MANAGING CLOUD COMPUTING
A Life Cycle Approach
Gerard Conway
1
and Edward Curry
2
1
Innovation Value Institute, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
2
Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Keywords: Cloud Computing, Project Management, Outsourcing, Life Cycle.
Abstract: Cloud computing has the promise of significant benefits that include reduced costs, improved service
provisioning, and a move to a pay-per-use model. However, there also are many challenges to successfully
delivering cloud-based services; including security, data ownership, interoperability, service maturity and
return on investment. These challenges need to be understood and managed before attempting to take
advantage of what the cloud has to offer. In this paper we introduce a nine-step cloud life cycle that can be
used for both the migration and the ongoing management of public, cloud-based services. A consortium of
organizations using an open-innovation approach developed the life cycle. This paper describes each step of
the life cycle in terms of the key challenges faced, and the recommended activities, with resultant outputs,
needed to overcome them.
1 INTRODUCTION
The move to a cloud computing environment has
started in earnest with the complete spectrum of
businesses, from large multinationals to smaller
organizations, moving their IT services to cloud
computing platforms. There are many drivers for
this, with reduced costs being the most commonly
cited reason (Harms and Yamartino, 2010). Cloud
services may be provided in a pay-per-use model
that allows companies to pay only for what they
actually need, with the flexibility of increasing or
reducing capacity in line with business demand. In
effect, cloud computing offers the advantage of
switching from a Capital Expense (CapEx) to an
Operational Expense (OpEx) cost model whilst
promising to deliver a reduced Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO). Cloud computing also provides
greater flexibility and agility as new applications and
services can be deployed in less time.
A major driver of cloud computing is the
pressure on IT departments to deliver more and
enhanced services with reduced budgets, whilst
responding to ever-increasing and ever-changing
business requirements. Cloud computing is also seen
as a way to free up IT resources to concentrate on
core activities, by outsourcing non-core activities
such as management of e-mail systems. An internal
IT department running cloud-based services can
focus its energy on services that offer core business
value to the business, whilst letting the cloud service
provider deal with the non-core services. While
cloud computing promises significant benefits, there
are many challenges to successfully delivering
cloud-based services. These challenges need to be
understood and managed before attempting to take
advantage of what the cloud has to offer. In this
paper, a cloud life cycle approach is introduced and
it is shown how such an approach can be used for
both the migration and the ongoing management of
public, cloud-based services.
2 CHALLENGES WITH
MANAGING CLOUD
PROJECTS
Despite all of the claims made on behalf of cloud
computing, it is not a panacea for all the problems
faced by companies and their IT departments. Bitter
experience has shown that if an IT department is
struggling to deliver services, a move to cloud
computing will either leave them in the same mess
or potentially make if far worse (Brooks, 2010).
Before we delve into the key challenges to managing
198
Conway G. and Curry E..
MANAGING CLOUD COMPUTING - A Life Cycle Approach.
DOI: 10.5220/0003928401980207
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER-2012), pages 198-207
ISBN: 978-989-8565-05-1
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
cloud projects, it is important to understand that
cloud computing comes in four primary deployment
models: public, community, private, and hybrid.
• Public Cloud. Public cloud infrastructure is
owned by an organization selling cloud services to
the general public or to a large industry group.
Two examples are Amazon Web Services (AWS)
and Microsoft Azure.
• Community Cloud. Community cloud
infrastructure is shared by several organizations
and supports a specific community that has a
shared mission and shared goals, security
requirements, policies, and compliance
considerations. An example is Google Gov.
• Private Cloud. Private cloud infrastructure is
owned or leased by a single organization and it is
operated solely for that organization. Intel,
Hewlett Packard (HP) and Microsoft have their
own internal private clouds.
• Hybrid Cloud. Hybrid cloud infrastructure
consists of two or more clouds (public,
community, or private) that remain unique entities
but are bound together by standardized or
proprietary technology that enables data or
application portability.
Within this work we have initially targetted the
adoption challenges of migrating to a public cloud.
There are a number of key challenges faced by
companies that want to move to a public cloud.
These challenges include:
• Security. With cloud computing, you are heavily
dependent on the service provider for security.
