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About IBM Multicloud Management Platform
Get full governance of your hybrid IT environment with a digital consumption and delivery platform for enterprises.
Balance agility with control
Enable self-service access to cloud services while maintaining control of usage, compliance and security.
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Optimize hybrid multicloud deployments for maximum business ROI
01
3 min read
Executive summary
Businesses are determined to drive transformation — with or without help from their IT group. They want to launch new digital customer engagement initiatives, employ analytics to enhance marketing, capitalize on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and more. And they don’t want to wait days, weeks or longer until their technology requests rise to the top of the IT queue.
With the emergence of cloud-based solutions, an increasing number of business units today go around IT, deploying their own solutions without input, assistance or oversight from IT. Unfortunately, this shadow IT approach to transformation can create problems. Business units might fail to implement sufficient security measures, for example. Or, without insight into the use of various cloud services across the enterprise, one team might duplicate the services of another and either create redundant costs or miss cost-saving opportunities.
However, it’s also imperative that IT doesn’t become a roadblock to business units that must drive agile and direct interaction with cloud services. A business unit must be free to select a cloud provider that meets its business needs and offers the best value.
IT must change the way it delivers, manages and governs services.
IT must change the way it delivers, manages and governs services.
To better support new business initiatives and avoid the potential problems produced by shadow IT — while also allowing business units to operate independently — IT must change the way it delivers, manages and governs services. In many cases, the best approach for this shift involves implementing a holistic hybrid IT operating model.
Envisioning a new IT operating model
Many organizations are already tapping into multiple cloud services — often from several vendors — while continuing to use on-premises IT environments. This model represents the next generation of IT: a hybrid operating model based on a multisource approach that combines a variety of public and private clouds with traditional IT. But how should organizations manage and optimize the shift to this new way of operating?
The key is to extend the legacy IT operating model at all levels with a new set of processes designed for dynamic self-service to regain control over cloud consumption and rein in escalating cloud costs. The current service request portal needs to be extended with a cloud services store where users can easily discover, order and manage a digital service and pay for its use. The new operating model must also enable DevOps – allowing for the interaction between multiple users and across several cloud providers.
After this extension, enterprise IT will have a model that lets technology leaders operate whichever combination of new and legacy elements best fit the enterprise and its digital initiatives. IT will now be a stronger business partner, better equipped to provide visibility of IT assets deployed in the cloud and manage their performance, usage and cost. Through the cloud services store, IT can provide a single point of access to development and production enablement resources, helping to accelerate apps’ time to market and scalability. Shadow IT no longer presents a problem; it becomes a co-collaborator in accelerating the move toward digital IT.
Moving ahead with a partner
Transitioning to a hybrid cloud operating model helps IT groups better support business initiatives and reduce the likelihood that business units will deploy cloud services on their own. But adopting this new operating model involves a lot of change at once — change that can be daunting for IT groups to take on without assistance.
Wherever enterprises are in their journey, IBM can help IT groups transform their operating model so they can deliver automated, self-service capabilities to business teams and better enable their organization to fully capitalize on cloud benefits. By partnering with IBM, organizations have the flexibility to implement a multisource approach that incorporates existing IT environments with services from their preferred cloud providers. Leading American health insurance provider Anthem turned to IBM to help them transform their technology infrastructure to meet consumer demand for more personalized service.
02
5 min read
How to drive
business goals
with multicloud
Many organizations today face decisions about how to fit public cloud resources into an overall IT strategy – securely and at scale. Companies have different needs and goals, and the varying choices can make the decision-making process complex.
Even the meaning of terms such as hybrid cloud and multicloud are not always clear. Technically, a hybrid environment can include on-premises physical servers along with a private cloud and a public cloud. Most often, multicloud simply means that an organization uses multiple public clouds from many vendors.
Many IT leaders have questions about adopting a multicloud approach. How many of their peers are actually adopting this type of plan and why? What are some of the top challenges they are encountering, and how are they addressing these challenges?
A survey from IDG and IBM of IT leaders sheds light on these questions. The survey uncovers motivations for moving to multicloud, challenges, benefits experienced to date and more.
Driving business innovation and competitiveness
Nearly 6 in 10 qualified respondents (59 percent) report their companies have already integrated cloud and computing storage from two or more vendors. As a group, respondents cite aligning IT with business objectives and boosting speed of applications as top motivators for multicloud plans.
These motivations make good business sense. Increasing the performance of critical customer-facing applications can confer an important edge over competitors, while IT and business alignment is often key to fostering business innovation. More than half of respondents who have integrated a multicloud plan are seeing benefits such as improved agility to react to changing business demands and increased competitive advantage.
