NAVIGATINGTHECLOUD

CLOUD COMPUTING: EMPOWERING BUSINESSTO CREATE AND EXPLOIT NEW SERVICES

Copyright © 2011 ValueTeam.

All rights reserved.

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”.

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The current challenge for companies is“changemanagement“ (fromculture, tothe organisation, to technology).

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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

services in the cloud.

The managers of our clients and prospects

are all facing this “shift” and we are aware of

that. We are also aware that Cloud

Computing can be a very “democratic”

technology. For example it allows even small

companies to access very powerful

solutions easily. Ten years ago only large

corporations could afford CRM systems.

Nowadays even the bakery in your

neighbourhood could have a

“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

“The revenuesgenerated by cloudcomputing servicesare growingworldwide; 148.8US$ billion forecastby Gartner for2014.”

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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.

Technologies (ICT) are an enabling factor of

contemporary society and the very sectors

which are driving the economy are

experiencing parallel organisational evolution

solicited by the availability of new

communications channels and devices.

For ICT, the change is driven by both

external factors, such as the evolution of

services from large providers (infrastructure

and application), the availability of new

instruments and the penetration of Internet

usage [Fig 2], but also internal factors, such

as aggressive IT cost control and

technological and product innovation have a

big impact.

In this sense opportunities have arisen which

certain companies have managed to take

timely advantage of, such as Rentokil Initial

for example2 , which is implementing Cloud

DEVELOPMENT ANDBUSINESS MODELSAs we anticipated earlier, Cloud Computing

developed thanks to the convergence of at

least three major trends over the last few

years: service orientation of IT, virtualisation,

and simplified access to resources via the

Internet. Its diffusion is due to the

development of large-scale data centers,

broadband connections and pay-per-use

payment models.

Cloud Computing is differentiated by three

service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) and

three deployment models (Public, Private,

Hybrid). [Fig. 1]

Internet and mobile markets are moving the

attention of both businesses and consumers

to “service oriented” models. Therefore

Information and Communication

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“CLOUD COMPUTING”1 :A SERVICE ORIENTED ECONOMY.

1 “Cloud computing is a model forenabling convenient, on-demandnetwork access to a shared poolof configurable computingresources (e.g., networks,servers, storage, applications,and services) that can be rapidlyprovisioned and released withminimal management effort orservice provider interaction”. TheNIST Definition of CloudComputing , Authors: Peter Melland Tim Grance, Version 15, 10-7-09

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solutions to handle e-mail and collaboration

systems and cutting its’ costs in this area by

70%.

The current challenge for companies is

“change management“ (from culture, to the

organisation, to technology). Cloud

Computing, in this sense, is similar to the

urban development of a large metropolis:

one may decide to govern the growth of a

city following a regulatory plan or suffer

random growth, witnessing the development

of unstructured suburban areas, which future

generations will then have to deal with and

manage.

NAVIGATION THROUGHTHECLOUDSCloud Computing requires decisions made in

a framework of both opportunities and risks:

OPPORTUNITIES

• Newly defined business models;• Economic sustainability;

• Maturity of the model and services;

• Solidity of SLAs and infrastructures;

• Flexible governance of fragmented,

distributed services;

• Management of the transformation process

of the architectural model.

2 BBC Business News, May 5,2010, “Cloud Computing forbusiness foes mainstream”, TimWeber

Fig.1

CLOUD TYPOLOGIES:

PRIVATE, PUBLIC E HYBRID

FIG.2

DIFFUSION OF INTERNET

AND PERCENTAGE OF

USERS BY COUNTRY.

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NEEDS USE

Handling enormous quantities of data Distributed computing

Remote storage

Designing distributed products andservices (co-creation)

BlogMessaging and collaboration and/ordistributed supply chain managementplatforms

Horizontal communications (betweenpersons, persona-to-thing, and thing-to-thing)

Machine to machine communication

(remote metering & reading in utilitiesQ)

Domotics (intelligent building)

Eco-sustainability of IT Green IT

Shared resources.

Collaboration and interaction in mobility,in real time

Social CRMeLearningVideo Conferencing

3OVUM, “2010 Trend to Watch:cloud computing”, 2010,Laurence Lachal, SteveHodgkinson - “Computermediated transaction” Hal R.Varian, Ely lecture to theamerican economics association,Atlanta GA, 2010 - “The datadeluge” The Economist,Economist Special report, 2010“The Big Switch: rewiring theworld from Edison to Google”Nicholas Carr, 2009

RISKS

• Low level of penetration;

• Offer not very clear;

• Lack of clear evolutionary roadmap;

• Infrastructural problems for external/public

cloud;

• Difficulty of data management in Clouds

(e.g., person data privacy laws in different

countries).

