3. The current challenge for companies is
“change management“ (from culture, to
the organisation, to technology).
Organisations face many challenges: competition coming out of nowhere , international
turmoil, rising costs of raw materials, energy and labour, access to qualified knowledge
workers and an ever accelerating of technological innovation.
In this environment, it is not easy to stay on course, have a coherent strategy and at the
same time maintain costs under control.
CEOs, CTOs and CIOs have to provide their companies and organisations with a set of
solutions where the orchestration of a huge array of resources is the key success factor.
In this paper, Value Team states how it can support its clients in attaining this ability to
orchestrate and govern their organisations through an adaptive use of disruptive
technologies such as Cloud Computing.
The revenues generated by Cloud Computing services are growing worldwide 148.8 US$
billion forecast by Gartner for 2014.
What is also thought to increase is the adoption of cloud services by both companies and
end-users. Over the next 5 years, they will spend US $ 112 billion on software-as-a-service
(SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).
Coping with the world of Cloud Computing implies a mindset shift and requires the know-
how and experience from those who have it. It is the combined knowledge of the assets
involved, like that of technology, organisation and resources together with that of the
environments, like the infrastructure, the platforms and the applications.
Value Team, with competences, methodologies and experiences, aims today to serve the
market as a Cloud Services Enabler. ICT governance in this relatively new paradigm, is a
question of balancing the competitive cost of not using the cloud, against the risks of actually
using it. There are opportunities and risks to take into account. This requires a fair
assessment of the situation, and to face and address themes such as data and infrastructure
security as well as quality of service requirements.
So how are organisations reacting to the “paradigm shift” which “cloud” stimulates?
Telecommunications operators are investing in the development of those advanced services
which Cloud Computing enables to introduce ICT cloud offerings to their markets.
Financial Services and Insurance are looking to Cloud Computing not only to optimise costs
and deliver efficiency, but also to improve existing channels and exploit new ones.
In the Utilities market, remote-reading and remote-management are areas where governed
Cloud Computing delivers interesting real-time synergies when combined with innovative
CRM platforms and the “internet of things”.
3
4. For Government (both central and local) the role of Cloud Computing, along with the
adoption of “open source” technologies is even more crucial in delivering digital services to
the citizens.
We believe that the overall challenge can be paraphrased in “governing the context”.
This means to address ever-growing expectations of users towards technology (don’t we all
expect our ICT operations to run as smoothly as the commodities we use every day: easy as
the music on our iPod? safe as our Volvo, and as much fun as drinking our Coke?). It means
to control securely virtual environments, deliver services seamlessly on time, on budget and
in an elastic fashion.
It means to make more and more services available on a self-provisioning and self-serving
basis. It means to run business-oriented
“The revenues
services in the cloud.
generated by cloud
The managers of our clients and prospects
computing services
are all facing this “shift” and we are aware of
that. We are also aware that Cloud
are growing
Computing can be a very “democratic”
technology. For example it allows even small
worldwide; 148.8
companies to access very powerful
US$ billion forecast
solutions easily. Ten years ago only large
corporations could afford CRM systems.
by Gartner for
Nowadays even the bakery in your
neighbourhood could have a
2014.”
“salesforce.com” account (and it could have
it within minutes from ordering online) to
better serve his/her clientele.
Then there is the widespread availability of super-functional mobile technology with the likes
of smart-phones, tablets, thin clients etc. This mobile technology responds very well to the
new ways of conducting business and to what we now call “mobile workers”. Finally there is
the emergence of strong business models that leverage the “social” side of internet
computing. Facebook, Twitter, Google mail, Dropbox etc. are now household names.
These disruptive tools (and others) have boosted overall productivity and are a strong
reinforcing trend in the adoption of Cloud Computing which exalt the horizontal scalability,
typical of “social networks”.
The provisioning of these services, which when you look at Amazon or Google, seems to be
performed effortlessly, actually requires massive preparation and a general mobilisation of IT
resources which is far from easy to execute.
In this ever-changing framework, the Value Team value proposition is independent of the
Cloud Computing services and IT offerings currently on the market. At our core, as a
4
5. strategic consulting company specialised in ICT themes and as a systems integrator, Value
Team has the capability to design and enable Cloud Computing, and also to engineer and
deliver the instruments necessary to govern the cloud and eliminate the risk. That’s why we
describe ourselves as a Cloud Services Enabler.
In fact, in spite of the great hype which surrounds “cloud”, we are fully aware of the fact that
although “cloud” is often referred to as a “game changer”, so have the rules of the game
changed!. Best practices in the cloud are yet to be established and the integration of
systems, business rules and legal frameworks is far from simple in terms of analysis,
process and execution. It is facing and overcoming these various degrees of complexity that
we aim to deliver to our clients and prospects.
Finally we also offer a selection of Software-as-a-Service turnkey solutions built upon our
direct experience in the market. This serves also to prove our ability to implement in the first
person cloud services, and to build our credibility in the eyes of our clients and prospects
when it come to putting our money where our mouth is.
Navigating the cloud is not easy but Value Team is ready to guide you.
5
6. “CLOUD COMPUTING” : 1
A SERVICE ORIENTED ECONOMY.
