NETWORK MANAGEMENT
Moving to the cloud Don’t Cloud the Business Issues By Chris O’Malley, CEO, Nimsoft
Chris O’Malley outlines the considerations that should be made when considering a move to the Cloud.
The saying “Good fences make good neighbours” is very applicable to relationships with Cloud service providers. Clear demarcation of services, roles and responsibilities is vital to these relationships. The more that’s left to subjective opinion, conjecture and guesswork, the more likely it is that misunderstandings, mistakes and missed opportunities will result. Good ‘fences’ for the Cloud are built by asking the right questions: Which services are ‘core’ and which are ‘chore’? Which will be off-loaded to a Cloud partner and which will remain in-house? Who has front- line responsibility in the event of a problem? Who is the next contact in line if that person isn’t available? Detailed process documentation, well-
defined roles and clear accountability are all essential for managing an increasingly disparate IT infrastructure that includes partnerships with Cloud services providers. This is one factor that differentiates
today’s high-value Cloud engagements from the less successful outsourcing
engagement of the past. With the Cloud, IT can tightly focus what it off-loads and what its service-level expectations are. So it can actually gain control, rather than losing it.
Concrete Definitions Service level agreements cannot be standardised. Performance that is acceptable for one service will not be for another. There cannot be grey areas; everyone must understand the performance target. This is why it is so important to have watertight service contracts in place, ones that detail deliverables and potential penalties, thus ensuring there can be no questions or misunderstandings in the event of service disruption. It is essential to detail what constitutes acceptable up-time. If an outage is reported, it must be clear how quickly it is to be addressed. One good way to set thresholds
for Cloud service providers is to use benchmarks based on service levels historically achieved by the internal IT organisation.
Other considerations when creating SLAs: • Penalties: What service credits or compensation will be honoured if SLAs are missed?
• Realism: Can 99.999 percent reliability actually be guaranteed by the service provider? Does the business really need to bear the cost of premium reliability for every service?
• Accountability: Service Provider claims about service levels should be validated against reports of problems from end-users.
• Alignment with business requirements: Different departments may require different service levels.
Service Status Updates Many established Cloud service providers offer their clients online portals that provide access to real-time data on the performance and status of their managed infrastructure and services. Some also provide automated reporting and alerts. This transparency gives customers a higher level of confidence that business needs and SLAs are being met. The use of Cloud service providers does not eliminate the need for businesses to monitor the performance and availability of critical services. On the contrary, it is still important to identify problems and hold service providers accountable. Rather than relying exclusively
With the cloud, IT can focus what it off-loads and what its service-level expectations are. 42 NETCOMMS europe Volume II Issue 4 2012
on the monitoring and reporting offered by each Cloud service provider, it is advisable to implement a comprehensive solution for monitoring any and all externally provided services. Such a solution will help ensure the success of Cloud computing initiatives by measuring all key services and applications in real-time. Ideally, this monitoring solution should unify the entire operational IT infrastructure, bringing both internally and externally provisioned services under the umbrella of a single IT monitoring and management process. This unified approach is the most cost-effective way to ensure that all IT services are meeting the needs of the business in terms of performance and availability.
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