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Lynn DeCourcey Showcased in ExecutiveBiz
Kudos to my colleague Lynn DeCourcey for her recent interview on ExecutiveBiz.com! Lynn is NJVC vice president and general manager, cyber security. She oversees all aspects of the company’s cyber…
BISNOW Data Center Event Highlight’s Cloud
A big thank you to BISNOW and my fellow panel members for an outstanding discussion and very informative event, last week’s Data Center Investment Conference and Expo. The federal marketplace…
GSA Seeks Cloud Brokerage Information
GSA is using the RFI process to collect information about alternative models and/or solutions for future cloud acquisition vehicles and processes that further these goals. One emerging concept in cloud…
DoD Cloud Computing Strategy
The DoD recently released the department’s formal cloud computing strategy. DoD Cloud Computing Strategy View more documents from Kevin Jackson. In the forward, DoD CIO Teresa Takai said that: “The…
FedRAMP PMO Releases First Set of 3PAOs
Late today the FedRAMP Program Management Office released the first list of certified Third Party Assessment Organizations (3PAOs). These companies are accredited to perform initial and periodic assessment of cloud…
FedRAMP Releases Updated Security Assessment Plan Templates
Last week the GSA FedRAMP Program Office released the latest version of the cloud computing Security Assessment Plan (SAR) template. This document is the most recent step toward the Federal…
NJVC® and Gravitant® Announce New Strategic Alliance: Partnership to Benefit Federal Agencies with Powerful Provision and Management of Cloud Services that Unify Multiple Providers
Vienna, Va., April 4, 2012 — NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, and Gravitant®, a provider of cloud brokerage and management…
NJVC® VP and GM, Cloud Services, Kevin L. Jackson to Speak on Cloud Security at 2012 Emerging Threats and Cyber Defense Symposium
Vienna, Va., March 15, 2012 — NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions (IT) providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, is pleased to announce that Kevin L. Jackson,…
NJVC’s Kevin L. Jackson Co-Authors INSA White Paper on Cloud Computing for the Intelligence Community
Findings Reflect Insight from More than 50 Cloud Thought Leaders VIENNA, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions (IT) providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, announces…
INSA Study on Cloud Computing in the Intelligence Community: Rollout 13 March 2012 | SYS-CON MEDIA
(Originally posted by Bob Gourley at CTOvision) Over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of serving with a team of volunteers from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance…
Today’s businesses run in the virtual world. From virtual machines to chatbots to Bitcoin, physical has become last century’s modus operandi. Dealing with this type of change in business even has its own buzzword – Digital Transformation. From an information technology operations point of view, this has been manifested by organizations increasingly placing applications, virtual servers, storage platforms, networks, managed services and other assets in multiple cloud environments. Managing these virtual assets can be much more challenging than it was with traditional physical assets in your data center. Cost management and control are also vastly different than the physical asset equivalent. Challenges abound around tracking and evaluating cloud investments, managing their costs and increasing their efficiency. Managers need to track cloud spending and usage, compare costs with budgets and obtain actionable insights that help set appropriate governance policies.
The cloud computing operational expenditure (OPEX) model demands a holistic management approach capable of monitoring and taking action across a heterogeneous environment. This situation is bound to contain cloud services from multiple vendors and managed service providers. Enterprises also need to manage services from a consumption point of view. This viewpoint looks at the service from the particular application down to the specific IT service resources involved, such as storage or a database. Key goals enterprises need to strive for to be successful in this new model include:
- Obtaining ongoing visibility into true-life cloud inventory;
- Viewing current and projected costs versus industry benchmarks;
- Establishing and enforcing governance control points using financial and technical policies;
- Receiving and proactively responding to cloud cost and operational variances and deviations;
- Gaining operational advantages through advanced analytics and cognitive computing capabilities;
- Simulating changes to inventory, spend goals and operational priorities before committing;
- Managing policies through asset tagging across providers and provider services; and
- Identifying and notifying senior managers about waste and opportunities for cost savings.
Accomplishing these goals across a hybrid IT environment will also require timely, accurate and consistent information delivery to the organizations, CIO, CFO, IT Financial Controller and IT Infrastructure and Operations Managers. Ideally, this information would be delivered via a “single pane of glass” dashboard.
One path towards gaining these capabilities would be through the use of a cloud services brokerage
platform like IBM® Cloud Brokerage Managed Services – Cost and Asset Management. This “plug and play” service can assist in the management of spending and assets across hybrid clouds by visualizing data that provides focus on asset performance. Through the use of predictive analytics, it can also provide insight-based recommendations that help in the prioritization of changes according to their expected level of impact. Analytics enables an ability to recalibrate cost by comparing planned versus actual operational expenditures. The built-in cloud service provider catalog, pricing, and matching engines can also help organizations find alternative providers more easily. Using IBM Watson® cognitive capabilities, IBM Cloud Brokerage Managed Services – Cost and Asset Management will also highlight cloud best practices and expected results based on IBM’s rich knowledge base of cross-industry cloud transition experience.
Operating a business from a virtual IT platform is different. That is why advanced cost and asset management skills, capabilities and tools are needed. According to Gartner, more than US$1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud during the next five years. This makes cloud computing one of the most disruptive forces of IT spending since the early days of the digital age. You and your organization can be ready for these tectonic changes by implementing the straightforward five-step process supported by IBM Cloud Service Brokerage capabilities:
- Establish governance thresholds and policies for services;
- Connect the advanced management platform across all cloud service accounts;
- Track the costs of the services, including recurring and usage-based costs;
- Enforce compliance on the costs and asset usage using the purpose-built cost analytics engines; and
- Simulate and optimize the control and compliance actions and better control your costs.
This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit IT Biz Advisor
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)
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