Cloud Pak personas

A persona describes a group of individuals that have a similar set of goals and responsibilities. Depending on your persona, you might have to complete different tasks when getting started. Some planning and installation tasks can be completed only by a Red Hat® OpenShift® cluster administrator, while other tasks can be completed by a project administrator. The same person can fulfill more than one role, and their role might shift depending on their goals and their role in the organization. Learn about which role is needed to complete each task and when tasks should be completed, based on the installation method that you prefer for moving to the cloud.

The following set of personas focus on the “who does what, when they do it, and why they do it”. The intention is that these personas provide insight into the expected roles over the course of your company's journey to the cloud. Users can also fall into multiple personas throughout the journey, depending on their goals and organization roles. In smaller organizations, an employee might have more than one role, but even in larger organizations individuals can move in and out of roles as part of their assigned work.

Administrator

The administrator is typically responsible for setting up, configuring, and managing tools or technologies across systems and networks. For IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation, you will need both a cloud administrator and a system administrator, for managing the Cloud Pak software. Both types need a working knowledge of containers and Kubernetes.

System administrator

A system administrator, or sysadmin, is someone who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems; especially multi-user computers, such as servers. They are familiar with the Cloud Pak for Business Automation software and the prerequisites, and have expertise in database and LDAP configurations. A system administrator must have permissions to manage and create cluster namespaces (CNCF) or project (OCP or ROKS) for upgrading Cloud Pak for Business Automation.

Cloud or cluster administrator
A cloud administrator can configure a cluster by using cloud tools and APIs. They can create, update, and delete clusters, add and remove nodes, and control who can access the cluster by using cloud identity management (IM).

Cluster administration tasks are specific to the cluster platform and typically do not involve the Kubernetes system itself. Tasks can be done entirely by using the cloud console, the command-line interface, or the APIs. To control the cluster's internal behavior, they can use the Kubernetes API and the kubectl command-line interface.

Cloud administrators also control when cluster maintenance tasks occur, configure cluster-level autoscaling, and enable or disable logging and monitoring for the cluster.

Both these administrators are important and play an active part in the installation of the Cloud Pak for Business Automation capabilities. So much so that specific tasks are expected to be done by these different roles. Installation scripts are provided for each of these roles to be run only by a user with these roles in your enterprise.

Before you install any software on a cloud, the cluster administrator needs to assess the resources that are needed and set up logical grouping of resources. As an administrator of an OpenShift dedicated cluster for example, your account has permissions and access to all user-created projects in your organization’s cluster. While logged in to an account with this role, the developer CLI (the oc command) gives you increased visibility and management capabilities over objects across projects. The administrator CLI (commands under the oc adm command) can be used to complete additional operations.

Responsibilities

  • Planning and running the installation of the Cloud Pak.

  • Ensuring that the capabilities are connected to the appropriate systems within the organization.

  • Configuring and managing resources that are allocated to the Cloud Pak, including authorizing user access.

  • Creating templates and automation flows for accessing the Cloud Pak.

  • Triage and troubleshooting issues.

The following table shows the steps that each administrator is expected to do for an installation.
Table 1. Steps to be done by each role
Cluster administrator Cloud Pak sysadmin user
Step 1
  1. Create a cluster to host the Cloud Pak.
  2. Install CLIs.
  3. Configure storage.
  4. Create a Cloud Pak admin user.
Step 1
  1. Make sure all of the prerequisite software is installed, including for the Cloud Pak foundational services.
Step 2
  1. Create a dedicated namespace in the cluster.
  2. Configure the namespace for the Cloud Pak operator.
  3. Associate the Cloud Pak admin user as an administrator of the namespace.
  4. Install the Cloud Pak operator.
Step 2
  1. Make sure that the Cloud Pak namespace has access to the Cloud Pak images and registry.
  2. Create the custom resource (CR) file for the desired Cloud Pak capabilities.
  3. Configure the parameters in the CR file.
  4. Apply the CR to the Cloud Pak operator.
Step 3
  1. Provide the cluster and namespace information to the Cloud Pak admin user.
Step 3
  1. Do any post-installation tasks that are needed.
  2. Verify that the capabilities are up and running.

To facilitate the jobs to be done, scripts are provided for each administrator role.

Developer

Responsible for designing, developing, and testing the Cloud Pak with code-compliant quality and security protocols.

Responsibilities

  • Developing and deploying the Cloud Pak with high quality and compliant code.

  • Debugging issues and vulnerabilities that are associated with the code.

  • Automating processes to avoid repetitive and menial work.

  • Standardizing processes by peer-reviewing and documenting work.

  • Modernizing legacy applications.

Line of business owner

Responsible for owning the strategy behind business units, departments, and products.

Responsibilities

  • Stakeholder management, including negotiating and agreeing to the business needs, business models, budget allocation, and performance targets set by Executives.

  • Tracking business metrics and analytics to ensure that the performance targets are being met.

  • Managing key partners (for example, advertising channels and vendors) for business development.

  • Ensuring a good end-to-end customer experience, including maintaining security and performance.

  • Specifying high-level product strategy and managing the launch of products and features.

Operations

Responsible for implementing, maintaining, and upgrading resilient networks or systems, including responding to performance and availability problems.

Responsibilities

  • Maintaining performance and availability targets.

  • Monitoring and reporting on the availability and performance of networks or systems.

  • Responding to incidents that negatively impact networks or systems.

  • Managing and upgrading the infrastructure of networks or systems, optimizing over/under-utilized resources.

  • Automating processes to avoid repetitive and menial work.

Systems integrator

Builds integrated computing systems for clients by combining hardware, software, networking, and storage products from multiple vendors.

Responsibilities

  • Staying up to date with the most competitive software trends, solutions, and products.

  • Designs and integrates systems and data including Cloud/SaaS apps, packaged apps, and legacy apps.

  • Work with senior technical staff to integrate existing and new software packages.

  • Assess new technologies and meet business requirements for optimizing performance.

  • Developing solutions that meet the needs of their clients and working with their teams to integrate and then monitor the solutions.

Security specialist

The security specialist makes sure that there are no security vulnerabilities in the environment, networks, and integrations. They must be familiar with the architecture that was chosen for their Cloud Pak for Business Automation deployment.

Responsibilities

  • Ensure that Cloud Pak for Business Automation is compliant with all required security protocols.

  • Staying up to date with recent security related news.

Business user

The business user uses the automation capabilities installed and maintained by the administrator and developers to deliver business value. These capabilities include the features mentioned in Automation capabilities. This role does not need to be involved in configuring and setting up Cloud Pak for Business Automation, but they will work with the administrators to ensure that Cloud Pak for Business Automation is working as intended.

Responsibilities

  • Completing the tasks that are generated or assigned by the automation.

  • Notify the administrators when there are technical problems.