Better IT alignment with business needs tops the list of benefits from a multicloud approach experienced by companies to date. A multicloud strategy can aid this alignment in a variety of ways. For example, it helps alleviate contentious issues such as wait times for provisioning new services, and the growth of shadow IT assets deployed outside the central IT team’s purview. Companies can incorporate these shadow assets into an enterprise multicloud and enable self-service provisioning to reduce overall wait times.
Cost reduction is another significant benefit. Respondents report their IT costs have been reduced by 11 percent, on average, since moving to a multicloud strategy.
Managing multiple cloud providers
Having the necessary skills to manage cloud-based services across multiple providers is essential when embarking on a multicloud journey. A majority of participants in the IDG survey (63 percent) feel that their organizations are prepared from a skills standpoint to meet multicloud goals. However, smaller enterprises and mid-level IT managers are less likely to feel “very prepared.”
The more telling factor appears to be time. Even if they have the skills, less than one-third (29 percent) of respondents report their IT teams can allocate sufficient time to strategic projects today. Overall, those managing a multicloud environment are less likely to have time available to focus on innovation.
Addressing management challenges
IBM can help you to overcome these kinds of challenges. IBM Multicloud Management Platform offers secure, integrated solutions, powered by AI and automation. New management capabilities and delivery methods help gain critical visibility, optimize performance, control costs, provide quick cloud access and secure your mix of applications, environments and data — whether inside your data center or in the cloud. Are you considering adopting multicloud, or do you want to improve cloud management?
03
5 min read
Transforming
your hybrid IT
operating model
Successfully competing in the digital era requires enterprises to respond quickly to changing customer demands. A hybrid IT strategy helps meet these demands, allowing businesses maximum flexibility to build new services and support new initiatives. But fully capitalizing on this flexibility requires changes in the way services are delivered and managed by IT.
For many organizations, the optimal approach is to implement a new, hybrid IT operating model with self-service capabilities. Transitioning to this model requires making changes in three key areas: people, processes and technology.
1) People: A change in critical skills
Managing a hybrid, multisource IT operating model requires different skills than managing traditional IT. Enterprise IT needs a new set of skills that can guide business units to design the right cloud application and infrastructure architectures and select the right providers. Self-service tools are required to help business DevOps teams discover, order, provision and manage IT services.
This new model is based on a programmable, software-defined infrastructure. Enterprise IT administrators will no longer be required to configure hardware, but instead need to be reskilled to program infrastructure. Consequently, organizations need IT staff with programming skills.
CIOs, CFOs and financial controllers will need a new set of strategic sourcing skills as they become the managers of this new provider ecosystem, as well as capital and operating expenses budgeting skills for financial compliance and control.
2) Processes: Enabling real-time, automated self-service
In order to deliver the services that business units need as quickly and as easily as business units demand them, IT processes must transform. Organizations can no longer expect business teams to submit a request and wait — that lag tends to push business units toward shadow IT. Instead, organizations can take the following actions to implement self-service:
- Extend current IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes to add DevOps processes, including continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). This extension should cover the entire software manufacturing, delivery and management lifecycle so that it becomes completely automated and uninterrupted by human intervention. By integrating DevOps, you can reduce the time to value from months and weeks to days and hours.
- Establish new business management and governance processes. These processes should facilitate fast enablement of digital capabilities by business units in collaboration with IT using automation policies that drive the digital behavior of IT services.
IT groups need to implement these processes to support self-service and deliver resources and services in real time to truly enable an agile digital enterprise.
3) Technology: Managing multiple generations of IT
Organizations will continue to use their traditional hardware and virtualized infrastructure even as they increasingly move toward Kubernetes and Linux. The challenge for IT groups is to support all of these technologies, managing multiple generations of IT in a consistent way, through an integrated process with aggregated visibility. Meeting this challenge requires federated management of multiple environments. These key technologies are required to run this model:
- Discovery technologies: Asset discovery that is deployed in vendor clouds and brought together in one place — along with discovering and managing DevOps pipelines.
- Big data and AI: IT needs to create an aggregated data lake with an overarching model that connects all dimensions of business and IT execution in one place and runs AI to help guide the new hybrid IT model.
- Cloud-native technologies: Establishing standard cloud-native architectures across multiple stacks is required for creating a digital ecosystem and enabling the hybrid IT operating model.
Benefits to the enterprise
Making these changes offers valuable benefits to enterprises and empowers IT to accelerate DevOps across the enterprise while also managing the standardization of DevOps and CI/CD execution. As a result, organizations become more agile overall. In addition, IT and the business can be more closely aligned, with common processes, data and technology driving shared policies for automated governance.
04
5 min read
Six principles
for building your new
digital operating model
Enterprises know they have to transform, but what form should a new approach take, and how will it affect the current IT organization?