DEVELOPMENT AND Technologies (ICT) are an enabling factor of
BUSINESS MODELS contemporary society and the very sectors
As we anticipated earlier, Cloud Computing which are driving the economy are
developed thanks to the convergence of at experiencing parallel organisational evolution
least three major trends over the last few solicited by the availability of new
years: service orientation of IT, virtualisation, communications channels and devices.
and simplified access to resources via the For ICT, the change is driven by both
Internet. Its diffusion is due to the external factors, such as the evolution of
development of large-scale data centers, services from large providers (infrastructure
broadband connections and pay-per-use and application), the availability of new
1
“Cloud computing is a model for instruments and the penetration of Internet
enabling convenient, on-demand
payment models.
network access to a shared pool Cloud Computing is differentiated by three usage [Fig 2], but also internal factors, such
of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks, service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) and as aggressive IT cost control and
servers, storage, applications, three deployment models (Public, Private, technological and product innovation have a
and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with Hybrid). [Fig. 1] big impact.
minimal management effort or In this sense opportunities have arisen which
service provider interaction”. The
Internet and mobile markets are moving the
NIST Definition of Cloud attention of both businesses and consumers certain companies have managed to take
Computing , Authors: Peter Mell
and Tim Grance, Version 15, 10- to “service oriented” models. Therefore timely advantage of, such as Rentokil Initial
7-09 Information and Communication for example2 , which is implementing Cloud
6
7. Fig.1
CLOUD TYPOLOGIES:
PRIVATE, PUBLIC E HYBRID
solutions to handle e-mail and collaboration NAVIGATION THROUGH THE
systems and cutting its’ costs in this area by CLOUDS
70%. Cloud Computing requires decisions made in
The current challenge for companies is a framework of both opportunities and risks:
“change management“ (from culture, to the OPPORTUNITIES
organisation, to technology). Cloud • Newly defined business models;
Computing, in this sense, is similar to the • Economic sustainability;
urban development of a large metropolis: • Maturity of the model and services;
one may decide to govern the growth of a • Solidity of SLAs and infrastructures;
city following a regulatory plan or suffer • Flexible governance of fragmented,
random growth, witnessing the development distributed services;
of unstructured suburban areas, which future • Management of the transformation process
generations will then have to deal with and of the architectural model.
manage.
FIG.2
DIFFUSION OF INTERNET
AND PERCENTAGE OF
USERS BY COUNTRY.
2
BBC Business News, May 5,
2010, “Cloud Computing for
business foes mainstream”, Tim
Weber
7
8. RISKS The diffusion of Cloud Computing is also
• Low level of penetration; driven by benefits including:
• Offer not very clear; • Access to distributed resources: Cloud
• Lack of clear evolutionary roadmap; services fit well with mobile interaction, for
• Infrastructural problems for external/public example from a optimised web interface on
cloud; a handheld device. This applied in a global
• Difficulty of data management in Clouds market with distributed organisation means
(e.g., person data privacy laws in different the ability to access services regarless of
countries). the location (think of the workforce
management systems or the sales force
Value Team is proposing to its clients and tools).
prospects a model for active risk • Velocity: basic Cloud services are
management and to control the virtual “transparent” and designed for enabling
environment, rendering the cloud elastic for direct or even self-procurement of hardware
business use while offering secure services. and software systems (for example on
Amazon AWS you can get “virtual”
WHY CHOOSING CLOUD resources less than15 minutes)
Gartner and other international research and • Value for money providers operate
analysts companies3 have highlighted the systems for multiple organisations on a very
fact that Cloud Computing is a technology large scale. Sharing the resources and
“which cannot be ignored”. [Table1] obtaining greater economies of scale at a
The major analyst firms estimate that some lower cost for the organisation is a direct
4 billion people worldwide use a mobile benefit which IT can pass on to the
phone, and some 450 million connect to the business side.
Internet mainly via a mobile device. • Scalability: Cloud enables rapid growth,
TABLE 1 NEEDS USE
VIRTUALISATION OF ICT
Handling enormous quantities of data Distributed computing
RESOURCES FIRST AND CLOUD
Remote storage
Designing distributed products and Blog
COMPUTING TODAY PROVIDE A
services (co-creation) Messaging and collaboration and/or
RESPONSE TO CONSUMER AND
distributed supply chain management
BUSINESS NEEDS
platforms
Horizontal communications (between Machine to machine communication
OVUM, “2010 Trend to Watch: persons, persona-to-thing, and thing-to-
3
(remote metering & reading in utilities )
cloud computing”, 2010, thing)
Laurence Lachal, Steve Domotics (intelligent building)
Hodgkinson - “Computer
mediated transaction” Hal R. Eco-sustainability of IT Green IT
Varian, Ely lecture to the Shared resources.
american economics association,
Atlanta GA, 2010 - “The data Collaboration and interaction in mobility, Social CRM
deluge” The Economist, in real time eLearning
Economist Special report, 2010 Video Conferencing
“The Big Switch: rewiring the
world from Edison to Google”
Nicholas Carr, 2009
8
9. the management of peaks and THE ECONOMICS OF CLOUD
overloads is catered of. Even small and In these times of financial discontinuity and
medium firms can easily access these economic turmoil, reflected in the media and
large-scale operations. experienced directly through domestic
• Continuous innovation: markets, Cloud Computing is sometimes
the majority of providers continuouslupdate perceived as the response to a greater
their infrastructures, regularly demand for rationalisation of ICT costs. This
proposing new demand is what every CTO or CIO has to
services and functionalities that are made deal with everyday in their own organisation
readily available to organisations and about which every CEO and CFO is
regardless of size, ability to invest and asking these key IT roles. The request to
more and more often, their ability to “reduce cost” is hard to answer to. Which
understand technology. costs then? How? What is the business
impact?