Value Team is proposing to its clients and

prospects a model for active risk

management and to control the virtual

environment, rendering the cloud elastic for

business use while offering secure services.

WHY CHOOSING CLOUDGartner and other international research and

analysts companies3 have highlighted the

fact that Cloud Computing is a technology

“which cannot be ignored”. [Table1]The major analyst firms estimate that some

4 billion people worldwide use a mobile

phone, and some 450 million connect to the

Internet mainly via a mobile device.

The diffusion of Cloud Computing is also

driven by benefits including:

• Access to distributed resources: Cloud

services fit well with mobile interaction, for

example from a optimised web interface on

a handheld device. This applied in a global

market with distributed organisation means

the ability to access services regarless of

the location (think of the workforce

management systems or the sales force

tools).

• Velocity: basic Cloud services are

“transparent” and designed for enabling

direct or even self-procurement of hardware

and software systems (for example on

AmazonAWS you can get “virtual”

resources less than15 minutes)

• Value for money providers operate

systems for multiple organisations on a very

large scale. Sharing the resources and

obtaining greater economies of scale at a

lower cost for the organisation is a direct

benefit which IT can pass on to the

business side.

• Scalability: Cloud enables rapid growth,

TABLE 1

VIRTUALISATION OF ICT

RESOURCES FIRST AND CLOUD

COMPUTING TODAY PROVIDE A

RESPONSE TO CONSUMER AND

BUSINESS NEEDS

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the management of peaks and

overloads is catered of. Even small and

medium firms can easily access these

large-scale operations.

• Continuous innovation:

the majority of providers continuouslupdate

their infrastructures, regularly

proposing new

services and functionalities that are made

readily available to organisations

regardless of size, ability to invest and

more and more often, their ability to

understand technology.

Value Team has worked accurately in order

to build a new capability within its

organisation to help customers and

prospects to assess, case by case, which

benefits can be effectively obtained given a

specific company background. Finally to

enable these through the implementation of

a customised Cloud strategy programme

which fits the organisation and its ability to

actually implement such a plan.

THE ECONOMICS OF CLOUDIn these times of financial discontinuity and

economic turmoil, reflected in the media and

experienced directly through domestic

markets, Cloud Computing is sometimes

perceived as the response to a greater

demand for rationalisation of ICT costs. This

demand is what every CTO or CIO has to

deal with everyday in their own organisation

and about which every CEO and CFO is

asking these key IT roles. The request to

“reduce cost” is hard to answer to. Which

costs then? How?What is the business

impact?

Value Team believes that the actual problem

lies in the alignment of costs to business

value (e.g., revenue, profit, market share,

etc.).

This imposes a discipline and a novel ability

to answer key questions such as:

• How to quantify and qualify the impact of ICT

costs by service on the businesses they

support?

FIG.3

NEW CHALLENGES: COMPANIES

MUST BE ABLE TO MATCH LEGACY

SOLUTIONSWITH THE INTERNET

AND CLOUD APPLICATIONS

BROUGHT INTO THE COMPANY

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organisations we work with, nor does it works

for all business processes, we think it may be

sensible to commence measuring ourselves

against Cloud Computing on terrains which,

by their nature, are better suited to

experimentation.

The experience which emerges from the

analysis of the conduct of the most

innovative companies in the field of Cloud

Computing indicates that it may be sensible

to “move” services such as collaboration (e-

mail, messaging etc.), personnel accounting,

Enterprise Content and Document

Management, CRM applications. Cloud

Computing can also assist peak traffic

management when dealing with Portals and

e-Commerce sites.

• Howdo youmake these costs visible in a

clear and transparentmanner to the

business?

• Which performance indicators do you use?

• What are the business KPIs?

• What does “pay-for-use”mean in your

organisation?

• How can thismodel be defined and

integrated in your company accounting

system?

• How dowemeasure the “added value” of

this effort in business terms (for example in

terms of indicators such as the reduction of

client and contact acquisition costs etc.)?

