2012: A Look Forward

By Jeffrey D. Abish, EVP and CTO

As 2011 draws to a close and we begin a new year, a fundamental shift has occurred in the way services are designed, delivered and maintained based on limitations in budgets and the need to establish a right-skilled and right-sized workforce to support the needs of the business.  These significant changes have challenged both the federal and contractor workforces to work in partnership to develop a business and technology roadmap that provides a mechanism for clearly measuring performance against mission goals and objectives. 

Over the past year, we have taken a close look at Technology ROI and Delivering Business Value, Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) and a Practical View of Cloud Computing.  These methodologies and initiatives are critical to our collective ability to efficiently manage our portfolios with the realities of increasing requirements while budgets continue to shrink.  As part of this analysis, there are several considerations moving forward:

Buying and Managing Hardware and Software vs. Buying Services

While the cost per unit of servers, storage, desktops, notebooks and mobile devices has continued to drop, these items still represent a large capital expenditure during refresh cycles, which typically range from 3 to 5 years.  The labor cost of the deployment of new hardware, operating systems and associated asset management activities represents a significant percentage of the cost of a technology refresh.  There is a desire by many organizations, both commercial and federal, to get out of the hardware and systems management business in order to focus on their core missions.  Cloud Computing represents a significant part of this strategy.

Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand.  Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture and utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.”  This model represents a paradigm shift from current operations where you can see or touch everything to one where the services are hosted either in a shared or private cloud.

The scalable nature of this model represents a challenge from multiple angles.  Contracts are typically written based on labor and materials requirements under Fixed Price, Time & Materials and Cost Reimbursable contract types, often with funding having a limited lifespan (i.e., Fiscal Year).  This presents a challenge from both the government procurement and program management side in measuring performance against deliverables that are billed in a variable nature on a “per unit” basis.  The need to manage budgets efficiently without inducing further erosion by leaving funding unallocated at the end of the fiscal year is a concern.  Also, the tools that measure items such as Earned Value Management (EVM) and Return on Investment (ROI) must be tailored accordingly to make sure the right components are being measured in their entirety and accurately under a XaaS model. 

Delivering Enterprise Value Added Services in the Cloud

ActioNet is leveraging the Cloud as a means of deploying Enterprise Value Added Services including:

• IT Service Management (ITSM) in Action™ – In order to reduce the cost of deploying consolidated Enterprise Service Desk capabilities, ActioNet has developed hosted on-demand solutions that can be deployed in a fraction of the time and cost as traditional on-premise solutions while still providing all of the key reporting and management capabilities.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) – The US workforce is becoming increasingly mobile and dependent on Smartphones and Tablets with a need to securely access their corporate applications and data.  ActioNet has deployed VDI capabilities that work with multiple platforms including Microsoft Windows, Apple iOS, Google Android and RIM BlackBerry.
• Hosted VoIP Services with Unified Communications (UC) Capabilities – Improvements in technology and reduced costs of bandwidth have enabled robust hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions that provide not only core telephony services, but also Unified Communications (UC) capabilities such as audio conferencing and video conferencing capabilities with web collaboration.  This functionality is available on multiple platforms and devices where smartphones and software-based phones (“soft phones”) can be used instead of traditional handsets.  The ability to securely communicate independent of technology and location is now a reality.

 Maintaining a Strong Security Posture in the Cloud

One of the critical considerations in a XaaS services model, where Cloud Infrastructure can be shared, private or hybrid in nature, is the ability to monitor security and maintain the required security posture based on acceptable risk levels. 

Although Virtualization and Cloud Computing can help organizations accomplish more by separating the IT infrastructure and its user base, heightened security threats must be overcome in order to benefit fully from this new computing paradigm. This is particularly true for the SaaS provider. In the Cloud, you lose control over assets in some respects, so your security model must be reassessed. Enterprise security is only as good as the least reliable partner, department, or vendor. Can you trust your data to your service provider? There are several considerations and additional questions you should be asking.

With the cloud model, you lose control over physical security. In a public cloud, you are sharing computing resources with other companies. In a shared pool outside the enterprise, you don't have any knowledge or control of where the resources run. Exposing your data in an environment shared with other companies could give the government "reasonable cause" to seize your assets because another company has violated the law. Simply because you share the environment in the cloud, may put your data at risk of seizure. Storage services provided by one cloud vendor may not be compatible with similar services from other providers, thus complicating a potential move from one service provider to another. Some vendors provide what is sometimes referred to as "sticky services" services, creating difficulty transporting from one cloud vendor to another (i.e., Amazon's "Simple Storage Service" is incompatible with IBM's Blue Cloud, or Google, or Dell).

If there are requirements to encrypt information while passing through the cloud, a key question to ask is “Who controls the encryption/decryption keys?”   Is it the customer or the cloud vendor? Most customers probably want their data encrypted both ways across the Internet using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol). They also most likely want their data encrypted while it is at rest in the cloud vendor's storage pool. Be sure that you, the customer, control the encryption/decryption keys, just as if the data were still resident on your own servers.  Data integrity means ensuring that data is identically maintained during any operation (i.e., transfer, storage, or retrieval). Data integrity is assurance that the data is consistent and correct, such that that it changes only in response to authorized transactions. While this concept sounds good on paper, the reality is that a common standard to ensure data integrity does not yet exist.
Based on multiple parties being involved in the delivery of services, the definitions of roles and responsibilities need to be updated with appropriate Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operating Level Agreements (OLAs), given the increased reliance on external service providers and external facilities.  The Review and Audit processes also need to be tailored to this service model.

Developing a Service Delivery Roadmap

Where do you start? – A service is defined as a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks.  The emphasis on delivering value extends beyond IT to all functions that provide support to customers.  The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Framework starts with the following four key areas (or four Ps):

• People – you need the right people in the right positions to be successful.
• Processes – focus on the critical processes that support your organization’s mission rather than trying to everything all at once.
• Products – tools should be purchased that support well-defined business processes.  A tool by itself is not a solution.  “A fool with a tool is still a fool”.
• Partners – highly skilled service providers and consultants can supplement your workforce and can be used on an as-needed basis.

Avoiding pitfalls – Any initiative must have management buy-in, strong and accountable process owners, well-defined priorities and an associated budget.  Managing expectations is the key.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and this also applies to the lifecycle of providing solutions.  A phased approach based on Continual Service Improvement (CSI) delivers incremental value, as well as measurable and visible results, reducing long development and deployment cycles.  This is a key strategy to maintain momentum and avoid losing management support.

Implementing CSI - A summary of the CSI process is outlined in the table below, which outlines the approach, associated process steps and the tools/techniques leveraged.

Approach	Process Steps	Tools/Techniques
What is the vision?
Where are we now?	1. Define what you should measure. 2. Define what you CAN measure. 3. Collect Data 4. Process Data 5. Analyze Data	Assessment
Where do we want to be?	1. Present Data	Gap Analysis
How do we get there?	Plan/Implement Corrective Actions	Project Plan
Did we get there?		Validation
How do we keep momentum going?

 

Summary

ActioNet provides ITSM in Action™, which encompasses the Software, Platform and Infrastructure layers of scalable, managed services. We have the expertise to design, migrate and deploy services to the cloud rapidly and securely, minimizing customers' time and investments.

ActioNet's service offerings are focused on the needs of the business. We leverage industry best practices and strategic partnerships first from a business perspective and align technical solutions to facilitate service delivery. Meeting business objectives and requirements with a high level of customer satisfaction is our ultimate goal. How can we help you deliver value?