Value Team has worked accurately in order
to build a new capability within its Value Team believes that the actual problem
organisation to help customers and lies in the alignment of costs to business
prospects to assess, case by case, which value (e.g., revenue, profit, market share,
benefits can be effectively obtained given a etc.).
specific company background. Finally to
enable these through the implementation of This imposes a discipline and a novel ability
a customised Cloud strategy programme to answer key questions such as:
which fits the organisation and its ability to • How to quantify and qualify the impact of ICT
actually implement such a plan. costs by service on the businesses they
support?
FIG.3
NEW CHALLENGES: COMPANIES
MUST BE ABLE TO MATCH LEGACY
SOLUTIONS WITH THE INTERNET
AND CLOUD APPLICATIONS
BROUGHT INTO THE COMPANY
9
10. • How do you make these costs visible in a organisations we work with, nor does it works
clear and transparent manner to the for all business processes, we think it may be
business? sensible to commence measuring ourselves
• Which performance indicators do you use? against Cloud Computing on terrains which,
• What are the business KPIs? by their nature, are better suited to
• What does “pay-for-use” mean in your experimentation.
organisation?
• How can this model be defined and The experience which emerges from the
integrated in your company accounting analysis of the conduct of the most
system? innovative companies in the field of Cloud
• How do we measure the “added value” of Computing indicates that it may be sensible
this effort in business terms (for example in to “move” services such as collaboration (e-
terms of indicators such as the reduction of mail, messaging etc.), personnel accounting,
client and contact acquisition costs etc.)? Enterprise Content and Document
Management, CRM applications. Cloud
From our standpoint, the massive and Computing can also assist peak traffic
pervasive presence of ICT in all of the management when dealing with Portals and
company’s processes and activities, the e-Commerce sites.
increasing complexity of ICT let alone its
“global” character (no -related to domestic
issues), non conventional competition and
rapid adoption of new enabling technologies,
are exposing in all of the organisations we
work with, both large and small ones, that a
new model of governance is mandatory.
The concept of “ICT Governance” when
applied to Cloud Computing, indicates the
process of controlling all of the ICT resources
in order to manage and guarantee that the
organisation reaches its own objectives:
• Strategic alignment of ICT to the
business;
• Control of the costs and value which the
use of ICT generates or may generate;
• Management of ICT related risks;
• Infrastructure management;
• Management and measurements of
performance on hybrid systems (internal
and external to the organisation) [Fig.3]
Although we are aware that caution is
required and that it is true that this model
does not necessarily fits to all the
10
11. NAVIGATING THROUGH
THE CLOUD
VALUE TEAM VISION organisative which have been more
To achieve a “governed Cloud” means being innovate in adopting Cloud Computing, one
able to offer business and IT services rapidly observes that two further reasons push
with an underpinning economic logic of “pay- towards the Cloud: on one hand the growing
per-use”. In further detail it means to have need to co-create content, products and
put together a clear cost-assignment model services (the “Facebook” model, which is
for the use of the resources, their availability addictive and self-sustaining) and on the
level of reliability, and their horizontal other hand their highly distributed nature (just
scalability etc. Cloud in this sense represents think about the mobile technologies available
the idea of provisioning services and today vs. 5 years ago).
resources oriented towards key business
performance indicators (KPIs, Service Levels The infrastructures on which this massive
or SLAs). collaboration is occurring today (and will
The elastic delivery of resources on a pay- occur with increasing frequency in the future)
per-use basis however, is founded on top of are distributed. They are virtualised
real infrastructures, and although they are architectures, that is; Cloud Computing.
aimed to respond to the evolution of As we have said, this “virtualisation” depends
organisational necessities, albeit now directly on physical elements of the
virtualised, they are still real. infrastructure. Furthermore it is important to
Again exploiting the experience of those make our clients and prospects consider the
11
12. fact that virtualisation is never free of charge, SCALABILITY AND ELASTIC
nor does it deliver benefits by itself, without COMPUTING
impacting management of the complexity of The association between service oriented
the underlying ICT infrastructure. economy and Cloud Computing has its’
For example the virtualisation of physical origins in the model of virtualisation, of
resources (a pre-requisite of Cloud abstraction and definition of software
Computing ) operationally imposes architecture which was anticipated an lead
maintaining control of many aspects, by SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
including: some years ago. Successfully operating on
• proliferation of virtual servers; services that expand and contract
• the increment in physical storage; dynamically as needed according to
• system configurations; business policies means approaching a cost
• the management of peaks in workload; model which adapts elastically to business
• the heterogeneous nature of the platforms; needs and objectives. Many international
• the complexity of the architectures; vendors are moving in this direction. Each of
• data security. the players we observed are working mainly
in a single layer (generally their strengths or
In this sense Value Team can support clients core business) focussing on criteria of
and prospects in assessing the impact of technical elasticity and often not bound by
Cloud Computing on IT investment plans. economic and business value criteria.
