Looking at what the public cloud providers offer and how they operate is instructive and serves as a model for the CIO as CSP.
What are the core competencies that need to be in place to operate as a CSP?
Well, first there are the basics:
Consumer self-service Consumers of IT resources must be able to self-service with no need to interact with another human as part of the resource request. To achieve this usually web interface with a service catalog of pre-packaged resources is used. This definitely does not mean sending an email off to a help desk requesting that a virtual machine be created on the requester's behalf.
Application abstraction from specific infrastructure. CSPs offer computing capability not specific hardware resources. To put it another way, the virtual machine provided via self-service may migrate around the cloud infrastructure, with no implied promise that it will reside on specific hardware.
Infrastructure funding separate from applications. Many CIOs "play the game" of getting funding for necessary infrastructure spending by tying it to specific application initiatives. Being a CSP means having a generalized pool of resources that applications use but are not tied to; Therefore funding for the infrastructure must be handled separately from application initiatives. Beyond this, one might observe that the overall level of infrastructure spend is likely to increase significantly.
Beyond the basics - The next set of implications are far more revolutionary and challenging for an IT organization, but getting them wrong will result in a failed initiative and a forced march to an external cloud provider.
More in Part II-Cheers
No comments:
Post a Comment