From our standpoint, the massive and

pervasive presence of ICT in all of the

company’s processes and activities, the

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

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VALUE TEAM VISIONTo achieve a “governed Cloud” means being

able to offer business and IT services rapidly

with an underpinning economic logic of “pay-

per-use”. In further detail it means to have

put together a clear cost-assignment model

for the use of the resources, their availability

level of reliability, and their horizontal

scalability etc. Cloud in this sense represents

the idea of provisioning services and

resources oriented towards key business

performance indicators (KPIs, Service Levels

or SLAs).

The elastic delivery of resources on a pay-

per-use basis however, is founded on top of

real infrastructures, and although they are

aimed to respond to the evolution of

organisational necessities, albeit now

virtualised, they are still real.

Again exploiting the experience of those

organisative which have been more

innovate in adopting Cloud Computing, one

observes that two further reasons push

towards the Cloud: on one hand the growing

need to co-create content, products and

services (the “Facebook” model, which is

addictive and self-sustaining) and on the

other hand their highly distributed nature (just

think about the mobile technologies available

today vs. 5 years ago).

The infrastructures on which this massive

collaboration is occurring today (and will

occur with increasing frequency in the future)

are distributed. They are virtualised

architectures, that is; Cloud Computing.

As we have said, this “virtualisation” depends

directly on physical elements of the

infrastructure. Furthermore it is important to

make our clients and prospects consider the

NAVIGATING THROUGHTHE CLOUD

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SCALABILITY AND ELASTICCOMPUTINGThe association between service oriented

economy and Cloud Computing has its’

origins in the model of virtualisation, of

abstraction and definition of software

architecture which was anticipated an lead

by SOA (Service OrientedArchitecture)

some years ago. Successfully operating on

services that expand and contract

dynamically as needed according to

business policies means approaching a cost

model which adapts elastically to business

needs and objectives. Many international

vendors are moving in this direction. Each of

the players we observed are working mainly

in a single layer (generally their strengths or

core business) focussing on criteria of

technical elasticity and often not bound by

economic and business value criteria.

Value Team is not limited to a single layer of

the Cloud computing services (i.e.: IaaS,

SaaS, PaaS) but carries forward a vision

aimed at governing the trends in peaks,

allocation and the relative impacts on the

ROI of all services across all models of the

Cloud Computing.

fact that virtualisation is never free of charge,

nor does it deliver benefits by itself, without

impacting management of the complexity of

the underlying ICT infrastructure.

For example the virtualisation of physical

resources (a pre-requisite of Cloud

Computing ) operationally imposes

maintaining control of many aspects,

including:

• proliferation of virtual servers;

• the increment in physical storage;

• system configurations;

• themanagement of peaks in workload;

• the heterogeneous nature of the platforms;

• the complexity of the architectures;

• data security.

In this sense Value Team can support clients

and prospects in assessing the impact of

Cloud Computing on IT investment plans.

One typical assignment which VT performs is

assessing the need to purchase new, large,

costly proprietary infrastructures vs.

outsourcing into public, hybrid and private

clouds “hosted” by cloud providers such as

Telecom Italia, BT, NTT Data, Verizon or

international players such as Microsoft-

Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rackspace

Hosting, etc..

FIG.4

THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE

CLOUD: ENABLING

TECHNOLOGIES,

GOVERNANCE PROCESSES

AND SLA COMPLIANCE, AS

SEENWITH A SECURITY

VIEWPOINT

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PROCESSES &TOOLS OFGOVERNANCE FORAPPLICATIONS &INFRASTRUCTUREThe growing evolution of IT applications and

services imposes on the platforms and

infrastructures, as on the processes which

govern them, deal with variable workloads

and respond to business requirements in

terms of availability, costs, performance,

scalability, reliability and agility.

The same underlying technological

components must have characteristics of

granularity, inter-operability, portability and

independence of the hardware layer in order

to permit their dynamic organisation,

operation and delivery on the basis of

service criteria that comply with these

objectives.

Cloud Computing is characterised by 3

dimensions: [Fig.4]

• Enabling technologies and solutions,

which provide elasticity, security and

scalability of data and application

management (vStorage, vNetwork,

vComputing).

• Governance processes and solutions

which deliver direct feedback on the state of

health of services, guarantees the security of

the environment, provides visibility of critical

components, and delivers effectiveness in

respecting Service Levels (Security,

Management &Control,Application

PerformanceMonitoring,Adaptable

Automation).

