management

Scenario: Your Company has changed its strategy and is now expanding into
Europe. What about data privacy regulations you dismissed as irrelevant?
Answer
See the answer to 6.7

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