Good Take on Private Clouds in CloudComputing in the Enterprise from CloudBzz

I recommend this article for people building service catalogs. I think it helps to see how the catalog will actually get used.  My comments, in-line.

One of the first things IT needs to let go of, to get a cloud running to its full potential, is the concept of manually approving anything.  All of the rules for approvals need to exist in advance and the system just needs to follow them.  

I don't disagree with this last statement, but this is unlikely to happen in the medium term.  The best thing to do will be to put in electronic approvals so this stuff can be at least reliably tracked.

Having a person “OK” the creation of a VM is just crazy, yet that’s what happens in many IT organizations.  Someone requests a virtual machine instance for a project and it goes into a queue for manual approval, and then manual implementation.  Yikes!!  This isn’t to say that nothing is approved – as I said, you have to set up the rules in advance.  How many instances of X can a department get?  What do we charge them (IT is now really a business, no?)?  Are there time limits on the VMs or servers we provide (e.g. maximum lease terms)?  All of this needs to be there and ready to go.

This is not difficult to carry out with a service catalog.  But in my experience it takes a lot of preparation work to establish the standard, rules, and pools.  In fact, other than budget limits, why should there be limits to how many VM's I can request.  But the reality is most IT shops don't charge back. And you'll need a real good subscription lifecycle manager to track expirations.

Then you need to give people the portal. That’s the magic pixie dust that makes it all come together.  Rather than “requesting” a server, you provision one.  It might take a few minutes for the automati0n to do its work, but that’s a lot better than the hours, days, or even weeks (yes weeks for a single VM!!) it used to take.

That's exactly our customers achieve with our product. We have learned that they a) have to see it to believe it, and b) it takes a while to let go of the reins while they become comfortable with the new operating model.  It's a tranfsformation!

So, to net it out — a private (internal) cloud = hardware + virtualization + automation + chargeback + self-service portal. It also = the promised land for enterprise IT modernization.

Sounds easy?  As if!

Agree. Not so easy if you don't have the right tools.  Read the rest via www.cloudbzz.com

Comments

[catalog processing]

That sounds so good! Should have the right tools for the right process.