• SLACompliance between business KPIs

and ICTservices/resources (e.g., Intercloud

SLABroker, PeakOverload, DynamicWork

LoadManagement, etc.);

In addition to these dimensions there is the

integration to and with security services,

which enables user and access

management, handling data privacy issues,

audit independence, Business Continuity

and Disaster Recovery. Value Team has the

competencies to support the design and

construction of solutions with structured

operational models [Fig. 5], guaranteeing

high standards of security, performance,

availability, flexibility and automation

THE ENABLINGTECHNOLOGIESThis paradigm of delivery requires

substantial re-engineering of the

technologies and methodologies in the field

FIG. 5

SETTING UP THE

OPERATIONAL MODEL

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at both the infrastructure level and that of

applications and services:

INFRASTRUCTURE

The network, as the storage systems and

servers, must offer elevated performance so

as to constitute an ample reservoir to draw

on and to instantiate the necessary

resources, assigning them configurable

levels of service (Quality of Service) on the

basis of the criticality of the data, the

importance of the user and the application

context, with the ability to handle any

possible peak overloads drawing, for

example, on a pool of external resources

(previously negotiated), applying clear

business rules (e.g., to protect the paying

user, preserve the availability and execution

of the showcase components, etc.).

PLATFORM

Selected platform containers must be

engineered to enable and guarantee high

standardisation of the application layer, and

at the same time guaranteeing high level of

scalability and reliability as well as efficient

use of resources.

APPLICATION

Service oriented architectures have the

objective of transforming complex processes

into the controlled orchestration of more

simple and discrete application components

or services. It is therefore also possible to

modify and simplify the interaction between

services, and it is easier to add new services

or modify processes to respond to changing

business requirements, given the

independence of binding to a specific

platform or to a monolithic application

architecture. In this sense the service may be

considered as a component in a wider

process, which can be re-used and modified.

PROCESSES, TOOLS ANDINTEGRATIONThe ease of use and speed of adoption

introduced by Cloud Computing is reflected

in a greater complexity of the architectures

and technologies, and in greater stratification

of the application context. This poses new,

more challenging problems with respect to

the traditional “silos” models, such as

contention for hardware resources, the

reconciliation of application priorities, and the

fragmentation of governance responsibilities.

In Value Team’s view, the definition and

enforcement of Service Levels (SLA) is the

critical element of delivery of ICT services in

the cloud. For example, one might

hypothesise sizing an application or a portal

on the basis of its actual adoption, privileging

business users (e.g., “Gold” or “VIPs”Q) over

guest users and predicting dynamic growth

of the resources against peaks in utilisation

through opportunistically configured

automation measures.

This permits a significant reduction in the

initial investment (usually CAPEX) and by

introducing a pay-per-use model correlates

effective use of the resources (costs) to

business growth (revenues, share, customer

satisfaction, etc.) not to mention the ability to

discriminate among users and the impact

that can have on your CRM’s capabilities

SECURITYINTHECLOUDSAn integrated approach to Cloud Computing

cannot ignore data and infrastructure related

security themes. The security themes

requiring attention in the move to Cloud

Computing solutions may be summarised as

follows:

• User andAccessmanagement (certified

authentication and traceability of operations).

CloudComputing exacerbates the problems

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• Data privacy problems.

Legislative regulations (Italian, EU and

international) impose strict obligations, which

can also set limitations on the country for

storage of the data. TheEuropean

Community, for example, with Data Protection

Directive 95/46/EC,mandated that the data

must be handled/processed in European

Union nations or, where outside the EU,which

have adopted specific protectionmeasures in

linewith EU legislation.

• Audit independence. The faculty to perform

independent audits on the infrastructure

delivering the service, in technological and

legal terms, is another factor guaranteeing a

companywishing to approach theworld of

CloudComputing. It becomes evenmore

important, in the specific case of SaaS, to be

able to verify opportune levels of logical, and

eventually physical, data segregation

respecting the regulations cited above.

• BusinessContinuity andDisaster

Recovery. If, on the one hand, Cloud

Computing offers a greater degree of flexibility

than normal BC solution, on the other it

requires careful assessment, including

contractual terms, so that the business

ofmanaging users: themultitudes of

accounts, themanagement of diverse silos

linkedwith identities, the use of

heterogeneous administration tools are some

of the aspects to be considered. In the case of

use of CloudComputing services split over

diverse providers the governance of the life

cycle of users becomes evenmore important

in order to guarantee effective control. The

user federationmechanism too, if on the one

hand guarantees easy user access to

services operated by distinct providers, poses

a series of operational and technological

challenges, whichmust be comprehensively

addressed.

