Digital Transformation Asset Management

Enomaly: Startup of the Week

By G C Network | November 18, 2008

Congratulations to Enomaly and Reuven Cohen for being named Startup of the Week byInformationWeek !!! Reuven and I collaborate quite a bit and his blog, Elastic Vapor, is a staple for anyone interested in…

Cloud Computing at DoD, DISA, DIA, CENTCOM and NCOIC

By G C Network | November 17, 2008

At CloudCamp last week, Military Information Technology distributed free copies of it’s November issue to all attendees. The issue contains a very informative article by Cheryl Gerber titled “Computing in…

Last Night’s Camp Out !!

By G C Network | November 13, 2008

Check out Tech BISNOW for more on CloudCamp Federal! Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

CloudCamp Federal was AWESOME !!

By G C Network | November 13, 2008

Just got home from CloudCamp Federal. What an event!! The over 100 attendees definitely made the statement that the Fed is interested in cloud computing. As expected, cloud security was…

DISA taps CollabNet to manage DoD cloud software development

By G C Network | November 12, 2008

This week, the Defense information Systems Agency (DISA) announced that they will be using Collabnet tools to manage application development for RACE. The Computerworld article said that DISA will use…

Today is CloudCamp Federal !!

By G C Network | November 12, 2008

Today we kick of off the first CloudCamp Federal. Reuven Cohen, Bob Lozano, Brand Niemann and over 150 other cloud computing enthusiast are expected to attend. We also plan to…

CloudCamp “Sold Out” !! More Tickets Added

By G C Network | November 11, 2008

We are happy to announce that CloudCamp Federal (aka DC), taking place tomorrow at Apptis headquarters in Chantilly, VA (directions), is sold out. But don’t fret, we’ve added 25 more…

President-Elect Obama: Good for Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 11, 2008

In his article, “What Does Obama Revolution Mean to Cloud Computing“, Krishnan Subramanian lays out a rosy picture for cloud computing: Protecting the openness of Internet: crucial for cloud computing…

Only 9 tickets left for CloudCamp Federal !!

By G C Network | November 10, 2008

Only 9 tickets left from the original allotment of 150 for CloudCamp Federal this week. We’re working to free up some more, but don’t leave it to chance. Go to…

Valiant Angel – A Perfect PED Application for Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 10, 2008

A few weeks ago in an article title “Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination“, I described two instances where the newspaper industry used cloud computing in order to process,…

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:

 

  1. Establish governance thresholds and policies for services;
  2. Connect the advanced management platform across all cloud service accounts;
  3. Track the costs of the services, including recurring and usage-based costs;
  4. Enforce compliance on the costs and asset usage using the purpose-built cost analytics engines; and
  5. 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

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