White Paper
Customer-Centric
Cloud Provisioning
White Paper
Customer-Centric Cloud Provisioning
Most IT organizations
tend to think more
about infrastructure
-centric activities
that are not clearly
connected with
business value.
Introduction
Most businesses today are completely dependent on IT. Yet most IT organizations cannot
articulate their costs and benefits in terms of business value. They tend to think more
about infrastructure-centric activities that are not clearly connected with business value
and hence are of little interest to the business. IT is not perceived as a business asset but
rather as a liability to be managed.
Instead of asking what cloud means to you, think about what cloud means to your
customers: self-service, flexible, efficient, and reliable shared infrastructure serving up
on-demand services with a clearly defined cost structure. Understanding your customers
and these expectations are key in understanding how to deliver on them.
This document discusses how self-service cloud provisioning can serve as a pragmatic
customer-centric approach for managing the proliferation of public and private clouds. It
discusses customer expectations, critical success factors, and key metrics required for
a successful implementation of such an offering.
Infrastructure-Centric Virtual Sprawl
Virtual machines carry many of the same sources of management overhead associated
with physical servers. Administrators must keep track of who owns them, what they are
being used for, how they are configured, and what resources they require. Because
virtual machines are so easily created, they rapidly proliferate. Eventually the accumulation
of this management overhead exceeds the capacity of administrators, and virtual sprawl
fully sets in. IT spends more time maintaining virtual infrastructure than servicing its
customers. The resulting bottleneck creates unplanned expenses, delays, and
eventually stalled projects. Yet virtual sprawl is not caused by cloud technologies; it
is the result of inadequate management exasperated by the ease with which cloud
technologies proliferate.
This serves to illustrate that effective adoption of public and private cloud is less about
bottoms-up cloud technologies and more about top-down consistent operational
engagement and IT governance. To be successful, IT will require a customer-centric
approach to service delivery that encompasses traditional IT services as well as cloud
technologies. This in turn fuels demand for effective policy-driven automation to
streamline delivery, contain proliferation, and manage cost.
IT should aspire to demonstrate that its services contribute to the end goals of its
customers. However, most IT departments spend their time managing the needs of
the infrastructure. This leaves very little time for the innovation required to service the
business. Yet the infrastructure must be managed. So the challenge lies in transforming
the infrastructure-centric focus of IT into a new identity based on innovation, integrity,
and customer intimacy.
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Customer-Centric Cloud Provisioning
The goal of cloud
provisioning is to
create structure
and value around
customer interaction
that strives to elevate
the relationship to
one of greater value.
White Paper
Cloud Provisioning Reference Architecture
It is not unusual for customers to tell ServiceNow that it takes their administrators minutes
to create a new virtual asset from a base image. However, the typical hand-off time to the
requesting user averages 7-10 days. This huge gap from creation to hand-off is largely
filled with empty time: People blocked waiting for resources and brokering the request
between teams prior to hand-off to the requesting user. These users do not care where
their request is hung or the technical fulfillment process. They care about whether or not
their request was understood and when it will be fulfilled.
Figure 1 - Cloud Provisioning Reference Architecture
The Cloud Provisioning Reference Architecture (Figure 1 above) presents an integrated
approach to cloud provisioning. It starts with the customer and illustrates how core
IT Operations and Governance processes should be aligned to support them. The
Operations path aligns customers with IT Operations Management (ITOM) processes
and tools focused on consistent and reliable service delivery. The Governance path
illustrates how IT establishes control and accountability, makes decisions, manages risk,
and communicates outside of IT. Operations and Governance should not be separate
experiences for IT, they should be aligned with the customer and operate from a common
data-driven understanding of services and operational processes – the configuration
management database (CMDB).
Know Your Customer
Successful cloud provisioning starts with knowing your customers and their expectations.
Ensure that everyone has a clear and consistent view of the services IT offers. Workshops
targeted at creating structure and service-centric alignment can be helpful. Who should
be involved? IT staff, management, and especially customers of IT should participate.
Keep the meetings “top-down” focused and strive to establish a clear and consistent
view of what a service catalog is and what it will deliver.
Do not simply understand what virtual resources your customers want. Seek to
understand why they want them. Too often, cloud provisioning projects are designed
to minimize the interaction between IT and its customers.
Offer virtual resources that match customer demand; do not simply throw self-service
automation at the customer. The goal of cloud provisioning is not to avoid interacting
with customers; it is quite the opposite. The goal is to create structure and value around
customer interaction that strives to elevate the relationship to one of greater value.
Understand how your customers want to pay for the services they consume. It is a
common misconception that modern IT is not ready for next-generation subscription
billing models. In reality, many IT organizations are finding that their business partners
have already begun paying for these services from external providers. Options IT could
offer include pay-as-you go plans, subscriptions, fixed price plans, and even free
services. Where possible, base plans on usage, not on the cost of the infrastructure.