Cloud service providers can claim to provide
complete security for access, compliance, data
segregation, backup, recovery, etc. With so many
new players in the market how do you know if you
can trust the supplier? Do you know what their
security policies are (Armbrust et al., 2010)
(Heiser and Nicolett, 2008) (Grossman, 2009)
(Kaufman, 2009)?
• Data Ownership. What happens to your data
when it leaves your organization to reside in the
cloud? Companies who move to the cloud
probably will not completely lose track of their
data but they are likely to lose some level of
ownership and, in particular, control. It is
important to understand who can access the data
and for what purpose (Armbrust et al., 2010)
(Buyya et al., 2009) (Kaufman, 2009) (Curry et
al., 2010).
• Lock-in and Interoperability. Today each
service offering provides its own unique way for
the cloud to interact with applications, data and
clients. It can be very difficult to use multiple
vendors and to seamlessly integrate legacy and
cloud services. Do you have a plan to integrate
your cloud servicesor to move to another cloud
supplier in the future (Armbrust et al., 2010)
(Dillon et al., 2010) (Grossman, 2009)?
• Standard Architecture. There is no standard
open architecture being used for cloud services.
Each of the major cloud providers (Amazon Web
Services, Salesforce Force, Google App Engine,
and Microsoft Azure) imposes different
architectures that are dissimilar to the common
architectures currently used for enterprise apps
(Buyya et al., 2009). Althought a customer’s
functional and technical requirements may be
satisfied, the lack of standards will compromise
the customer’s ability to seamless migrate from
one service provide to another and may need a
complete re-write of their software to do so.
• Enterprise Support and Service Maturity.
Cloud computing services may not provide the
levels of reliability, manageability, and support
required by large enterprises. Is the cloud supplier
mature enough for your needs (Li et al., 2009)
(Armbrust et al., 2010)?
• Loss of Data. Data stored in the cloud can be
replicated across multiple machines and backed
up. However, not all cloud services have the same
redundancy for disaster recovery. Does the cloud
supplier have an appropriate disaster recovery
strategy? (Kaufman, 2009)
• Return on Investment. The expectation is that
external cloud computing can reduce costs.
However, the cost advantages for large enterprises
may not be as clear as for SMEs. Currently, many
large enterprises can reap the benefits of
significant economies of scale in their own
internal IT operations. What is the real TCO of the
cloud service (Li et al., 2009)?
• Requirement for Online Connectivity. Cloud
computing is impossible if you cannot connect to
the Internet. A dead Internet connection means it
is not possible to work, and in areas where Internet
connections are few or inherently unreliable, this
could be a problem. What network redundancy
exists between you and the cloud supplier
(Armbrust et al., 2010) (Curry, 2004)?
In order to overcome these challenges,
organisations need a systematic means of reviewing
their business needs and weighing up the potential
gains and opportunities against the risks, so that the
transition to cloud computing is strategically
planned and understood.
MANAGINGCLOUDCOMPUTING-ALifeCycleApproach
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3 DEFINING THE LIFE CYCLE
In order to deliver the advantages and overcome the
challenges faced by organizations that want to
migrate to cloud computing, there is now a need to
define a management framework for how a cloud
migration project can be successfully managed.
However, because the field is new and evolving, few
guidelines and best practices are available. To
address this shortcoming, a consortium of leading
organizations from industry, (including: Microsoft,
Intel, SAP, Chevron, Cisco, The Boston Consulting
Group, Ernst & Young, and Fujitsu) the not-for-
profit sector, and academia have developed and
tested a life cycle for systematically managing cloud
migration projects. This section outlines the design
process for the cloud life cycle, how the cloud life
cycle aligns with the IT-Capability Maturity
Framework (IT-CMF), and why a life cycle
approach was taken.
3.1 Design Methodology
The Innovation Value Institute (IVI; http://
ivi.nuim.ie) consortium uses an open innovation
model of collaboration that engages academia and
industry in scholarly work to amalgamate leading
academic theory with the best of corporate
experience – in order to advance practices for
managing information technology for business value
and innovation.