One typical assignment which VT performs is
assessing the need to purchase new, large, Value Team is not limited to a single layer of
costly proprietary infrastructures vs. the Cloud computing services (i.e.: IaaS,
outsourcing into public, hybrid and private SaaS, PaaS) but carries forward a vision
clouds “hosted” by cloud providers such as aimed at governing the trends in peaks,
Telecom Italia, BT, NTT Data, Verizon or allocation and the relative impacts on the
international players such as Microsoft- ROI of all services across all models of the
Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud Computing.
Hosting, etc..
FIG.4
THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE
CLOUD: ENABLING
TECHNOLOGIES,
GOVERNANCE PROCESSES
AND SLA COMPLIANCE, AS
SEEN WITH A SECURITY
VIEWPOINT
12
13. FIG. 5
SETTING UP THE
OPERATIONAL MODEL
PROCESSES & TOOLS OF health of services, guarantees the security of
GOVERNANCE FOR the environment, provides visibility of critical
APPLICATIONS & components, and delivers effectiveness in
INFRASTRUCTURE respecting Service Levels (Security,
The growing evolution of IT applications and Management & Control, Application
services imposes on the platforms and Performance Monitoring, Adaptable
infrastructures, as on the processes which Automation).
govern them, deal with variable workloads • SLA Compliance between business KPIs
and respond to business requirements in and ICT services/resources (e.g., Intercloud
terms of availability, costs, performance, SLA Broker, Peak Overload, Dynamic Work
scalability, reliability and agility. Load Management, etc.);
The same underlying technological
components must have characteristics of In addition to these dimensions there is the
granularity, inter-operability, portability and integration to and with security services,
independence of the hardware layer in order which enables user and access
to permit their dynamic organisation, management, handling data privacy issues,
operation and delivery on the basis of audit independence, Business Continuity
service criteria that comply with these and Disaster Recovery. Value Team has the
objectives. competencies to support the design and
Cloud Computing is characterised by 3 construction of solutions with structured
dimensions: [Fig.4] operational models [Fig. 5], guaranteeing
• Enabling technologies and solutions, high standards of security, performance,
which provide elasticity, security and availability, flexibility and automation
scalability of data and application THE ENABLING
management (vStorage, vNetwork, TECHNOLOGIES
vComputing). This paradigm of delivery requires
• Governance processes and solutions substantial re-engineering of the
which deliver direct feedback on the state of technologies and methodologies in the field
13
14. at both the infrastructure level and that of PROCESSES, TOOLS AND
applications and services: INTEGRATION
The ease of use and speed of adoption
INFRASTRUCTURE introduced by Cloud Computing is reflected
The network, as the storage systems and in a greater complexity of the architectures
servers, must offer elevated performance so and technologies, and in greater stratification
as to constitute an ample reservoir to draw of the application context. This poses new,
on and to instantiate the necessary more challenging problems with respect to
resources, assigning them configurable the traditional “silos” models, such as
levels of service (Quality of Service) on the contention for hardware resources, the
basis of the criticality of the data, the reconciliation of application priorities, and the
importance of the user and the application fragmentation of governance responsibilities.
context, with the ability to handle any
possible peak overloads drawing, for In Value Team’s view, the definition and
example, on a pool of external resources enforcement of Service Levels (SLA) is the
(previously negotiated), applying clear critical element of delivery of ICT services in
business rules (e.g., to protect the paying the cloud. For example, one might
user, preserve the availability and execution hypothesise sizing an application or a portal
of the showcase components, etc.). on the basis of its actual adoption, privileging
business users (e.g., “Gold” or “VIPs” ) over
PLATFORM guest users and predicting dynamic growth
Selected platform containers must be of the resources against peaks in utilisation
engineered to enable and guarantee high through opportunistically configured
standardisation of the application layer, and automation measures.
at the same time guaranteeing high level of
scalability and reliability as well as efficient This permits a significant reduction in the
use of resources. initial investment (usually CAPEX) and by
introducing a pay-per-use model correlates
APPLICATION effective use of the resources (costs) to
Service oriented architectures have the business growth (revenues, share, customer
objective of transforming complex processes satisfaction, etc.) not to mention the ability to
into the controlled orchestration of more discriminate among users and the impact
simple and discrete application components that can have on your CRM’s capabilities
or services. It is therefore also possible to
modify and simplify the interaction between SECURITY INTHE CLOUDS
services, and it is easier to add new services An integrated approach to Cloud Computing
or modify processes to respond to changing cannot ignore data and infrastructure related
business requirements, given the security themes. The security themes
independence of binding to a specific requiring attention in the move to Cloud
platform or to a monolithic application Computing solutions may be summarised as
architecture. In this sense the service may be follows:
considered as a component in a wider • User and Access management (certified
process, which can be re-used and modified. authentication and traceability of operations).