• Provisioning. This aspect takes on particular

relevancewhere accountmanagement is

delegated to diverse providers, eachwith their

ownmanagementmethod. In this case it is

important to rely on identitymanagement

services integratedwith the principal private or

public Cloud service providers. Some security

technology (Identity &AccessManagement)

service providers are thus beginning to supply

integrated services, which can fullymanage

users, even in the environments of external

public cloud providers.

FIG.6

SETTING UP THE SERVICE MODEL

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personalised questions that helps us to

address the specific nature and needs of our

clients and prospects. The following is an

example of our checklists

• What is the priority for the general

business and the specific department?

• How is it possible to deliver “just-in-time”

resources to support business objectives?

• How can costs for determined services or

service types be identified, measured and

controlled?

• How is it possible to align resources with

the service levels expected by the

business?

• How is it possible to govern a system in a

Cloud where the application has been

developed and/or used by third parties?

• How is it possible to establish a software

development service directed solely to the

most important services with frequent

releases to production environments?

• What are the key application and

architectural parameters (review of multi-

tenancy of services)?

• Should “Mock-up” techniques (simulation)

be used?

• How can precise access privilege

management be assured?

• How to handle sensitive and personal data

for Cloud infrastructure delivery and

correctly map the counter measures to be

enacted to respect the legislative

regulations and guarantee correct

management of the risk scenarios?

• How to identify and map the perimeters of

the classic on-premise systems, private

Cloud infrastructures and services, which

can be operated on public or hybrid

Clouds?

• How to modify business continuity and

disaster recovery plans to take into

account the specific behaviours of Cloud

services?

processesmanaged byCloudComputing

continue to respect their respective planned

recovery limitations.

Security is today probably the biggest

concern of IT executives weighing the

adoption of cloud. Issues such as how do

users authenticate into the cloud? Who’s

responsible for data? Where are services

being hosted? What is the back-up policy of

data? How can we be sure that a given

provider is “trusted” and that they adhere to a

given policy?

However Cloud Computing is rapidly

addressing such concerns. Several

organisations have been operating mission-

critical operation in the cloud. For example,

since October 2008 Wall Street Systems has

announced its cloud based Electronic

Settlement Network (a pay-as-you-go post-

trade processing tool for the capital markets),

which has been used by five mid-tier, banks

for a couple of years already.

So although we are fully aware that there are

security concerns, we also know that as

soon as business will be satisfied with the

security offered by Cloud Computing, this will

transform the world.

THE SERVICES OFFEREDThe Value Team offer consists of

consultancy services, together with

governance tools and solutions already

developed and operational, thanks to which

it is possible to define and navigate a custom

route to and through the Cloud. [Fig.6]

A) DESIGNING THE CLOUD

Definition of a personalised Checklist

In Value Team’s methodology, the approach

to Cloud Computing begins with the

assessment of client “cloud-readiness”. This

can be achieved through a set of

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can be automated to handle risk situations.

For example, if SLA adherence is at risk, a

series of actions and notifications cloud be

set up to return the situation to normal.

B) GOVERNANCE TOOLS

Intelligent workload balancing.

It is possible to configure a minimum kit

internally for a new to-be-offered service or a

new campaign, and set trigger values

beyond which additional resources must be

provisioned “just-in-time” to balance the

workload across the system. Once a stable

workload is identified, a decision on

incrementing/decreasing the dedicated

resources can be taken (with resources from

the in house DC or from a partner/provider).

Once the desired workload is set up for each

application, this load is constantly monitored

and where there are indications of overload

or ‘stressed’ service levels, the application is

supplied in near real-time with additional

resources from the “virtualised environment”

(e.g. CPU, memory, data storage from the

virtualised Data Center, etc.) or cloud, with

the mission of balancing the workload during

these peaks. The additional resources are

then released when the workload returns to

normal. All scaling operations and the KPIs

that triggered them are recorded and

available for analysis, billing or charge-back,

SLAoutage reports, etc.

So not only is the workload optimized to

operate with just the right amount of ‘power’

the IT and business owners are provided

with details of the exact cause and resolution

of SLAoutages for future improvements and

customer satisfaction management.

Application performance monitoring

It is possible to provide timely control of

increasingly complex applications with

distributed critical components, using an

Application Performance Monitoring solution,

Structuring by business priority.

Operationally the cloud strategy translates to

the ability to select the most critical business

applications or services and to assign them

additional resources only when needed from

the qualified pool of ICT services – in-house

data centre, hosted or partner DC, trusted or

private cloud services provider, public cloud

services provider or some combination of

these.

