The document discusses the benefits and challenges of cloud computing, highlighting the importance of Business Service Management (BSM) to enhance flexibility, reduce costs, and meet business needs through structured cloud planning and governance. It outlines various cloud models such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and emphasizes the need for dynamic management practices and effective resource provisioning to achieve organizational goals. BMC Software's solutions are proposed as tools to navigate cloud implementation challenges and maximize efficiency and service quality.

1. SOLUTION WHITE PAPER
Reaching for the Clouds: Achieving the
Business Benefits of Cloud Computing
Increase flexibility, lower costs, and more effectively meet the needs
of the business with BSM for Cloud Computing

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
DREAMING OF CLOUDS: THE SKY HIGH GOAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
A LADDER TO THE CLOUD: CHALLENGES GETTING THERE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
BSM FOR CLOUD COMPUTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
» Cloud Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
» BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
» Cloud Operations and Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
» Cloud Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
LEARN MORE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
By any measure, the hype around Cloud computing has reached nearly deafening levels. However, behind the wall of hype lies
a fundamentally straightforward concept — one that’s been percolating for many years in the IT world. Cloud computing is an
architecture that enables IT organizations to parcel out portions of a shared pool of hardware and so ware resources to users
through an automated, self-service request system.
This model for IT, internally managed and externally hosted, offers tremendous benefits in the areas of cost-savings, IT
responsiveness, and improved flexibility. However, its successful implementation typically requires organizations to overcome some
significant organizational and technological hurdles.
BMC So ware delivers solutions and expertise to clear these barriers, from the planning stages to the optimization and governance
of a working Cloud. The payoff, in the end, is a transformed infrastructure that is flexible, highly responsive to business needs, cost
effective, and unified.
DREAMING OF CLOUDS: THE SKY HIGH GOAL
Cloud computing is driving a great deal of IT investment. IT groups are seeking to give greater access to resources to their
stakeholders, respond with agility to the needs and demands of the business, and at the same time, curtail costs. Clouds come in a
variety of flavors, including:
» So ware-as-a-Service (SaaS): Targeted at end users seeking to purchase applications, SaaS hosts those applications for the
user and charges a subscription fee.
» Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Designed for developers, PaaS hosts all the building blocks of a development environment,
speeding up the development process and encouraging support for a platform.
» Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Comprised of the foundations of any IT environment, IaaS is the most fundamental type of
Cloud, delivering operating systems and application stacks to internal or external customers.
Fundamentally, a few core elements are required of an IaaS Cloud:
» A self-service portal, enabling users to request and receive configured resources rapidly
» An automated provisioning model, facilitating the creation of flexible, multi-tiered VMs to meet the specific needs of the user
» A service-model, extending the traditional model of Business Service Management to the Cloud, and bringing with it the best
practices that ensure service quality
» A dynamic management environment that can actively monitor and respond to this ever-changing set of workloads in a way that
optimizes service quality and cost
This definition applies equally to private Clouds and public Clouds. Public Clouds are designed to sell capacity to companies with
limited internal resources. Private Clouds mimic the same structure, but exist within the company’s datacenters, delivering flexibility
and some cost-savings without leaving the walls of the organization. Hybrid Clouds are an amalgam of both, in which companies
reach out to public Clouds to extend their own infrastructures, but manage them seamlessly. Finally, the concept of a community
Cloud has been developed to describe coalitions of organizations, typically governmental or of the same type, who build a shared,
secure external Cloud together.
The ultimate goals of all these environments are:
» More efficient use of resources, whether financial, physical, or human
» Improved agility and flexibility, removing the IT barrier from business efficiency
» Expanded service orientation, aligning IT and business goals more directly
“ Enterprises investing in private Clouds and/or using the public Cloud for overdra or to build virtual
private Clouds must invest in management technology to manage service quality and availability.
Source: Gartner Cool Vendors in Cloud Management, 2010, 31 March 2010
”
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4. A LADDER TO THE CLOUD: CHALLENGES GETTING THERE SUMMARY OF CASE STUDY
While the concept of Cloud computing is reasonably straightforward, the execution does Concur Technologies embraced BSM
come with its challenges. Each component must work hand-in-glove with the rest to enable for Cloud Computing, and in one year:
a dynamic, stable, cost-effective, and flexible environment. Without careful attention, the » Increased server virtualization from
equilibrium of a Cloud could easily be threatened. 5 percent to 42 percent virtualized
Organizations face several challenges that must be addressed: » Reduced server configuration
mistakes by 85-95 percent
» First and foremost, Clouds must provide users with the ability to self-provision resources.
» Has already saved $1.7 million
Whether in internal private Clouds or third-party public Clouds, users must have a
mechanism for selecting their preferences from a set of options and for initiating a According to Craig Baughn, vice
workflow to generate this resource. In a process similar to that of ordering a laptop president of Concur’s hosting
online, there are typically a variety of baseline options, capacity requirements, so ware services, the BMC solution “enabled
options, and additional features — all of which represent a tailored, if not custom, us to re-allocate resources to other
result. Identifying the options, creating the portal, defining the baseline requirements areas of the business because of the
efficiency offered.”
and approvals, and finally, provisioning the resources presents a complex orchestration
challenge far beyond “copy and paste.” Specifically, organizations usually desire that (source: www.cio.com/article/506114/Inside_
One_Firm_s_Private_Cloud_Journey)
the available service offerings be driven by user roles and constrained by security,
organizational, or financial policies.
