Choosing the right service providers, managing resources with one governance model, and right-sourcing workloads based on cost, SLA, and trust can be a daunting prospect. Some call this private cloud, others refer to it as public cloud, and still others as hybrid cloud. A better moniker might be enterprise cloud. Enterprise clouds are more attainable with solutions like Gravitant’s cloudMatrix.

1. Cloud Services Brief
Supply Cloud Management (SCM)
Date: February 2013 Author: Wayne Pauley, Senior Analyst
Abstract: Choosing the right service providers, managing resources with one governance model, and right-sourcing
workloads based on cost, SLA, and trust can be a daunting prospect. Some call this private cloud, others refer to it as
public cloud, and still others as hybrid cloud. A better moniker might be enterprise cloud. Enterprise clouds are more
attainable with solutions like Gravitant’s cloudMatrix.
Overview
The market for cloud computing continues to heat up, with more vendors—both net-new and long-established—looking
to take advantage of the opportunity and an increasing number of public and private sector organizations leveraging
these services. Indeed, more than half of the respondents in ESG’s recently published 2013 IT Spending Intentions Survey
report that they are already leveraging cloud computing to some degree already (see Figure 1). Additionally, a previously
conducted study revealed that half of current cloud computing users expect that more than 20% of their annual
expenditures for IT infrastructure hardware and associated management software will have shifted to these services
within three years.1 It seems that IT organizations have reached the tipping point with cloud computing, which means
they need to find efficient and effective ways to leverage cloud computing resources.
Figure 1. Usage Trends for Public Cloud Computing Services
What are your organziation's plans for public cloud computing services? (Percent of
respondents, N=540)
We have no plans for
or interest in cloud
Don’t know, 2%
computing services,
10%
We currently use a
We have plans for or
cloud computing
interest in cloud
service(s), 57%
computing services,
31%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2013.
Along comes Gravitant, a relatively new entrant to the enterprise-grade cloud space that makes private and public cloud
resources easy to source, consume, and govern. Gravitant’s cloudMatrix platform uniquely applies a supply chain
management (SCM) process to IT to optimize and manage the consumption of virtualized infrastructure and private,
public, and hybrid clouds. In this way, Gravitant can reduce an organization’s spending while improving the agility of IT
resource delivery. CloudMatrix works with on-premises infrastructures, making private cloud resources easy to consume
1
Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 Public Cloud Computing Trends, March 2012.
© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2. Cloud Services Brief: Supply Cloud Management (SCM) 2
and monetize as well as making it simple to choose which private, public, or hybrid cloud resources are best suited for
particular enterprise workload needs and business objectives. Gravitant’s services assess the current environment;
analyze the public/private cost and performance models; propose where to right-source specific workloads and re-
provision them; and implement a common governance and management methodology. The cloudMatrix service is
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-delivered and non-disruptive in its implementation.
Key elements of the Gravitant solution include:
 SaaS-based ITaaS as a subscription. Upgrading a virtualized data center to cloud and ITaaS requires complex
and expensive software elements for automation, orchestration, and service management. Gravitant allows
the IT shop to utilize these software components via a Software-as-Service subscription model. This eases
capital costs and removes maintenance obligations as well.
 Shift from IT’s traditional allocation model to a demand model. IT budgeting is often based on a strict
annual planning process, locking in fixed resources for the budget year. This doesn’t allow IT to be
responsive to on-demand requests or seasonal expansions without being burdened with resources that are
idle when they aren’t needed. Gravitant allows a company to elastically expand into public cloud providers
such as Terremark, Savvis, and Amazon Web Services as needed. This reduces the need for underutilized
capital resources while making the business far more agile.
 Supply chain methodology applied to IT process management. During the 80s and 90s, manufacturing
processes were transformed by SCM, yet IT still often uses a one-off project-based approach to managing
infrastructure resources. Gravitant takes the best of SCM methodology to automatically and intelligently
employ cost controls and right-sourcing workloads based on governance policies driven by SLAs and
resource availability.