The development of the life cycle was
undertaken using a design process with defined
review stages and development activities that were
based on the Design Science Research (DSR)
guidelines advocated by Hevner et al. 2004. The
approach followed a similar design process used to
develop a maturity model for Sustainable ICT
(Donnellan et al., 2011) within the IT-CMF.
Within this work we have initially targetted the
adoption challenges of migrating to a Public Cloud.
This lead us to leverage the work by Cullen et al.,
2005 into the management of IT outsourcing
projects using a life cycle. The Cullen life cycle is an
in-depth piece of research on IT outsourcing that is
backed up by many years of practical experience.
We have adapted Cullen’s work and applied the
resulting life cycle to the problems of managing a
public cloud migration and then running the cloud
services on an ongoing basis. In particular, we
examined the requirements of a public cloud project
from both the life cycle and supply chain
perspectives (Linder et al., 2011).
During
the design process, researchers
participated together with practitioners within
research teams to research and develop the life
cycle. The research team interviewed multiple cloud
stakeholders to capture the views of key domain
experts and to understand current practice and
barriers to managing public cloud projects. The team
widely consulted the relevant literature, both
industrial and academic, on cloud computing.
Once the life cycle was developed, it was
validated within a number of organizations – with
learning and feedback incorporated into subsequent
versions. Cloud projects were studied within 11
organizations in order to validate the life cycle.
These included organizations that had successfully
delivered public cloud-based projects, and also
organizations that have failed cloud projects. The
research approach involved a qualitative approach to
data collection. Empirical evidence was collected via
semi-structured interviews with representatives of
the 11 companies. From this perspective, the use of
the interview was an appropriate research method, as
it enabled depth, nuance and complexity in data to
be captured (Mason, 2002).
3.2 The IT-capability Maturity
Framework
IVI has developed an IT Capability Maturity
Framework (IT-CMF) that is an innovative and
systematic framework, enabling CIOs/CEOs to
understand and improve their organization’s
maturity and enable optimal business value
realization from IT investments (Curley 2004). IT-
CMF provides a high-level process capability
maturity framework for managing the IT function
within an organization to deliver greater value from
IT by assessing and improving a broad range of
management practices. The framework identifies 33
critical IT processes and defines maturity models for
each process. A core function of the IT-CMF is to
act as an assessment tool and a management system.
Within this work we utilize a combination of the
life cycle approach and the use of IT-CMF to
establish the key areas a customer must identify for
it to ensure it has the required level of maturity
before migrating to the cloud. The resulting cloud
life cycle can be applied to both the migration and
the ongoing management of public cloud services.
3.3 Why does the Life Cycle Work?
The cloud life cycle applies proven and documented
project management principles that are known by
CLOSER2012-2ndInternationalConferenceonCloudComputingandServicesScience
200
Figure 1: The cloud life cycle.
most IT and business managers. It breaks down the
project into discrete manageable stages that allows
the company to gather the correct information to
make a decision before moving to the next stage.
The life cycle ensures appropriate pre-planning so
that the correct partners are chosen and that the
impacts on the business are properly understood,
managed, and controlled. For example it allows a
company to identify the correct services to move to
the cloud and to create plans for the impact on staff
directly and indirectly impacted. It also provides a
mechanism of building up a repository of knowledge
and best practices to fill the current void created by
this new use of technology, with its lack of standards
and best practice.
4 THE CLOUD LIFE CYCLE
The cloud life cycle is broken down into four phases
that are further divided into 9 steps as illustrated in
Figure 1. Each step prepares the way for the
following step, so the sequence is important and
must be followed for a successful outcome. The
reason for such an approach is it allows a company
to break down its planning and workload to suit its
requirements. The basic premise is that a company
only commits resources one step at a time – so, as
each step is completed, there is the option to stop
without losing the initial investment. This
incremental approach reduces the risk associated
with cloud projects
The four stages of the cloud life cycle are:
• Architect. The first phase starts with the
investigation and planning of the cloud project.
Typically an organization will only commit a
small number of high-level resources in order to
decide if they should go ahead with a full-scale
project.
• Engage. The second phase selects a service
provider that can deliver the required cloud
service. Many organizations decide to stop at this
stage because the appropriate cloud services are
not available, or because there is no cloud provider
MANAGINGCLOUDCOMPUTING-ALifeCycleApproach
201
that they have confidence in to deliver the required
cloud services.