Cloud Computing exacerbates the problems
14
15. of managing users: the multitudes of • Data privacy problems.
accounts, the management of diverse silos Legislative regulations (Italian, EU and
linked with identities, the use of international) impose strict obligations, which
heterogeneous administration tools are some can also set limitations on the country for
of the aspects to be considered. In the case of storage of the data. The European
use of Cloud Computing services split over Community, for example, with Data Protection
diverse providers the governance of the life Directive 95/46/EC, mandated that the data
cycle of users becomes even more important must be handled/processed in European
in order to guarantee effective control. The Union nations or, where outside the EU, which
user federation mechanism too, if on the one have adopted specific protection measures in
hand guarantees easy user access to line with EU legislation.
services operated by distinct providers, poses • Audit independence. The faculty to perform
a series of operational and technological independent audits on the infrastructure
challenges, which must be comprehensively delivering the service, in technological and
addressed. legal terms, is another factor guaranteeing a
• Provisioning. This aspect takes on particular company wishing to approach the world of
relevance where account management is Cloud Computing. It becomes even more
delegated to diverse providers, each with their important, in the specific case of SaaS, to be
own management method. In this case it is able to verify opportune levels of logical, and
important to rely on identity management eventually physical, data segregation
services integrated with the principal private or respecting the regulations cited above.
public Cloud service providers. Some security • Business Continuity and Disaster
technology (Identity & Access Management) Recovery. If, on the one hand, Cloud
service providers are thus beginning to supply Computing offers a greater degree of flexibility
integrated services, which can fully manage than normal BC solution, on the other it
users, even in the environments of external requires careful assessment, including
public cloud providers. contractual terms, so that the business
FIG.6
SETTING UP THE SERVICE MODEL
15
16. processes managed by Cloud Computing personalised questions that helps us to
continue to respect their respective planned address the specific nature and needs of our
recovery limitations. clients and prospects. The following is an
example of our checklists
Security is today probably the biggest • What is the priority for the general
concern of IT executives weighing the business and the specific department?
adoption of cloud. Issues such as how do • How is it possible to deliver “just-in-time”
users authenticate into the cloud? Who’s resources to support business objectives?
responsible for data? Where are services • How can costs for determined services or
being hosted? What is the back-up policy of service types be identified, measured and
data? How can we be sure that a given controlled?
provider is “trusted” and that they adhere to a • How is it possible to align resources with
given policy? the service levels expected by the
business?
However Cloud Computing is rapidly • How is it possible to govern a system in a
addressing such concerns. Several Cloud where the application has been
organisations have been operating mission- developed and/or used by third parties?
critical operation in the cloud. For example, • How is it possible to establish a software
since October 2008 Wall Street Systems has development service directed solely to the
announced its cloud based Electronic most important services with frequent
Settlement Network (a pay-as-you-go post- releases to production environments?
trade processing tool for the capital markets), • What are the key application and
which has been used by five mid-tier, banks architectural parameters (review of multi-
for a couple of years already. tenancy of services)?
So although we are fully aware that there are • Should “Mock-up” techniques (simulation)
security concerns, we also know that as be used?
soon as business will be satisfied with the • How can precise access privilege
security offered by Cloud Computing, this will management be assured?
transform the world. • How to handle sensitive and personal data
for Cloud infrastructure delivery and
THE SERVICES OFFERED correctly map the counter measures to be
The Value Team offer consists of enacted to respect the legislative
consultancy services, together with regulations and guarantee correct
governance tools and solutions already management of the risk scenarios?
developed and operational, thanks to which • How to identify and map the perimeters of
it is possible to define and navigate a custom the classic on-premise systems, private
route to and through the Cloud. [Fig.6] Cloud infrastructures and services, which
can be operated on public or hybrid
A) DESIGNING THE CLOUD Clouds?
Definition of a personalised Checklist • How to modify business continuity and
In Value Team’s methodology, the approach disaster recovery plans to take into
to Cloud Computing begins with the account the specific behaviours of Cloud
assessment of client “cloud-readiness”. This services?
can be achieved through a set of
16
17. Structuring by business priority. can be automated to handle risk situations.
Operationally the cloud strategy translates to For example, if SLA adherence is at risk, a
the ability to select the most critical business series of actions and notifications cloud be
applications or services and to assign them set up to return the situation to normal.
additional resources only when needed from
the qualified pool of ICT services – in-house B) GOVERNANCE TOOLS
data centre, hosted or partner DC, trusted or Intelligent workload balancing.
private cloud services provider, public cloud It is possible to configure a minimum kit
services provider or some combination of internally for a new to-be-offered service or a
these. new campaign, and set trigger values
beyond which additional resources must be
SLA Definition: provisioned “just-in-time” to balance the
A consistent set of rules, that support a given workload across the system. Once a stable
business policy, is defined to discipline the workload is identified, a decision on
provisioning and deprovisioning of resources incrementing/decreasing the dedicated
as needed, against a determined load and in resources can be taken (with resources from
pursuit of specific service level objectives the in house DC or from a partner/provider).
