Cloud Management: Key Requirement for Cloud Providers

My colleague at CA, Stephen Elliot, vp of strategy, has spent a lot of time recently with large enterprise customers on how they approach and define their plans for Cloud Computing. Many are excited about the opportunity that public clouds provide, but remain on the sidelines due to what they see as technology and business risks.  In fact, they all pointed out their fear of data "left" in the public cloud, poor visibility into service performance, and the general confusion over what a public cloud really is. One of the most common issues was management, spanning service level agreements, security, performance management, and chargeback. It is clear that customers need to investigate, with their public cloud providers, what visibility they provide into their services.  A few key issues include:

• Performance management:  Public cloud services require visibility into service performance and credits they are liable for if they don't meet existing SLAs.
• Security:  How access to public cloud infrastructure is managed , how Identity management is monitored, and how multi-tenancy is executed are critical decision factors.
• Chargeback:  Identifying the financial model upon which cloud services are offered is critical to understanding the ability for the supporting infrastructure to scale as demands fluctuate without warning.
• Process automation:  Automation will play a key role in cloud service providers' ability to scale and maintain an effective cost structure; virtualization and automation must be part of the conversation to determine if the cloud provider is really a low cost option.

Over the next few years, public cloud service providers must consider how they will differentiate their service offerings.  The ability to manage services effectively and efficiently offers providers a foundation to build from:  scale, cost management, increased customer satisfaction, are all building blocks for differentiation. Without management as an upfront investment, cloud providers' increase the risk of failure and price points that are uncompetitive.

These and other issues will be explored in a Cloud Panel at TMW on Thursday 7 May, including representatives from Amazon, Microsoft, VMWare, BT, and CA.  Check the TMW schedule for time and place.