 Near real-time multi-provider provisioning and management. Let’s face it, in the new world of cloud
computing, IT is facing stiff competition. In order for IT to compete as well as mitigate the risks of shadow IT,
the organization has to transform itself into a service provider as well as a broker for external cloud services.
Gravitant’s cloudMatrix allows both to occur by providing near real-time multi-provider provisioning and
management.
More about the Gravitant Supply Chain Methodology:
1. Gravitant’s cloudMatrix first discovers assets and resources such as VMware infrastructure, HyperV, or public cloud
resources running on AWS.
2. Once the current resources are discovered, Gravitant’s integrated service catalogs are used to evaluate resource
cost models against the internal and external sourcing options. Gravitant provides a collaborative solution design
capability so that the solution architecture can be optimized for various private (e.g., openstack or VMware) and
public clouds (e.g., Amazon, Savvis, Terremark, Rackspace, and others).
3. Since cost may not be the primary driver, SLAs and resource availability are also taken into consideration.
4. The next step is for the Gravitant system to provision and deploy the workloads on the appropriate resources that
are located on-premises or on a public provider. Since the system also has a predictive engine, the workloads and
SLA compliance are constantly monitored. If workloads need to be shifted, the system alerts the IT procurement
manager and cloud administrators so the right decision can be made to support the business appropriately.
5. The last element of the Gravitant cloudMatrix system is the embedded governance policy engine that assures
pricing compliance, appropriate administrative controls, and consumption thresholds, etc. Gravitant’s governance
engine provides a current “Bill of IT” to the CIO and CFO so there is no guessing about IT costs.
© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3. Cloud Services Brief: Supply Cloud Management (SCM) 3
Figure 2. Gravitant CloudMatrix Process
1. Discover and
Assess
5. Govern, 2. Analyze Cost
Evolve, and Scale Models
3. Analyze
4. Provision and Sourcing Models
Deploy
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2013.
Analysis
The Gravitant product CloudMatrix should be seriously considered by companies already down the path of
implementing some cloud services or contemplating it. Cloud computing holds a tremendous amount of promise for IT
and ESG research shows just how significant the shift is. There are a number of challenges such as choosing the right
provider(s), assuring that security requirements and SLAs are enterprise grade, and employing IT’s governance standards
across clouds. Putting the company’s systems and more importantly its data at risk by extending the exposure to go
beyond the firewall has been discussed as a serious concern since the advent of cloud. The risks have included the
potential for breaches at cloud providers, the reduced lack of control and visibility, as well as the risks of outages that
can occur. Gravitant implemented a large-scale system for one of the largest states in the country that started out as a
failed implementation of a large services firm. Gravitant’s solution was able to allow the state to realize reduction of
infrastructure costs of 30%-40% as well as reduce provisioning time from more than a week to almost real-time.
The Bigger Truth
ESG is not suggesting that Gravitant’s cloudMatrix is the only option out there for managing cloud resources and it is a
relatively new entrant to the market (though cloudMatrix has been deployed in production environments at a number
of enterprise customers since 2011). ESG is suggesting that Gravitant has developed a unique approach that allows the
enterprise to quickly transform itself to ITaaS by leveraging the strengths of SCM and it is a provider in a position to help
your company manage the transformation successfully. For many years, IT organizations have taken a project-by-project
approach to new technologies. By applying methodologies that are proven such as SCM, IT can become organizationally
more efficient, which is going to be important when the data center becomes the data-center-without-walls. Cloud
computing allows a company to place workloads at the right place at the right time and price. But only if there are
systems in place to manage the elastic nature of today’s workloads and deal with the demand of the lines of business for
IT to be more responsive. The old 80/20 rule of IT budget dollars going to maintenance/new projects is no longer
acceptable and if IT doesn’t learn how to step up, then the business will continue to go around IT.
All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy
Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This
publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy
format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S.
copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client
Relations at 508.482.0188.
© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.