SLADefinition:

Aconsistent set of rules, that support a given

business policy, is defined to discipline the

provisioning and deprovisioning of resources

as needed, against a determined load and in

pursuit of specific service level objectives

(also know as KPIs – Key Performance

Indicators). Value Team offers solutions,

which permit agile management of ICT

resources respecting given sets of SLAs. It

also proposes a well-defined service level

governance “within and among the clouds”

(known as “SLABrokerage”). This entire

solution can guarantees correct operation of

the applications even with the most elevated

loads requiring the highest level of reliability.

Modularity and risk mitigation:

It is possible to define a series of detailed

rules tailored to specific business

requirements, for example, enable for certain

users the use of determined resources, and

redirect others to a controlled ‘No’ or invite

them to take up some kind of engagement or

special offer. Also, you can govern the type,

number and size of the resource or even its

usage cost can be limited to certain users (or

user classes). A secure web portal can be

used to control and manage the usage status

of all services and to obtain reports on

service level delivery and SLA ‘health’.

Further, through continuous monitoring of

service health against KPIs, real-time actions

18

which enables real time observations of

business transactions and intervention to

improve adherence to agreed Service

Levels.

For example, one might consider an e-

commerce portal where it may be opportune

to identify and monitor the more critical

business transactions, such as the addition

of a product to a basket or the conclusion of

a purchase. During the effective execution of

the transactions by users, it is possible to

identify the application components involved

and visualise the relationship between these

and the effective usage experience of the

end user. Analysis of the results provides the

basis for construction of intervention actions

on the infrastructure and in the application.

C) “SAAS” SOLUTIONSWorkforce Management

Value Team supports all phases of Work

Force (WFM) and Field Force Management

(FFM) projects with a flexible, modular,

scalable, integrated approach: from definition

of the strategy, to the model and roadmap,

and to solution design, development,

implementation and operation/management.

The WFM and FFM products on the market

cover distinct yet limited areas, while the

solution developed by Value Team presents

a wider functional coverage than most

market products. The solution plans and

distributes the workforce in an optimal

manner. In particular, it enables requirements

forecasting, resource and working hours/shift

planning and management and monitoring of

the correspondence between planned and

effective use. Nor should it be forgotten that,

also in the case of SaaS delivery, a project of

this type also implies accurate Change

Management activities to manage the

impacts from viewpoint of personnel

management.

In Italy, in particular, the FFM products on the

market require ad hoc customisation to

comply with current national legislation in

matters of labour control. Value TeamWFM

solution implements all the legislation

foreseen for shift workers. The optional SaaS

delivery model, further enables the

implementation of home/remote working

while maintaining control of the infrastructural

impacts.

Payment as a Service ( VTPie)

The VTPie solution provides the full set of

tools needed for flexible payment

management, delivered as a service.

The architecture and technologies selected

from the inception are open to the adoption

of Cloud models.

VTPie was conceived for core banking

application management and supports

elevated volumes of events and operations.

Indeed the architecture is fully scalable in

order to handle increased calculation

capacity, while maintaining the same

structure. VTPie modules handle “client-

bank”, bank-bank” and “interbank network”

processes.

Adoption of the Cloud model, on the one

hand, guarantees data security and

segregation in compliance with banking

regulations, and on the other hand process

customisation on the basis of client needs in

order to maintain a differentiation of the

services offered to their markets.

The offer provides both a user license

approach and a service approach. In the first

case, it addresses banks, which intend using

their own IT structures and acquire VTPie

user licenses to fully govern within their

environments. The service model enables

19

Banks adopting an outsourcing strategy to

exploit fully turn key services with pricing

policies based on the effective use of

infrastructures (for example the number of

transactions).

The heart of the VTPie platform provides the

elements to build the diverse front-end

modules and manages interactions with the

re-usable components (services, workflow

management, transaction engine, etc).

Starting from these principles, the

architectural orientation is service based

(100%) SOA, while development has

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

adaptation to regulations (for example for

ISO certification) and to describe enterprise

processes and organisations.

Both are framework based using Microsoft™

technology, modular, scalable structures fully

customisable on the basis of client

requirements. They can, naturally, be

integrated with the major document

management systems and SSO( Single Sign

On) systems in the market today. The

system is designed to supply solutions under

a SaaS model: each client activates a

maximum number of user accounts, profiles

as per the specific needs (pay-per-use). The

service provision mode is multi-tenant, multi-

instance.