There’s no doubt organizations are leveraging next-generation cloud technology to accelerate digital transformation to benefit clients and employees as well as pursuing technology initiatives such as AI, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). But in many cases, their business units are driving the digital journey — with or without IT — because business units can often access cloud resources faster on their own. The business units may have more self-service selection of IT resources, for example, while traditional IT processes remain the same or are extended. And if those IT services they are extended, they aren't built to work with the dynamic nature of cloud.
This situation is likely to continue as enterprises enable evermore digital services supported by the next generation of cloud. With multiple technology options and a new acronym seemingly popping up daily, confusion can easily proliferate.
Next-generation hybrid and multicloud environments
In IBM’s view, enterprise IT needs to move toward continuous operations for cloud, one that requires changes in people, processes and technology. CIOs and CTOs are already accelerating the transition to hybrid multicloud environments to meet increased expectations of business units and other partners. Managing next-generation hybrid and multicloud deployments and optimizing their use will become a critical success factor for IT and the business.
Enterprise IT needs to move toward continuous operations for cloud, one that requires changes in people, processes and technology.
Enterprise IT needs to move toward continuous operations for cloud, one that requires changes in people, processes and technology.
In taking this transformation journey, enterprises have two options. The first is to extend their current IT operating model. But there are critical reasons why this approach won’t work over the long term. The current IT operating model can’t scale and does not have the necessary automation needed to keep up with organizational requirements.
The second option, however, offers IT a forward-looking approach that can grow and flex with the enterprise needs. The federal operating model involves creating a new continuous operating model, one that defines the future and integrates it with the current model.
To be successful in moving to a federated operating model, enterprises need to base their IT operating model on six key principles.
1) Self-service digital IT across the lifecycle
Continuous operations must enable self-service consumption. This approach should provide an app store-like experience where users can easily discover, configure, price, order, provision and deploy a digital service or stack for development or production environments. Checking the status of a service, paying for use and upgrading or changing the state of the service as needed should be quick and easy.
Self-service should cover the entire IT lifecycle experience for users, and be digitally integrated with IT operations as well as all cloud providers and their technology platforms.
2) A new office structure
The second principle involves restructuring the IT organization to reflect new responsibilities in three categories: front office, middle office and back office.
New Enterprise IT Front Office: IT’s core responsibility in this area is personalizing the self-service experience for users. Here are a few examples:
- Provide business unit DevOps teams with access to secure cloud stacks for quick access to development environments on approved cloud platforms.
- Design packaging and consumption pricing for each set of services and track usage and performance.
- Curate and stock the self-service store with new cloud services from providers based on demand.
New Enterprise Middle Office: IT is responsible for enabling continuous operations across different operating and delivery models. Examples include:
- Ensure smooth and efficient order provisioning and deployment.
- Integrate all CI/CD pipelines and ITIL Workflows and monitor them for throughput and performance.
- Manage operations for workloads and infrastructure across multiple platforms to ensure self-service for users.
New Enterprise Back Office: In this area IT must enable and manage the multicloud technology architectures and platforms. Examples include:
- Select the right cloud platforms (Hybrid, Private, Public) and relevant services that business units need.
- Ensure seamless integration and operations between the self-service, continuous operations (CI/CD + ITIL) and cloud platforms.
- Author automations for workloads and infrastructure across different architecture patterns and provisioning models.
3) Integrated DevOps and ITIL (ITSM)
In the new continuous operations model IT must integrate current ITIL (ITSM) and DevOps processes with a common change and configuration management system. In addition, the ITIL and DevOps processes should be integrated to create a seamless self-service for users. This includes:
- Governance and business management: Any current IT performance dashboards should be integrated with cloud performance dashboards and financial management processes.
- Service Delivery: IT should integrate workflow-based IT service delivery with standard development and CI/CD pipeline processes.
- System Management: IT consoles need to be extended for cloud monitoring of data-driven AIOps.
In this way, the new continuous operations model extends the ITIL with DevOps to create a hybrid IT model that is driven by self-service and end-to-end automation across a multicloud landscape. IT will need to sketch out new roles to support this paradigm.
4) Multiprovider ecosystem
Instead of single providers, ITs new continuous operating model relies on multiple cloud providers, preventing vendor lock-in. Certain workloads are well suited to hyperscale public cloud, for example, while workloads such as AI, blockchain and IoT require a hybrid architecture with public and private cloud.
5) Cloud AIOps: Data + AI + automation
Because the multi-provider cloud ecosystem is very complex, IT must adopt a new management model based on data-driven AI and automation to drive operations and govern actions.
To that end, AI and big data with intelligent automation will help reduce costs and increase agility for handling internal and external workloads and infrastructure. Running an intelligent management platform that discovers all IT activities across the multi-provider ecosystem and uses the data-driven AI is critical to managing the cloud operating model.