Remember that customers think in terms of services and the value they derive from
them, not infrastructure and the cost it imposes.
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Customer-Centric Cloud Provisioning
The service
catalog should
deliver a uniquely
identifiable and
consistent user
experience for
customers to request
any and all services
IT offers.
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Self-Service
Establish a service catalog as the “front door” to IT. It should deliver a uniquely identifiable
and consistent user experience for customers to request any and all services IT offers.
Do not force customers to approach the catalog on IT’s terms. Create an initial user
experience that is simple and well aligned with the business. It is not unusual for
ServiceNow customers to redesign the external appearance of their service catalog to
align with corporate branding. This sends a clear message that IT services are offered in
support of the business.
Promote the service catalog as the single user experience of IT that everyone can rally
around. Clearly articulate the criteria for establishing services in the service catalog.
Each service should have a clearly identified owner and Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Remind everyone that the service catalog has not been created as a way for IT to
request services for itself. Develop and maintain a list of services with clearly defined
owners, supporting IT components, service models, configuration Items, SLAs, and
subscribing customers.
Services should be characterized in terms of service levels and desired outcomes by the
customer. What service am I getting? How much will it cost? How will it be customized
to meet my unique needs? What sort of availability, response time, and support will I
experience? What operational support processes are in place to support me?
Design services that meet the specific needs of established consumer groups. The
technology should always support the need of the customer. What the service needs to
do is more important than how the underlying technologies are implemented to deliver
the solution.
A leading indicator of a well-designed service is the amount of free-form information users
have to provide to characterize their requests. Consider a scenario where a requesting
user submits a request via an email message. Someone from IT has to read the email
and interpret the user’s request. Since all requests submitted in this fashion could be
drastically different, the resulting deliverable will be unique to the requestor and hence
highly customized and manually delivered. Had there been a well-designed service that
met users’ specific needs, there would be no need for a highly customized service.
Requests could be fulfilled via automation.
Incrementally add products and services to the service catalog as you demonstrate value
to the business. Do not over-commit and under-deliver. Remember that trust is slowly
earned over time but quickly lost when commitments are not kept.
Automate Everything
Simply put: Get IT out of the way! Automate the fulfillment of services as completely as
possible. Automated services will be delivered more promptly, provide a more consistent
customer experience, and have a lower cost structure than those delivered manually.
Automated services can scale capacity up or down at a speed that more closely matches
customer demand than manually delivered services. This makes efficient use of elastic
resources, permitting services to scale on demand. Customers can add or remove
resources as needed without the manual intervention of IT.
Hide implementation details and enable a completely automated response to a self-service
request. For example, technical workflow associated with automated provisioning of
virtual resources can produce huge amounts of data. These details are only meaningful to
IT; only key stages in the delivery are relevant to self-service users looking to understand
when their orders will be completed.
There should be little need for customers to know their requests are being fulfilled
against an elastic pool of shared resources. The self-service user experience should be
sufficiently customized so as to give the impression of individuality to the consumer.
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Customer-Centric Cloud Provisioning
When new
infrastructure
and services such
as virtual machines
are deployed,
they should carry
with them all IT
policies needed
to manage them.
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IT Operations Management
IT Operations Management (ITOM) has traditionally been a challenge for IT. Disparate
management tools used within technology silos have rarely been consistently integrated
into IT operational processes. As a result, IT Operations seldom has the customer focus
needed to connect infrastructure-centric activities with its customers. This reinforces the
negative perception of IT as a cost-center rather than a center for agility, innovation, and
business value.
Consider a scenario where a provisioning request for a virtual resource takes 10 minutes
to fulfill. Then another request for the same resource takes 30 minutes to fulfill. Then
another request takes 2 days to fulfill. The “root cause” of the variance in delivery
times could easily be the workload and priorities of engineers sent to fix failures in the
provisioning process. Self-service users do not care about this. All they see is that for
the same request IT took anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 days to complete the work.
IT Operations should have a clear directive to provide a predictable and consistent user
experience. Work should be prioritized according to customer service levels, not the
individual priorities of technology silos. When service commitments are out-of-bounds,
IT Operations should focus on restoring service as a first priority.
When new infrastructure and services such as virtual machines are deployed, they should
carry with them all IT policies needed to manage them. This could include VM leases
or default change management policies based on the environment where the VM is
provisioned. Sometimes service catalog items will have a “managed” or “unmanaged”
attribute associated with their cost structure. Managed services include a commitment
of service from IT, along with increased cost for this commitment. The costs and level of
management should balance one another to meet customer expectations. Unmanaged
services may have a lower subscription cost but, in contrast to managed services, come
with no commitment of service beyond what IT is prepared to include in the base service price.