Security

The Identity &Access Management solution

integrates account management and that of

the Cloud application identities through

specific security SaaS. On the one side these

interface with the applications/ services from

the service provider coherently managing the

user life cycle and the access management

aspects, on the other the SaaS security

services can expose the application

interfaces to integrate with the end user on-

premise Identity &Access management

systems.

“The system isstructured to

deliver solutionunder the SaaS

model: each clientactivates a

maximum numberof users, profiledfor the specific

needs”

20

CLOUD IN THETELCO &MEDIA MARKETWith the premise that without a good

network, talking about Cloud Computing has

no sense whatever, in Italy, the adoption of a

structured ICT governance system is

generally the prerogative of large industrial

companies and certain local and central

public administrations. So any proposal of

value in the Cloud Computing arena, must

be based on a reliable, redundant, resilient,

high performance communications system.

With specific reference to the Telco market,

Cloud Computing is a contemporary

challenge for adaption of infrastructures and

an opportunity for the diffusion of a new

business model by Telco and Media

companies.

The demand for Cloud Computing services

requires guarantees at service and security

levels for “solutions”. The most typical of

these are generally: collaboration

applications, connectivity services, on

demand processing resources and CRM.

In general, TLC operators aim to propose

three macro-service types:

• IT infrastructure and communications

integration;

• virtualisation of physical assets;

• de-coupling of applications from physical

infrastructures.

Although it is true that the large carriers

have, to date, had a marginal role in the set

up and sale of generally defined public

Clouds services (mostly IaaS), some are

now making significant investments for the

development of the advanced services which

Cloud Computing enables.

CLOUD ON THE MARKETS

21

as an opportunity to improve their services

and reduce operating costs. Cloud

Computing is a technology which is reaching

interesting levels of maturity for many

decidedly heterogeneous sectors, from on-

line collaboration to entertainment.

In the world of Financial Services and

Insurance, the need to deliver services to

employees and partners contrasts with the

necessity for a capillary infrastructure

requiring complex maintenance. Making

information available to be shared by diverse

actors, thus having by necessity to manage

a diversified infrastructure, is often the

reason for costs spiralling out of control.

Further, the lack of agility of processes, often

does not permit taking business

opportunities as they are presented.

Cloud Computing, however, not only enables

cost optimisation and delivers efficiency; it

In this scenario, Value Team is aiming above

all to play the role of enabler thanks to its

competency in sector specific processes:

• Mission critical applications (e.g. mobile

operator top up systems, provisioning

systems, billing, etc.);

• System operations support applications

(OSS such as Trouble management for

the field, trouble management for

customer operations);

• Business support applications (BSS such

as CRM, Human Digital Assistants,

Federated Identity Management,

Workforce Management).

CLOUD IN THEFINANCIAL INSTITUTIONSMARKETMajor banking and insurance groups are

looking at this combination of technologies

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 ”

22

also permits better exploitation of new

information distribution channels. Thanks to

Cloud Computing it is possible to provide

access to one or more databases in real time

from any device utilised by a broker/agent.

For brokers, real time mobile systems

access is a critical factor for success,

especially where a broker is multi-

representative.

A study performed in the United States (by

International Data Corporation IDC))

indicates that 25% of US banking institutions

use web-based technologies to supply on-

demand services to their clients/partners,

while a solid 20% of financial institutions

foresee passing to Cloud Computing over

the next 3 years.

Cloud Computing is used in the anti-money

laundering filed, where distributed calculation

capacity enables analysis of an extraordinary

number of transactions and also in Financial

Provisioning and market analysis, to rapidly

execute simulations without requiring the

setup and operation of a costly infrastructure.

The flexibility, which Cloud-based solutions

can deliver in the business model, is highly

significant. In particular, the facility to have

only the services really needed available, is

a source of significant savings in a period in

which cost saving is more important than

ever.

Value Team plays the role of enabler in many

business areas in this sector where this

technology can be employed effectively.

Among the most important we can cite:

• Enterprise content management

• Document archiving and search solutions,

e-mail archiving and security;

• Back-office activities;

FIG 8

“25%OFUS BANKS USEWEB-BASED

TECHNOLOGIESTODELIVER ON-

DEMAND SERVICESTOTHEIR

CLIENTS/”

23

of the private cloud to become hybrid with

use of state of the art solutions already

existing for other primary industrial realities.