(also know as KPIs – Key Performance Once the desired workload is set up for each
Indicators). Value Team offers solutions, application, this load is constantly monitored
which permit agile management of ICT and where there are indications of overload
resources respecting given sets of SLAs. It or ‘stressed’ service levels, the application is
also proposes a well-defined service level supplied in near real-time with additional
governance “within and among the clouds” resources from the “virtualised environment”
(known as “SLA Brokerage”). This entire (e.g. CPU, memory, data storage from the
solution can guarantees correct operation of virtualised Data Center, etc.) or cloud, with
the applications even with the most elevated the mission of balancing the workload during
loads requiring the highest level of reliability. these peaks. The additional resources are
then released when the workload returns to
Modularity and risk mitigation: normal. All scaling operations and the KPIs
It is possible to define a series of detailed that triggered them are recorded and
rules tailored to specific business available for analysis, billing or charge-back,
requirements, for example, enable for certain SLA outage reports, etc.
users the use of determined resources, and So not only is the workload optimized to
redirect others to a controlled ‘No’ or invite operate with just the right amount of ‘power’
them to take up some kind of engagement or the IT and business owners are provided
special offer. Also, you can govern the type, with details of the exact cause and resolution
number and size of the resource or even its of SLA outages for future improvements and
usage cost can be limited to certain users (or customer satisfaction management.
user classes). A secure web portal can be
used to control and manage the usage status Application performance monitoring
of all services and to obtain reports on It is possible to provide timely control of
service level delivery and SLA ‘health’. increasingly complex applications with
Further, through continuous monitoring of distributed critical components, using an
service health against KPIs, real-time actions Application Performance Monitoring solution,
17
18. which enables real time observations of
business transactions and intervention to In Italy, in particular, the FFM products on the
improve adherence to agreed Service market require ad hoc customisation to
Levels. comply with current national legislation in
For example, one might consider an e- matters of labour control. Value Team WFM
commerce portal where it may be opportune solution implements all the legislation
to identify and monitor the more critical foreseen for shift workers. The optional SaaS
business transactions, such as the addition delivery model, further enables the
of a product to a basket or the conclusion of implementation of home/remote working
a purchase. During the effective execution of while maintaining control of the infrastructural
the transactions by users, it is possible to impacts.
identify the application components involved
and visualise the relationship between these Payment as a Service ( VTPie)
and the effective usage experience of the The VTPie solution provides the full set of
end user. Analysis of the results provides the tools needed for flexible payment
basis for construction of intervention actions management, delivered as a service.
on the infrastructure and in the application. The architecture and technologies selected
from the inception are open to the adoption
C) “SAAS” SOLUTIONS of Cloud models.
Workforce Management
Value Team supports all phases of Work VTPie was conceived for core banking
Force (WFM) and Field Force Management application management and supports
(FFM) projects with a flexible, modular, elevated volumes of events and operations.
scalable, integrated approach: from definition Indeed the architecture is fully scalable in
of the strategy, to the model and roadmap, order to handle increased calculation
and to solution design, development, capacity, while maintaining the same
implementation and operation/management. structure. VTPie modules handle “client-
The WFM and FFM products on the market bank”, bank-bank” and “interbank network”
cover distinct yet limited areas, while the processes.
solution developed by Value Team presents
a wider functional coverage than most Adoption of the Cloud model, on the one
market products. The solution plans and hand, guarantees data security and
distributes the workforce in an optimal segregation in compliance with banking
manner. In particular, it enables requirements regulations, and on the other hand process
forecasting, resource and working hours/shift customisation on the basis of client needs in
planning and management and monitoring of order to maintain a differentiation of the
the correspondence between planned and services offered to their markets.
effective use. Nor should it be forgotten that, The offer provides both a user license
also in the case of SaaS delivery, a project of approach and a service approach. In the first
this type also implies accurate Change case, it addresses banks, which intend using
Management activities to manage the their own IT structures and acquire VTPie
impacts from viewpoint of personnel user licenses to fully govern within their
management. environments. The service model enables
18
19. Banks adopting an outsourcing strategy to
exploit fully turn key services with pricing Security
policies based on the effective use of The Identity & Access Management solution
infrastructures (for example the number of integrates account management and that of
transactions). the Cloud application identities through
specific security SaaS. On the one side these
The heart of the VTPie platform provides the interface with the applications/ services from
elements to build the diverse front-end the service provider coherently managing the
modules and manages interactions with the user life cycle and the access management
re-usable components (services, workflow aspects, on the other the SaaS security
management, transaction engine, etc). services can expose the application
Starting from these principles, the interfaces to integrate with the end user on-
architectural orientation is service based premise Identity & Access management
(100%) SOA, while development has systems.
followed the J2EE standard and is 100%
Java.
Document Management
Our solutions are VTDocs and Cruisenet.
The first is a document management system
vertically integrated for Italian regulation of
the so called “dematerialisation” (e-
document or e-paper), which supports the
digital signature, IT protocol and
interoperability via certified e-mail.
The second is a support system for
“The system is
adaptation to regulations (for example for
structured to
ISO certification) and to describe enterprise
processes and organisations.