6) Business outcomes–driven IT
In order for IT to contribute to the organization’s business side, a focus on providing solutions (and not just piece parts) tied to real business outcomes is essential. The new IT must correlate an IT service outage, for example, to business impact — ie., the ability to simulate the client experience and fix issues in real time. In addition, IT spend and performance should tie to real-time business capabilities and outcomes.
The self-service experience
To implement these changes, enterprises need vendor capabilities tailored to their journey. IBM Multicloud Management Platform offers a range of capabilities, including the ability to define acontinuous operations model that is already automated and operationalized as a service, then integratethis new model into an organization’s existing ITIL (ITSM) and DevOps technologies and processes. IBM can even partner with your organization to manage this new model — meaning the enterprise experiences everything in a self-service manner. Plus, IBM multicloud management solutions work with the cloud providers of your choosing.
The industry continues to shift to consumption-based hybrid cloud services, calling for new thinking about the cloud operating model.
05
5 min read
Cloud management
capabilities that
accelerate transformation
As enterprises find ways to leverage Amazon, Azure, Google, IBM and VMware clouds to accelerate their digital transformation journey, enabling cloud operations and management has become a priority, a gap and a risk.
Most current enterprise IT operations are centralized and follow a rigid control regime that is not aligned to a developer-driven IT model with speed and agility at its core. However, enterprises and their service providers need a common operations, compliance and governance cadence for cloud, without which the digital enterprise cannot scale. Organizations must embrace the “Born in the Cloud, Run and Manage in the Enterprise” philosophy and do it soon.
Any developer-driven enterprise cloud operations model should federate IaaS, PaaS and SaaS capabilities from multiple providers at all levels of the stack. This approach provides enterprise developers, DevOps and IT Ops teams with choice and consistency while avoiding provider lock-in. This is the true hybrid, multicloud operating model.
IBM is helping clients more quickly adopt this model and simplify their management. The IBM Multicloud Management Platform helps clients manage workloads across multiple clouds and current data centers, providing them with:
- A digital self-service user experience to consume, deploy, operate and govern across all clouds and data centers
- Agility and speed through modern technology, automation and self-service
- Reduced risk through integrated governance and management
- Lower costs by leveraging cloud and automation
- Visibility and control across the full estate, from the traditional Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to the site reliability engineer and DevOps-driven cloud-native approaches
The key goal: provide organizations with the power to operate an agile and scalable infrastructure across hybrid and multicloud that is ready to support any workload, eitherlegacy or cloud native.
A single point of access through four management consoles
Developers, IT Ops, CIO, CFOs, procurement managers and other users access role-based capabilities of the cloud management platform through four self-service consoles. These consoles include:
- Enterprise Marketplace: The console provides users access to contracted AWS, Azure, Google, IBM and VMware cloud services from a single marketplace. Users can create solutions, estimate costs, place orders and provision services in a single, integrated process. The portal has a pre-integration with ServiceNow to ensure traditional service request is also available in a single interface to drive ITIL Processes. Users can initiate self-service Day 2 actions on provisioned resources.
- DevOps: Organizations need to continuously keep their finger on the pulse of the DevOps pipeline and see where all their workloads are deployed. This provides more detailed visibility to build, test, deploy and run phases of the DevOps lifecycle while tightly integrated with Kubernetes in support of cloud native site reliability engineering (SRE) activities.
- Operations: An Operations management console includes a single interface to provide visibility into the health of the current data center, multicloud and container operations. This augments human intelligence with AI (machine) intelligence to automatically discover events, run diagnostics and recommend actions. Over time, machine-learning capabilities create AI models that help guide operations to understand where issues are developing and enable resolution before they become a problem.
- Governance: The governance console provides visibility into costs and usage across cloud providers while continuously tracking against budget thresholds. This gives the CIO and finance department transparency to make proactive decisions on workloads and IT spend. The IT team can track assets and tag them for consumption based on usage patterns.
The underlying technology stack
IBM has built a technology stack underneath this console layer to help simplify and automate the IT experience for our clients — all they need to do is manage the four consoles. The underlying stack includes a business management application suite, an IBM platform-as-a-service (PaaS) continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) and multicloud operations management platform.
This approach providesenterprise clients with a choice of consumption models that is aligned with their cloud journey and investment plans.
A foundation for a new generation of IT
IBM Multicloud Management Platform delivers the foundation required for the digital enterprise. IBM can help clients:
- Optimize their current data center operational efficiencies and IT unit costs
- Plan and execute their move to a hybrid, multicloud landscape with optimal cost models
- Accelerate release of new digital services to customers to drive revenue
- Re-think current service contracts to drive innovation, flexibility, best value and speed
CIOs and CTOs are already accelerating the transition to hybrid and multicloud to meet increased expectations of businesses and their business partners. Managing hybrid cloud and multicloud deployments and optimizing their use is becoming an important success factor for IT and the business. The IBM Multicloud Management Platform is designed to help you succeed.