Network Communications News (NCN) November 2016 | Page 26

S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

cloud computing & virtualisation

Cloud management provides
a single point of contact

Cloud computing systems need to have the flexibility to adjust to an organisation’s changing needs.

Whether you carry out the cloud
migration yourself or use a third party,
the transition requires a number of skills:
A
 n understanding of how to map and
migrate the services from the old to
the new.
C
 loud architect skills to scope, design
and cost the target environment to
achieve the desired outcome: each
cloud provider does it differently.
Proven migration methodologies and
experience spanning multiple systems.
Significant project management
capabilities and the ability to deal with
multiple partners, including third parties.
In-depth knowledge of the cloud industry
E
 xcellent relationships with other
organisations such as network
providers for WAN links.

Monitoring multiple
suppliers from a single
pane of glass
Once an organisation has moved one
or more services to cloud, it still needs
to actively manage its cloud portfolio
and monitor performance against
SLAs. This is leading to a growth in new
services (Cloud Monitoring as a Service,
or CMaaS) to monitor the performance
of multiple suppliers, all of whom will
claim ‘it’s not their fault’ when a problem
arises. Such services should consolidate
events and other performance statistics
across the IT supply chain, showing
overall service health and providing the
ability to drill down into specific services
where required. An added service is
equally important, Security Monitoring
as a Service (SMaaS), which can run
alongside or be integrated CMaaS to

ensure that core services are secure as
well as available.
When choosing such services, look
for integration with public cloud services
(eg. Office 365, Salesforce, Huddle,
Google Apps), IaaS and PaaS services
(eg. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web
Services and Google’s App Engine).
Some services such as Fordway’s CMaaS
can carry out this this monitoring from
a single pane of glass and can also be
used to monitor traditional IT services
such as in-house environments, plus
hosted and private cloud services
where agents can be deployed or
gateways installed into the monitored
environment. Network monitoring is
also provided and the results integrated
into event correlation then displayed on
custom HTML5 dashboards which offer
policy based SLA measurement.

Cloud management might on first
thought be perceived as something that
is not required for cloud services, as
they are all designed to be commodity
services, primarily with user self-service
through web portals. However, most
organisations prefer, and in many cases
need, a human voice and face plus
organisation specific information from
their services. Additionally, there may be
several cloud providers who collectively
provide your IT service.
Thus we are seeing the introduction
of cloud management services
which provide service integration,
management and monitoring for
all cloud services contracted by an
organisation. They offer major incident
and problem management, with
escalation to third parties if required and
may also include asset management of
devices and infrastructure.
The features to look for in a third
party cloud management service include:
Customisable services and reporting.
C
 ross supplier service consolidation and
reporting against defined service levels.
Independent review and reporting on
third party supplier performance.
Service on-boarding and service
management for multiple partners.
Ability to work with other organisations
eg. network providers for WAN links.
24x7 monitoring and support.
Moving to cloud is a more complex
transition than other infrastructure
change projects, particularly if most of
an organisation’s IT services are currently
provided in-house. However, with
appropriate analysis and planning it can
provide significant benefits.

Figure 2: Roles in setting up hybrid cloud: the Conceptual Reference Model (as defined by NIST)

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