» Second is the dynamic management challenge. Once commissioned, Cloud resources
have tremendous flexibility to grow, shrink, move, change configurations, and ultimately,
be decommissioned. This process mirrors that of a traditional physical datacenter, infused
with a host of additional degrees of freedom (and thus, complexity). As such, it requires
much of the same management best practices — augmented with Cloud awareness.
Absent that, conditions will occur for which appropriate responses and controls are
not well established, and the organization will experience increased costs, decreased
availability, and reduced flexibility. In fact, organizations need to view Cloud as a catalyst
for improving their IT maturity.
» Third is the challenge of scope. Born of the virtualization world, Cloud computing is o en
perceived as being uniformly based on x86 Microso Windows and Linux platforms;
while, in fact, this is not at all reflective of the reality of the modern datacenter. Companies
continue to be broadly multi-platform in their datacenters, running everything from blade
servers to mainframes and leveraging a host of virtualization technologies, including
hypervisors, Solaris™ zones and containers, and even LPARs. To limit the Cloud to a
subset of the company’s systems is to hamper its strength and curtail its eventual growth.
» Finally, a diverse group of public Clouds are being built by telecommunications firms and
service providers the world over. Enterprises are increasingly seeking opportunities to
leverage these external Clouds both for cost-savings and increased flexibility. However,
the provisioning and management of those resources o en represent a separate
IT challenge —one that, realistically, should be a seamless extension of the private
Cloud, managed with consistent processes, policies, people, and tools. Thoughtful
organizations, while embracing the benefits of public Cloud usage, are not willing to do so
at the price of introducing new management silos.
To implement and be successful developing a Cloud computing infrastructure, organizations
should consider every stage of the environment — from planning and provisioning to
operations and decommissioning. By adopting a layered approach, the fundamentals
of management can be implemented, and then improved upon, generating increasing
efficiencies and flexibility for the business.
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5. KEY BENEFITS BSM FOR CLOUD COMPUTING
CLOUD PLANNING BMC applies the proven principles of Business Service Management to the Cloud, in the
» Discover and assess existing following ways:
IT assets
CLOUD PLANNING
» Establish technical and business
Cloud Planning lays the foundation of an efficient, effective Cloud environment by leveraging
plans for Cloud transition
a set of activities and solutions to ensure the private Cloud is tailored properly to meet the
CLOUD LIFECYCLE needs of the organization. These steps include:
MANAGEMENT
» Efficiently and accurately
» Developing and maintaining an accurate picture of the current IT environment — from
provision Cloud services through existing VMs and physical machines to the dependencies between these systems. BMC
a self-service portal driven by a Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping, working in conjunction with the BMC Atrium
service catalog CMDB, can create a current, accurate base from which the requirements of the Cloud can
be created.
CLOUD OPERATIONS AND
OPTIMIZATION » With a baseline understanding of the types of workloads that will be utilizing the
» Proactively monitor the Cloud Cloud, BMC BladeLogic Server Automation Suite can come together with BMC Atrium
by predicting and repairing Orchestrator and BMC Capacity Management to design the services that will be delivered
performance issues before they via the Cloud. From the quantity of resources required to the desired service levels and
impact users costs to the application stacks, these solutions help organizations balance the flexibility
» Actively manage capacity to ensure desired by the business with the control required for successful operations.
optimal use of resources
» Once designed and built, the transition of existing workloads onto the Cloud requires a
CLOUD GOVERNANCE combination of automation and organizational change. The same tools that helped create
» Run IT like a business, with the Cloud can now assist in this move, ensuring continuity from the physical or virtual
visibility and predictability of environments into the Cloud environment. Maintaining the context, data, configurations,
financial metrics and histories on each workload is critical both to their ongoing operations and to
measuring the success of the Cloud initiative.
» View and manage asset usage for
reduced costs
BMC CLOUD LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
SUMMARY OF CASE STUDY BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management ensures the full lifecycle of resources in the Cloud is
(BMC I.T. ORGANIZATION) well structured and flexible. As the most visible manifestation of the Cloud computing
infrastructure, the provisioning experience must be easy, flexible, and rapid, while still
BMC’s own IT department utilized
ensuring that the operational integrity of the environment is maintained.
BSM for Cloud Computing and:
» Reduced physical servers by 25
» A self-service portal is the only interaction most Cloud users will ever have with the
percent, and achieved 70 percent infrastructure, and thus should be a positive experience. Rather than simply offering a
CPU utilization limited, cookie-cutter set of VMs, cloned from static images, BMC BladeLogic Server
Automation Suite, BMC BladeLogic Network Automation, and BMC Atrium Orchestrator
» Reduced power consumption by
work behind the scenes to provision and deploy custom services — from OS to
23 percent
application stack to network configuration. Exposed through a robust service catalog,
» Increased server admin this capability enables each Cloud resource to both conform to operational requirements
productivity by 600 percent (such as policy or cost constraints), while still meeting users’ individual needs.
