Media Center / iWave Blog

Happy Hour with Service Providers (SPs)

By Brent Rhymes

Despite the demands of our booming business (we just closed out a record-setting quarter for the company), I had the privilege of spending time with some of the world's largest Service Providers (SP). First at the TM Forum in Dublin held back in May and then later at events hosted by EMC both in their EBC in Cork, Ireland and then later at customer meetings in London.  
 
The recurring topic within the SP community - not surprisingly - is automating the management of its own booming cloud-based services. From my conversations (several of which occurred over happy hour), I was able to distill the following themes:  
 
- Home Brewed Automation is Tasting Bitter. When most SPs started building "version 1.0" of their cloud-based infrastructure, pickings were slim when it came to off-the-shelf software for Cloud Service Management automation. Using in-house and inexpensive outsourced developer resources, SPs hand crafted their own solutions to automate user provisioning, VM provisioning, fault remediation, etc. However, most of the SPs I spoke with indicate that their "home brewed automation" is starting to taste a little bitter as they struggle to keep pace with changes in their network, compute & storage infrastructure and serve the line forming at their bar wanting more and more cloud-based services.  
 
- Vintage Infrastructure Still Important. The SPs' home grown solutions (like most off-the-shelf Cloud Service Management automation products) fail to take into account the importance of integrating into existing processes and infrastructure. The SPs I spoke with don't see a compelling reason to ignore the Hitachi storage they bought back in 2009 or toss the proven change management process they embedded in their CA Service Desk system over a decade ago. Rip and replace? Not in this economy?  
 
- Budweiser? Dom Perignon? SPs are realizing that they need to partner with a software vendor to replace their bespoke automation solution(s) with an "off-the-shelf" orchestration platform. (Please note the quotes around "off-the-shelf.") If nothing else, they want maintenance of their cloud service automation software to be someone else's problem. The challenge they face: Which Orchestration engine? All vendors in the Cloud Service Management Orchestration market claim to do it all (iWave is no exception). Some vendors provide highly-focused automation solutions for very specific Cloud Service Management challenges (like VM provisioning, handling multi-tenancy, providing a slick service catalog, etc.). Other vendors tout their enterprise features and flexibility. Questions heard over beer and Champagne alike included "Why do I need iWave Orchestrator if I have VMware vCloud Director?" or "Why do I still need my enterprise license of BMC Atrium Orchestrator if we're going with Newscale/Tidal to manage our new vBlocks?"  
 
So SPs have bellied back up to the bar, and are now looking for their second round of Cloud Service Management automation. Most are hoping that this second round is "last call," so the headache of managing their growing cloud-based businesses will subside in the morning. The trick will be ordering the right mix of drinks that include some Champagne (enterprise orchestration), beer (embedded orchestration) and perhaps a Scotch for good measure. We'll cover a potential strategy for mixing cloud service orchestration strategies in our next post.  
 
In the meantime, I'm on vacation this week and this talk of Cloud Service Management Orchestration has left me a bit parched. So Cheers! Talk with you soon.