• Operate. The third phase is the implementation
and the day-to-day management of the cloud
service.
• Refresh. The fourth phase is the ongoing review
of cloud services
In line with all well-managed projects, this
structure maintains control and allows a company to
stop at any step in the project and re-start when
external and or internal circumstances allow, without
losing the value and investment of the work done in
the preceding steps.
The steps in the cloud life cycle were surveyed
among 11 organizations to determine their
importance. The results of this survey are available
in the appendix at the end of this paper.
The following sections describe in detail the
objectives, activities, outputs and challenges for the
cloud life cycle.
4.1 Phase 1: Architect
Step 1: Investigate
This step provides an insight into and an
understanding of what an organization wants to
achieve by moving to the cloud, and what goals and
expectations are to be met. This will be based on an
analysis of the appropriate industrial segment, with
insights from experts and experiences from peer
organizations, together with knowledge of potential
suppliers.
The key challenges faced in the investigate step
are:
• To satisfy new requirements within an existing or
a reduced budget.
• To provide a clear cost-benefit analysis of cloud
services using limited or no historical cost data.
• To clearly articulate the benefits of a move from
CapEx to OpEx. This may need to consider the
current CapEx investment of decommissioning
existing services (depending on where the service
is in its life cycle).
• Resistance by a perceived lack of financial control
using the pay-as-you go model.
• The need for seed funding to investigate cloud
options.
The critical capabilities used in the investigate
step are IT Leadership and Governance (ITG),
Strategic Planning (SP), and Business Planning
(BP). The key activities and outputs of the
investigate step are described in Table 1.
Table 1: Key activities and outputs for Step 1: Investigate.
Activities Outputs
• Determine the organization’s
IT objectives and its
alignment with the business.
• Determine what role cloud
computing will play within the
IT strategy.
• Gather intelligence on cloud
service offerings.
• Validate with cloud subject
matter experts.
• IT strategy for cloud
computing.
• Strategic intent of moving to
the cloud and how it
progresses the business
objectives.
• Intelligence document on
cloud service offerings and
providers.
• Documented understanding
of what will be achieved by
comparing the strategic
requirements with the
available services and
providers.
Within the organizations we studied it was
clearly shown that having a clear vision and strategy
of what can be achieved by moving to cloud
computing was a distinct advantage. Once the
strategy and vision was clearly defined and
communicated, it was a much easier task to see what
services were available and what service providers
could deliver. Organizations that lacked this vision
experienced resistance – particularly from the user
community, who were not active participants as they
failed to see the strategic and financial benefits.
Step 2: Identify
Objectively assess what areas of the business are
appropriate to outsource to the cloud and what
impact this will have on the current delivery model.
This will require an understanding of the current
state, so that it can be compared to the desired future
state. At a minimum, the impact on the service,
people, cost, infrastructure, stakeholders and how
the impact will be managed should be considered.
The key challenges faced in the identify step are:
• To define the Enterprise Architecture. This can be
particularly time-consuming if none is already in
place.
• To objectively choose the appropriate service to
outsource.
• To engage with both users and IT personnel who
will be impacted, particularly if their job is being
altered or removed.
The critical capabilities used in the identify step
include Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
and Sourcing (SRC). The key activities and outputs
of the identify step are described in Table 2.
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Table 2: Key activities and outputs for Step 2: Identify.
Activities Outputs
• Determine what services will
be outsourced to the cloud,
and consider impacts on the
service, people, cost,
infrastructure, and
stakeholders.
• Decide what type of cloud
outsourcing model will be
used, and why it is suitable.
• Document the current and
future states of the IT
infrastructure.
• A List of services to be
outsourced to the cloud, with
documented understanding
on impacts to service, people,
cost, infrastructure, and
stakeholders.
• A Cloud outsourcing model,
with documented justification.
• Documented current and
future states of the IT
structure.
Choosing the correct service to outsource was
influenced by the maturity of the service and the
desired functionality. Organizations that successful
migrated to the cloud: had a well-defined Enterprise
Architecture, engaged both users and suppliers at an
early stage, and recruited external expertise in areas
not covered by internal resources. Organizations that
attempted to correct problems with their existing
services by simply moving them to the cloud, failed,
as they just moved the problem to the new
environment.
