Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a lot of businesses at an affordable price. Creating solutions and products takes a lot of plan-
ning, and that includes market analysis and knowledge of current business trends, especially
in internal business processes that companies use. This is because cloud services are mostly
enterprise-based solutions, which may also cater to small and medium-sized businesses
(SMBs), and not simple consumer-grade products. Also, when a business needs to move into
the cloud space, the staff is not always well versed in what it would entail to move to the
cloud and has very little idea as to what solutions they actually require. So for both service
providers looking to create solutions and organizations that want to know what solutions
they need, the cloud service solution planning workshop is ideal. It involves getting all repre-
sentatives of each stakeholder in the organization that will be affected by the change, such as
those that will actually use the system or those that will create them. The seven steps to do
this are mentioned under Cloud Service Solution Planning Workshop.
The workshop should focus on the organization's strengths and ensure that it has the
capacity to implement and maintain solutions and, in the case of service providers, deliver
them to customers in such a way that creates satisfaction with the product.
Planning is followed by the implementation phase. When building your cloud infrastruc-
ture, you should be mindful of the technologies used and how they interact with each other,
ensure homogeneity within the system, and also make sure upgrades and maintenance can
be handled easily.
Customers of cloud solutions should also consider cloud management platforms that
would enable them to better control the solutions that they have adopted. This includes
monitoring system performance metrics, which also helps with root-cause analysis and
report generation. The CMP must cater to governance, automation, and integration in
order to meet all of the organization's needs.
But how do we know you are getting what you pay for? Apart from the metrics, you
must also have a clear understanding of what you get for the money you spend. This is the
purpose of the service-level agreement (SLA). It will clearly show what the service provider
is offering in terms of performance and the amount of resources that will be supplied to
your organization. It will also show what penalties both sides may incur in failing to adhere
to the promises held in the SLA. So essentially, the SLA is the promise the service provider
makes for the type of service it is providing, and it also serves as an agreement for both
parties on certain points.
Upon launching a cloud computing system, an organization must have set policies and
procedures in place that will guide the operation and maintenance of the system. These
policies and procedures will guide most of the actions of employees and management in
relation to the cloud system.
Other documentation is required, such as network and IP planning documentation,
which will highlight how the network infrastructure is built and will help immensely
with maintenance and root-cause analysis. Through this documentation, the cloud system
and applications can be optimized to better utilize the traffic flow of the system, dubbed
as application-optimized traffic flow. And as we mentioned, cloud computing requires a
homogeneous infrastructure, which helps to bring simplicity to a complicated system and
helps with scalability and future maintenance and upgrades.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search