Tele-metering, tele-management and tele-

reading are other areas where governed

Cloud offers interesting real time synergies

with CRM platforms. Think of a future where

intelligent meters can communicate, and

power distribution is effected in peer to peer

mode as the Internet of Things paradigm is

realised.

Finally, harmonising the

operation/management of multiple data

centres, now migrated to a Cloud Computing

model, is hitting that target of mobility, agility,

economy and scalability which have been

the centre of presentations by industry

analysts for years.

For Energy operators, creating their own

Cloud means taking the opportunity to

maximise investments, free processing

resources and, at the same time, prepare for

the challenges of the future.

For public administration (Defence, Welfare,

central, regional and local government, etc.)

the need to use Cloud applications becomes

fundamental where services shared by

several administrations (private Clouds) to

offer added value services to citizens in the

areas of revenue management, health,

welfare also from a regional view.

The boundaries among the diverse sectors

are becoming less distinct and we often hear

of “open government” where information

(e.g. civil state data) is owned by

Government, while the services built on top

of these data may be offered by third parties,

though regulated and guided by the public

administration (e.g. city councils, regional

government, etc.).

• Credit card processing

• Management and consolidation of diverse

payment process types;

• Enterprise risk management – dedicated

IT framework for financial services

• Enterprise portals;

• Extreme Transaction Processing

Platforms;

• Enterprise CRM;

• Consumer credit reporting;

• Client support systems;

• Retail banking and stock trading;

• Sales support (Sales force automation).

CLOUD FOR THE ENERGYMARKET AND PUBBLICADMINISTRATIONOperators in the Energy field have to deal

with a “mixed bag” of an application

portfolios, because there are so many

specific operation areas to cover, from

communications with customers to energy

resource management. In this context, the

role of ICT is increasingly strategic in

delivering competitiveness and differentiation

that offers the business rapid responses to

fast changing needs, preferably leveraging

the infrastructural assets available.

There already many applications, which

have switched from dedicated to virtual

infrastructure for diverse motives, or they

have been subjected to consolidation

processes due to overlap of the services

supported. Here a Cloud governance

solution finds immediate application in the

systems supporting simulation activities oil

exploration and production models, at the

front-end towards the retail clients, on the

CRM, through field force management

systems.

For example, in field force management, the

Value Team offer can also escape the limits

24

Indeed, today in the world of public

administration, there is a need to integrate

services to the public with financial or

administrative services. And nowhere is it

more the mandate to ‘do more with less’.

FIG. 9

“CLOUD COMPUTING, IT AS A SERVICE, GREEN IT ARE BUT A

FEW OF THE TRENDS EMERGING”

“.. there is a needto integrate

services to thepublic withfinancial or

administrativeservices. And

nowhere is it morethe mandate to ‘domore with less’”

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:

HOW TO NAVIGATE IN THE CLOUDS

DESIGN GOVERNANCEINSTRUMENTS

SaaS SERVICES

CONSULTANCY SERVICES &APPROACH & SET UP

METHODOLGY

CONSULTANCY &IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES

LINKED TO THE

INFRASTRUCTURES AND

WITH OUSOURCING

SERVICES

OFF THE SHELF

PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS

FOR THE ENTERPRISE

MARKET

Key factors

• Scouting and auditing of

the services, processes,

policies and the

supporting KPIS and

SLAs;

• Service simulation design,

validation to support the

economic models

Key factors

• Audit of the governance

and “factory” infrastructure

• Re-engineering of

applications for Cloud

(physical to virtual) and of

the development, testing

and deployment

environments for elastic

delivery

Key factors

• Internally developed

products which better meet

customer needs

• Technological competency

and installation at large

clients

Activities

1. Definition of custom check

lists

2. Structuring to business

priorities

3. SLADefinition

4. Modularity and risk

mitigation

Activities

1. Intelligent workloadbalancing

2. Application performancemonitoringe

Activities

1. Work Force e Field Force

Management

2. VTPie: Payment as a

Service

3. Document Management

4. Identity &Access

Management

25

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 aninternational partner for

both enterprise, governmentorganisations and for

infrastructure providers,who knows how to

navigarte You to the Cloud”

26

Value Team is an IT consultancy andservice company developing innovativesolutions for business, whose offercovers the entire value chain.Counting on some 3000 professionalsworld wide, with a significant presencein Italy, Europe and Latin America,Value Team works for majormultinationals and leaders in theirrespective sectors and geographicareas, and has always collaboratedwith the principal universities andcentres of research and innovation.