Step 3: Implementation Strategy
Define at a strategic level how the cloud services
that are to be outsourced will be rolled out. This will
document how key decisions will be made later on,
by defining strategies on: staffing, communication,
program roll-out, organizational rules, and risk
assessment.
The key challenges faced in the implementation
strategy step are:
• To get the commitment and support to make key
resources available.
• To clearly define business and technical
requirements.
• To fully engage key stakeholders and users.
• To agree a formal decision–making / sign-off
process with stakeholders.
The critical capabilities used in the
implementation strategy step are Business Planning
(BP) and Risk Management (RM). The key
activities and outputs of the implementation strategy
step are described in Table 3.
One of the key findings of our research was that
organizations that wanted to move to the cloud
needed to fully understand the impact of the
migration on the user community, and on IT support
staff. Those organizations that did not understand
this impact and that failed to plan accordingly either
Table 3: Key activities and outputs for Step 3:
Implementation Strategy.
Activities Outputs
• Determine the roll-out
approach and how the
program will be managed.
• Detail how the program will
be staffed and reported.
• Decide how cloud suppliers
will be engaged, selected
and managed.
• Determine how risks will be
assessed and managed,
including data recovery and
in-sourcing.
• A program roll-out strategy.
• A Communication strategy.
• A strategy to manage staff
impacted by the migration to
cloud.
• A Cloud risk management
strategy.
• A Cloud supplier
management strategy.
lost key resources or experienced resistance from the
IT and user community – both during and after the
migration.
Step 4: Business Design
Design what is to be outsourced to the cloud and
what the future state will look like. This will detail
the new service, how it will be managed, how it
interfaces to the existing / remaining systems, and
how it will be monitored and reported. To provide
requirements with sufficient detail to have a
meaningful conversation with suppliers so that they
can be objectively compared, based on cost and
quality of service.
The key challenges faced in the business design
step are:
• To provide a clear definition of the existing and
desired interfaces.
• To clearly define what is negotiable /
non-negotiable.
• To engage and build a relationship with the
stakeholders that is based on trust.
The critical capabilities used in the business
design step are Enterprise Architecture (EAM) and
Service Provisioning (SRP). The key activities and
outputs of the business design step are described in
Table 4.
Table 4: Key activities and outputs for Step 4: Business
Design.
Activities Outputs
• Detail the service offering you
wish to tender for.
• Clearly define negotiable /
non-negotiable issues around
contracts, service-level
agreements (SLA), and
pricing model
•
Detailed and clear tender
documents for cloud
suppliers.
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The research demonstrated that organizations
that developed clear and concise tender
documentation had improved discussions with
suppliers without placing undue limitations and
constraints on what could be provided. Conversely,
those organizations that had poorly-defined
requirements spent a lot of time in discussions with
suppliers and were driven by the supplier’s agenda.
4.2 Phase 2: Engage
Step 5: Select
Based on the requirements and the other criteria
defined by the Architect phase this step will select
the best supplier based on value, sustainability, and
quality.
The key challenges faced in the selection step
are:
• In a lot of cases it was found that the cloud
supplier provided the Contract, Service Level
Agreement (SLA) and pricing as a standard
offering. The challenge was to ensure all business
and user requirements were still satisfied.
• To balance requirements between what
functionality is available now, with what will be
available in the future.
• To retain objectivity and do a thorough
background check on all suppliers.
• To have a back-out / alternatives strategy if things
change or go wrong.
• To retain the overall strategic intent and core
requirements; that is, do not compromise to get a
particular service up and running.
The critical capabilitiy used in the select step is
Sourcing (SRC). The key activities and outputs of
the select step are described in Table 5.
Table 5: Key activities and outputs for Step 5: Selection.
Activities Outputs
• Define the tender/bid
process.
• Select and staff an evaluation
team.
• Invite bids/tenders.
• Evaluate suppliers against
the defined criteria.
• Shortlist the supplier(s).
• Carry out due diligence.
• A tender process.
• Evaluation criteria.