In addition, the need for managed change and automated systems configuration is
ever-present in an agile IT infrastructure. IT needs to understand how to make changes
without disrupting services.
IT Service Management
Support the services in the service catalog using best practice processes. This almost
goes without saying. However, cloud provisioning projects built in a separate silo from IT
processes typically wind up focused more on technical fulfillment of requests rather than
how to take care of customers. Do not forget that the concept of virtual sprawl discussed
earlier is a consequence of poor management of cloud resources.
In many cases, the role of IT has become highly devalued. Business partners have
opted to contract directly with external service providers rather than do business with
their legacy IT partners. However, this can be little more than a symptom of a broader
problem. Cloud services are much like virtual machines. They are typically easy to
provision but carry with them management debt that, when integrated across the
business, can rapidly become significant.
Treat the service catalog as a commercial web shopping experience. Through reporting,
understand what products customers are ordering and the performance of automation to
deliver them. Proactively study consumption of the services offered in the catalog; make
adjustments as needed to optimize their utilization and drive customer satisfaction.
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Customer-Centric Cloud Provisioning
What is more
important than
an impressive list
of metrics is the
reason for collecting
metrics and
acceptance of these
measurements by
the business.
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CMDB
The CMDB is a fundamental component of the ITIL Configuration Management process.
It is also a key component of the single system of record for a customer’s interaction with
IT. It should contain the information needed to operationally manage and govern these
services including, but not limited to:
• The nature of the services and the terms of their use
• The cost of the services to IT
• The cost of the services to IT’s customers
• Which customers are eligible to request specific IT services
• How the services are delivered and who supports them
• Instances of requests for the services and their status
• Information about the status of persistent services (such as VMs), what they are
being used for, and when they will be retired
• The configuration of infrastructure elements that support the service
Without a CMDB, IT has to constantly maintain records (spreadsheets, etc.) and
manipulate data in disparate systems in order to deliver services. Reporting becomes a
massive endeavor to integrate scattered data. Moreover, without a consistent definition
of the services IT supports, there is only limited opportunity to deploy automation.
Logically linking the services in the service catalog and CMDB components provides
automation the guidance needed to fully unlock the value of ITIL processes.
Metrics of Success
Public and private cloud provisioning driven by automation will make rich data available
for use in building reports. This data (essentially usage metrics) can drive multiple
payment models used for measuring and accounting for services. This in turn can be
used to create different pricing plans and models. Look to the CMDB to house this data
and provide context for the services IT delivers and how customers consume them.
The list of metrics below is not intended to be exhaustive. What is more important than
an impressive list of metrics is the reason for collecting metrics and acceptance of these
measurements by the business. IT is notorious for making all sorts of measurements for
its own consumption, few of which have any value (let alone meaning) to a partner in the
business who cares about business value.
Category
Agility
Metric
• Time from receipt of request to hand-off of a resource
• Percentage of catalog items whose fulfillment requires manual intervention
Efficiency
• Number of resources with assigned leases
• Number of resources associated with automated fulfillment
• Number of different catalog items hosted on shared
virtual infrastructure
Flexibility
• Time from receipt of request to reconfiguration of a virtual resource
Reliability
• Percentage of requests submitted for fulfillment through automation
that required human intervention
• Percentage of submitted requests successfully fulfilled without incident
• Mean time to repair incidents impacting the delivery of catalog items
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Make commitments and proactively demonstrate accountability
by using reports driven by key process metrics. Reporting, if
appropriately implemented, remains an excellent way to establish
customer intimacy. Understand which metrics your customer
most values that reflect the agility, efficiency, flexibility, and
reliability of IT services. Add metrics and categories as needed to
create the customer feedback loop necessary to create alignment
and foster customer intimacy. The reports should directly relate to
the operational and governance processes.
Think critically about this data. Why are you collecting a given
metric? How is the metric evaluated, and can we automate
its collection? Can we formalize a given metric in a Service
Level Agreement? What do we do when the value falls outside
of expectations? What do we do when the results exceed
expectations? How do the metrics we are collecting map to
operational support processes? Are there governance key risk
indicators (KRIs) or key control indicators (KCIs) associated with
one or more metrics?
What about so-called intangible or indirect metrics that are
difficult or impossible to measure? Acknowledge they exist. Even
if they cannot be measured, it is important to document what
these metrics are and agree they are intangible. Establish a clear
understanding of why they are not being evaluated. Even if the
only data that can be collected for these metrics is anecdotal,
there is still value in collecting them. Challenge teams to find ways
to identify ways to measure them. Who knows – working with
customers might bring opportunities to the surface that would
have otherwise gone unexplored.
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