» Reduced server provisioning time
» Once Cloud resources are no longer needed, they should be properly decommissioned,
from two weeks to five minutes
or else the detritus of prior workloads will continue to consume resources and clog the
The financial payback of this Cloud. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management ensures that workloads with termination dates
investment in Cloud, which was are appropriately handled, saving resources and greatly easing management.
approximately $2 million, was
achieved in fewer than six months. » Cloud resources are fundamentally service offerings, and thus should be measured and
managed as such. With integration into the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite,
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management ensures that the Cloud is not managed in a vacuum,
but rather alongside traditional resources, ensuring continuity of service throughout.
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6. » Finally, when internal resources are not sufficient, either long-term or during peak SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS
times, organizations are increasingly turning to public Clouds to augment their own Required capabilities for a complete
infrastructure. In a so-called hybrid Cloud model, however, maintaining seamless Cloud solution include:
management and provisioning, regardless of the physical location of the back-end
» Comprehensive accurate discovery
resources, is critical to ensuring that these two environments transition smoothly and do — ensuring a complete up-to-
not become separate entities. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management integrates with external date service picture of the IT
Cloud vendors, such as Amazon EC2, facilitating that developing use case. infrastructure
» Self-service provisioning, marrying
CLOUD OPERATIONS AND OPTIMIZATION flexible full-stack layered
Cloud Operations and Optimization ensures that once a Cloud environment is running, it runs provisioning with strong IT controls
well. To do so, attention needs to be paid to maintaining an accurate inventory of the VMs in
» Process-driven, automated
the environment and their interconnectedness, as well as the health of the Cloud as a whole.
tools for managing provisioning
Over time, capacity requirements change, and performance may fluctuate. Some elemental
workflows and resource
components of physical management, brought into the dynamic Cloud environment, can decommissioning.
ensure that the Cloud continues to deliver business value.
» Automated management of service
» Dynamic environments need dynamic, ongoing discovery. Without an accurate picture of levels to ensure consistent quality
the Cloud, the services it delivers, and the dependencies between them, IT operations will service on all Cloud resources.
always struggle to maintain service quality and identify the root cause of issues. Using » A single management
BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping on an ongoing basis automates this infrastructure, across physical,
effort, and ensures that changes to the Cloud infrastructure are automatically captured. virtual, and Cloud environments
» BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management works within the Cloud environment to » Capacity planning for optimal
resource usage, balancing
ensure that every VM and service in the environment is performing to the level it should.
utilization with cost reduction
In a Cloud environment, with the growth, motion of VMs, and changes in resource
availability, performance can drastically improve or degrade as part of the regular ebbs » Ongoing monitoring, ensuring
and flows of the Cloud. With proper, proactive performance management in place, IT can environmental integrity
ensure that service quality is maintained. » A modular, complete solution that
can be implemented in stages
» Capacity management, like performance, is ever-changing in world of self-service
and customized to meet the Cloud
provisioning and automated decommissioning. As sophistication increases, managing the needs of your enterprise
capacity of the environment and the resources available to each VM will become critical
not only to their service levels but also to forecasting additional investment needs. BMC
Capacity Management can monitor, analyze, and forecast capacity needs in this new,
dynamic environment.
CLOUD GOVERNANCE
Cloud governance enables IT organizations to operate their Cloud environment like a
business. Organizations need the ability not only to calculate the costs associated with
delivering services, but also to optimize resource utilization in the environment and
ensure that compliance requirements are consistently and efficiently met. By linking an
understanding of service costing with Cloud service level definitions, utilization, capacity
investment, and public Cloud pricing, decisions can all be driven by — and aligned to —
the priorities of the business. The Cloud environment, private or hybrid, must create the
flexibility to address the needs of the business, while at the same time, optimize its own
operations to ensure costs and investments support business goals.
» IT service costing marries detailed information about the workloads in the Cloud with
costs associated with hardware, network, so ware, and other relevant resources. By
combining BMC Service Cost Management data with service level metrics and BMC
Capacity Management, a financial strategy for the growth of the Cloud can be created to
support the technological direction.
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7. » BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping discovers and inventories the VMs and other elements of the service environment,
including their interdependencies and relationships — ensuring that each chunk of resource is appropriately allocated and tracked.
» BMC BladeLogic Server Automation Suite and BMC BladeLogic Network Automation ensure that the resources delivering the
services meet the needs of the business, as well as the compliance requirements of the specific workload or service level.
With detailed inventories and integration to asset and license management, these tools support both compliance and asset
management priorities.
LEARN MORE
BMC can help you address your immediate and long-term Cloud computing goals efficiently and effectively. To learn more, please visit
www.bmc.com/Cloud.
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8. BUSINESS RUNS ON IT. IT RUNS ON BMC SOFTWARE.
Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC
So ware across both distributed and mainframe environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a
comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal
quarters ended March 31, 2010, BMC revenue was approximately $1.91 billion.
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