• A shortlist of suitable
suppliers with caveats.
• A Due diligence report.
The organizations that were successful were
characterised by:
• Only accepting solutions that had the required
functionality.
• The active involvement of the user community via
surveys and by validation of the proposed
solution.
• Choosing suppliers that were prepared to work
and resolve issues prior to the migration.
Organizations that compromised by accepting
partial functionality with the promise of enhanced
functionality at a later stage, or that skipped proper
validation to meet deadlines, ended up with
problems that led to failure of the cloud services, or
were very expensive to rectify.
Step 6: Negotiate
This step is to complete the final negotiation, pick
the preferred supplier, get internal approval and sign
the contract(s).
The key challenges faced in the negotiate step
are:
• To maintain control and objectivity by resisting
any major last-minute changes in order to achieve
sign-off; in other words be prepared to walk away.
• To have clearly defined and agreed contingency
plans for disaster and change scenarios.
• To understand the cloud supplier get-out clauses
and to make sure there is enough time to move
cloud services in-house, or to an alternative cloud
supplier.
The critical capability used in the negotiate step
is Sourcing (SRC). The key activities and outputs of
the negotiate step are described in Table 6.
Table 6: Key activities and outputs for Step 6: Negotiate.
Activities Outputs
• Define the negotiation
strategy.
• Select and staff the
negotiation team.
• Carry out negotiations.
• Select the preferred cloud
supplier.
• Get internal approvals and
sign the contract.
• A negotiation strategy.
• Results of the negotiation.
• Signed final documents:
Contract, SLA and Pricing
document.
Our research showed significant variations in the
attitude of cloud suppliers to accommodate client
requirements. Some suppliers would only offer their
default service offering and standard SLA, while
other cloud suppliers invested significant time and
effort to ensure they delivered on all major
requirements. Those organizations that had invested
time in the earlier steps of the life cycle, particularly
the engagement of users, had a smooth sign-off with
no major, last-minute problems.
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Problems were found with a number of
organizations when they treated this final step as a
rubber-stamping exercise. One example showed that
although the preceding step highlighted issues
around due diligence, the promise of a cost reduction
resulted in a binding contract being signed. As a
result, major problems occurred during
implementation that lead to a contractual dispute
with the supplier.
4.3 Phase 3: Operate
Step 7: Operational Roll-out
To put together a project team that will manage the
transition of the agreed services to the new cloud
service. This will require the transition of the service
itself, the management of staff impacted,
communication to all stakeholders, knowledge
retention / transition, and acceptance sign-off.
The key challenges faced in the operational
roll-out step are:
• To keep to the desired timelines, particularly for
dates that cannot be changed.
• To get access to appropriate case studies of
previous successful roll-outs of similar services.
• To resist the temptation to compromise on quality
in order to maintain the schedule.
• To get formal user and technical sign-off.
The critical capabilities used in the operational
roll-out step are Service Provisioning (SRP),
Solution Delivery (SD), and Risk Management
(RM). The key activities and outputs of the
operational roll-out step are described in Table 7.
Table 7: Key activities and outputs for Step 7: Operational
roll-out.
Activities Outputs
• Finalize and publish transition
plans.
• Select and staff the transition
team.
• Agree and publish
acceptance criteria.
• Carry out the transition.
• Communicate progress.
• Conduct knowledge transfer.
• Manage staff (directly and
indirectly) impacted.
• A roll-out plan.
• Progress updates.
• A signed acceptance
document.
The research has shown that many of the
organizations had a very smooth transition due to:
good planning, the full engagement of users, and a
strong partnership with the supplier. The research
highlighted that using a phased approach that
allowed the option to roll back to an in-house
version at any stage significantly reduced the risk
and exposure to the business. Organizations that
experienced difficulties in the transition to cloud
computing missed vital steps in their planning.
Examples included: not having the system validated
and tested by end users, or reducing the time
required for testing to meet deadlines.
Step 8: Manage the Supply Chain
It is important to manage the new cloud service as
efficiently and effectively as possible. The
organization will need to adapt to the new setup,
particularly at IT management level – because
rather than directly managing internal resources, the
requirement will be to manage the cloud supplier
and in particular the supplier relationship. This will
require effective monitoring and control so that
issue, variations and disputes can be resolved to the
satisfaction of both parties.
