Best Practice Cloud Service Management

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In my last blog I wrote about the impact of cloud computing on IT Service Management.  This blog continues the theme by describing the IT Service Management functions necessary to deliver cloud infrastructure services.  Delivering infrastructure as a service requires IT Service Management to move closer to Infrastructure Management (or IT Operations) and combine multiple processes from each of these separate departments to become a single functional component.

I’ve grouped the necessary functions into four service component groups; (i) Fulfillment Service, (ii) Offering Management Service, (iii) Monitoring & Restoration Service, and (iv) Environment Control Service.

The first two service components include the functions that are predominately specific to delivering cloud infrastructure as a service.  These are essential for the IT department to become an online IT shop and satisfy the business’ demand for compute, storage and network.   The latter two components seek to integrate common support processes to provide a step change in Service Support.

The Fulfillment Service component is the primary function of the Infrastructure Service.  It facilities requests for infrastructure services across the delivery lifecycle.  Its workflow includes three core stages, (i) the administration of infrastructure requirements, based on standard pre-designed patterns or images at pre-agreed prices, submitted via a self-service request mechanism, (ii) the automated provision or decommission of infrastructure resource according to the request, and (iii) the metering and billing of actual consumed resource.

The Offering Management Service component is comprised of the functions necessary to develop and maintain the Infrastructure Services offered and the delivery capability required to provide these services.  These enable the cloud service to (i) describe its services in a catalogue, (ii) develop and maintain its services (in this case standard build patterns), (iii) assess demand to help manage IT Operations and plan for future service requirements, (iv) offer service commitments (SLAs), and (v) research and develop future cloud infrastructure services and delivery capabilities according to the organisation’s Technology Strategy.

The purpose of the Monitoring and Restoration Service is to ensure any unplanned outages are detected and resolved as soon as possible to avoid additional service downtime.  It includes (i) the monitoring of the infrastructure systems, (ii) management of events triggered by system alerts, (iii) automated and manual resolution of incidents, (iv) managing problems underpinning any previous or potential incidents, and (v) analysis of incident data to detect trends that highlight unknown errors.

The final component, Environment Control, is concerned with the control, administration and deployment of changes to the IT infrastructure hardware and software.  This includes three core functions, (i) managing the infrastructure hardware and software release cycle, (ii) facilitating change activities without impacting service availability, and (iii) maintaining the currency of configuration data referred to by the delivery operations.

For more information about best practice cloud service management contact Dr Lloyd I Dale, Associate Partner IBM, via lloyd_dale@uk.ibm.com.