Both are framework based using Microsoft™ deliver solution
under the SaaS
technology, modular, scalable structures fully
model: each client
customisable on the basis of client
requirements. They can, naturally, be
activates a
integrated with the major document
maximum number
management systems and SSO( Single Sign
On) systems in the market today. The
of users, profiled
system is designed to supply solutions under
a SaaS model: each client activates a
for the specific
maximum number of user accounts, profiles
needs”
as per the specific needs (pay-per-use). The
service provision mode is multi-tenant, multi-
instance.
19
20. CLOUD ON THE MARKETS
CLOUD IN THE requires guarantees at service and security
TELCO & MEDIA MARKET levels for “solutions”. The most typical of
With the premise that without a good these are generally: collaboration
network, talking about Cloud Computing has applications, connectivity services, on
no sense whatever, in Italy, the adoption of a demand processing resources and CRM.
structured ICT governance system is In general, TLC operators aim to propose
generally the prerogative of large industrial three macro-service types:
companies and certain local and central • IT infrastructure and communications
public administrations. So any proposal of integration;
value in the Cloud Computing arena, must • virtualisation of physical assets;
be based on a reliable, redundant, resilient, • de-coupling of applications from physical
high performance communications system. infrastructures.
With specific reference to the Telco market, Although it is true that the large carriers
Cloud Computing is a contemporary have, to date, had a marginal role in the set
challenge for adaption of infrastructures and up and sale of generally defined public
an opportunity for the diffusion of a new Clouds services (mostly IaaS), some are
business model by Telco and Media now making significant investments for the
companies. development of the advanced services which
The demand for Cloud Computing services Cloud Computing enables.
20
21. FIG 7
“WITH REFERENCE TO THE TELCO
MARKET, CLOUD COMPUTING IS A
CHALLENGE FOR ADAPTATION OF
INFRASTRUCTURES AND AN
OPPORTUNITY FOR THE
DIFFUSION OF A NEW BUSINESS
MODEL ”
In this scenario, Value Team is aiming above as an opportunity to improve their services
all to play the role of enabler thanks to its and reduce operating costs. Cloud
competency in sector specific processes: Computing is a technology which is reaching
• Mission critical applications (e.g. mobile interesting levels of maturity for many
operator top up systems, provisioning decidedly heterogeneous sectors, from on-
systems, billing, etc.); line collaboration to entertainment.
• System operations support applications In the world of Financial Services and
(OSS such as Trouble management for Insurance, the need to deliver services to
the field, trouble management for employees and partners contrasts with the
customer operations); necessity for a capillary infrastructure
• Business support applications (BSS such requiring complex maintenance. Making
as CRM, Human Digital Assistants, information available to be shared by diverse
Federated Identity Management, actors, thus having by necessity to manage
Workforce Management). a diversified infrastructure, is often the
reason for costs spiralling out of control.
CLOUD IN THE Further, the lack of agility of processes, often
FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS does not permit taking business
MARKET opportunities as they are presented.
Major banking and insurance groups are Cloud Computing, however, not only enables
looking at this combination of technologies cost optimisation and delivers efficiency; it
21
22. also permits better exploitation of new capacity enables analysis of an extraordinary
information distribution channels. Thanks to number of transactions and also in Financial
Cloud Computing it is possible to provide Provisioning and market analysis, to rapidly
access to one or more databases in real time execute simulations without requiring the
from any device utilised by a broker/agent. setup and operation of a costly infrastructure.
For brokers, real time mobile systems The flexibility, which Cloud-based solutions
access is a critical factor for success, can deliver in the business model, is highly
especially where a broker is multi- significant. In particular, the facility to have
representative. only the services really needed available, is
a source of significant savings in a period in
A study performed in the United States (by which cost saving is more important than
International Data Corporation IDC)) ever.
indicates that 25% of US banking institutions
use web-based technologies to supply on- Value Team plays the role of enabler in many
demand services to their clients/partners, business areas in this sector where this
while a solid 20% of financial institutions technology can be employed effectively.
foresee passing to Cloud Computing over Among the most important we can cite:
the next 3 years. • Enterprise content management
• Document archiving and search solutions,
Cloud Computing is used in the anti-money e-mail archiving and security;
laundering filed, where distributed calculation • Back-office activities;
FIG 8
“25% OF US BANKS USE WEB-BASED
TECHNOLOGIES TO DELIVER ON-
DEMAND SERVICES TO THEIR
CLIENTS/”
22
23. • Credit card processing of the private cloud to become hybrid with
• Management and consolidation of diverse use of state of the art solutions already
payment process types; existing for other primary industrial realities.
• Enterprise risk management – dedicated Tele-metering, tele-management and tele-
IT framework for financial services reading are other areas where governed
• Enterprise portals; Cloud offers interesting real time synergies
• Extreme Transaction Processing with CRM platforms. Think of a future where
Platforms; intelligent meters can communicate, and
• Enterprise CRM; power distribution is effected in peer to peer
• Consumer credit reporting; mode as the Internet of Things paradigm is
• Client support systems; realised.