The key challenges faced in the manage the
supply chain step are:
• The integration of the cloud service with existing
support and reporting structures.
• That IT management make a smooth transition
from managing their own internal staff to
managing the cloud supplier and the interfaces.
• The control, communication and coordination of
internal and external changes.
The critical capabilities used in the manage the
supply chain step include Capacity Forecasting and
Planning (CFP), Sourcing (SRC), Technical
Infrastructure Management (TIM), Solution
Delivery (SD), Service Provisioning (SRP), and
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The key activities
and outputs are described in Table 8.
Table 8: Key activities and outputs for Step 8 Manage the
Supply Chain.
Activities Outputs
• Manage and report at cloud
service operational level.
• Capture and manage issues,
variations and disputes.
• Manage the supplier
relationship.
• Change management.
• Continuous improvement.
• Assess and validate how the
cloud service is performing.
• Day-to-day cloud service
performance metrics.
• Status on issues, problems,
variations, and disputes.
• Supplier meeting minutes.
• A change management
report.
• Audit reports.
Building a relationship with the cloud supplier
was the key to success in many of the projects we
studied. Some companies have gone further and
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205
built a strategic partnership with their suppliers,
which further increased their success. The research
highlighted that the risk to the business can be
significantly reduced if you retain the flexibility to
move the service back in-house or to an alternative
supplier within an agreed notice period.
Where problems arose, they were mainly around the
management of the supplier. There were examples
where the supplier did not deliver as per the signed
agreement and in one instance the supplier went out
of business, highlighting the need for adequate risk
assessment and mitigation.
4.4 Phase 4: Refresh
Step 9: Review
To review the cloud service requirements based on:
the cloud service itself, other changes within the
business, changes within the supplier organization,
or the need to change the supplier.
The key challenges faced in the review step are:
• To prioritise and get approval to start a new cloud
service project cycle.
The critical capabilities used in the review step
are
Strategic Planning (SP), Business Planning (BP),
and Sourcing (SRC). The key activities and outputs
of the review step are described in Table 9.
Table 9: Key activities and outputs for Step 9: Review.
Activities Outputs
• Gather intelligence on the
relevant market segment,
cloud service technology
trends, and supplier offerings.
• Audit cloud supplier
performance and compare to
alternatives.
• Understand and assess how
other changes in the
organization impact on the
existing cloud service
arrangement.
• Based on the above inputs,
regularly reassess and review
requirements.
• Make and present a business
case for any significant
change to the current cloud
service arrangement in order
to get approval to start a new
cycle.
• An intelligence report for next
generation cloud service
offerings.
• Cloud supplier audit results.
• A business case for any
proposed changes.
Some of the organizations researched had a clear
vision of the future that provided them with an
understanding of how cloud service offerings could
be enhanced by the use of common standards, the
use of cloud brokers and a standard integrated
architecture. Other organizations struggled to
integrate their services due to vendor lock-in and not
investing sufficient resources with the correct skills
to decide what was needed for the future. In one
instance it was found that cloud services were being
purchased without any central control, leading to a
mixture of solutions that was very difficult to
integrate.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The use of a cloud life cycle has been shown to be a
very good mechanism for organizations to control
and manage not only their migration but also the
ongoing, day-to-day management of their public
cloud environment. The research for each of the nine
steps described above clearly demonstrates the value
of using a cloud life cycle to control and manage the
move to cloud. The cloud life cycle provides an
organization with a management structure to assess
the following:
• The readiness/maturity of an organization to move
to the public cloud.
• How the organisation is managing the new
environment on a day-to-day basis after it is
migrated.
• What new services can be moved to a public cloud
environment.
Future research on the cloud computing life
cycle will focus on the development of a cloud
vendor assessment that uses both IT-CMF and the
cloud life cycle to help the consumer determine the
correct cloud computing service offerin for their
needs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to recognize the contribution of the
members of the Innovative Value Institute’s Cloud
Computing working group. Enterprise Ireland
funded part of the work presented in this chapter
under Grant CC/2009/0801.
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