• Retail banking and stock trading;
• Sales support (Sales force automation). Finally, harmonising the
operation/management of multiple data
CLOUD FOR THE ENERGY centres, now migrated to a Cloud Computing
MARKET AND PUBBLIC model, is hitting that target of mobility, agility,
ADMINISTRATION economy and scalability which have been
Operators in the Energy field have to deal the centre of presentations by industry
with a “mixed bag” of an application analysts for years.
portfolios, because there are so many
specific operation areas to cover, from For Energy operators, creating their own
communications with customers to energy Cloud means taking the opportunity to
resource management. In this context, the maximise investments, free processing
role of ICT is increasingly strategic in resources and, at the same time, prepare for
delivering competitiveness and differentiation the challenges of the future.
that offers the business rapid responses to
fast changing needs, preferably leveraging For public administration (Defence, Welfare,
the infrastructural assets available. central, regional and local government, etc.)
the need to use Cloud applications becomes
There already many applications, which fundamental where services shared by
have switched from dedicated to virtual several administrations (private Clouds) to
infrastructure for diverse motives, or they offer added value services to citizens in the
have been subjected to consolidation areas of revenue management, health,
processes due to overlap of the services welfare also from a regional view.
supported. Here a Cloud governance
solution finds immediate application in the The boundaries among the diverse sectors
systems supporting simulation activities oil are becoming less distinct and we often hear
exploration and production models, at the of “open government” where information
front-end towards the retail clients, on the (e.g. civil state data) is owned by
CRM, through field force management Government, while the services built on top
systems. of these data may be offered by third parties,
though regulated and guided by the public
For example, in field force management, the administration (e.g. city councils, regional
Value Team offer can also escape the limits government, etc.).
23
24. FIG. 9
“CLOUD COMPUTING, IT AS A SERVICE, GREEN IT ARE BUT A
FEW OF THE TRENDS EMERGING”
Indeed, today in the world of public
“.. there is a need
to integrate
administration, there is a need to integrate
services to the public with financial or
services to the
administrative services. And nowhere is it
public with
more the mandate to ‘do more with less’.
financial or
administrative
services. And
nowhere is it more
the mandate to ‘do
more with less’”
24
25. HOW TO NAVIGATE IN THE CLOUDS
THE APPROACH PROPOSED.
To navigate in the vast world of Cloud Computing it is necessary to count on a consolidated
approach to methodology and use tools and applications suited to governance management of
‘services’’
.
Value Team’s Cloud offering can be summarised as follows:
DESIGN GOVERNANCE SaaS SERVICES
INSTRUMENTS
CONSULTANCY SERVICES & CONSULTANCY & OFF THE SHELF
APPROACH & SET UP IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS
METHODOLGY LINKED TO THE FOR THE ENTERPRISE
INFRASTRUCTURES AND MARKET
WITH OUSOURCING
SERVICES
Key factors Key factors Key factors
• Scouting and auditing of • Audit of the governance • Internally developed
the services, processes, and “factory” infrastructure products which better meet
policies and the • Re-engineering of customer needs
supporting KPIS and applications for Cloud • Technological competency
SLAs; (physical to virtual) and of and installation at large
• Service simulation design, the development, testing clients
validation to support the and deployment
economic models environments for elastic
delivery
Activities Activities Activities
1. Definition of custom check 1. Intelligent workload 1. Work Force e Field Force
lists balancing Management
2. Structuring to business 2. Application performance 2. VTPie: Payment as a
priorities monitoringe Service
3. SLA Definition 3. Document Management
4. Modularity and risk 4. Identity & Access
mitigation Management
25
26. The method of approach for Cloud Computing applied by Value Team is advantageous because:
• it is action-based: it enables the set up of a series of preventive actions and risk mitigation;
• it is distributed and close to the potential points of failure of the systems and processes;
• it is independent and high level, integrating with the decision systems available on the market;
• it optimises just-in-time resource provisioning to respect the service levels required by
business;
• it enables a pay-for-use licensing model.
The challenge to private or public organisations is that of governing the risks while fully exploiting
the opportunities, which this new model proposes, that is succeeding in managing the Cloud,
which delivers business oriented added value services.
In this context, the key role is that of defining the operational model of Cloud utilisation within the
company, enabling services with defined, dynamic Service Levels and aggregating in house
functionalities and those sourced from other Clouds (private, public and hybrid).
With our experience all along the value chain (consultancy, projects and services), Value Team is
an international partner for both enterprise and government organisations, as well as for
infrastructure providers, who knows how to navigate You in the Cloud.
Value Team is an IT consultancy and services company developing innovative solutions for
business, whose offer covers the entire value chain.
Counting on more than 3000 professionals world wide, with a significant presence in Italy, Europe
and Latin America, Value Team works for major multinationals and leaders in their respective
sectors and geographic areas, and has always collaborated with the principal universities and
centres of research and innovation.
.
“Value Team is an
international partner for
both enterprise, government
organisations and for
infrastructure providers,
who knows how to
navigarte You to the Cloud”
26
27.
28. Value Team is an IT consultancy and
service company developing innovative
solutions for business, whose offer
covers the entire value chain.
Counting on some 3000 professionals
world wide, with a significant presence
in Italy, Europe and Latin America,
Value Team works for major
multinationals and leaders in their
respective sectors and geographic
areas, and has always collaborated
with the principal universities and
centres of research and innovation.
