The Cloud Service Management is the integral supply chain which forms a connecting link between the company and the customer. It includes the methodologies for the management and monitoring of cloud on a reduced cost by integrating products and services. Its key element is to achieve outcome goals which are demanded by the company. It requires all the activities that an organization does to plan, design and control the IT infrastructure.
As the methodologies are changing day by day and the traditional methods have been replaced by the modern cloud services, there is a need to properly manage such a huge network on which many businesses are depending. The cloud service management (CSM) focuses on managing such a huge potential network in the cloud computing platform. This ensures the proper functioning of cloud servers with scalability so that the productivity tends to increase regularly with a flexible and easy set up. Understanding cloud service management minutely brings the synergy and high performance with the changing needs of transforming businesses.
CSM helps you to take advantage of accuracy, speed, scalability, flexibility and other mesmerizing services that a cloud provides.
Cloud provisioning is the key component of cloud computing Platform and based upon how the customer is acquiring the cloud services from any cloud service provider. It includes SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service) components.
Cloud Provisioning categories
There are mainly three cloud provisioning categories from which the users of public cloud services can choose a one according to their business needs.
- User Self Provisioning
User Self Provisioning is also known as self cloud services which allow the users to directly use the services without the intervention of any IT organization. It can be used in public, private as well as hybrid cloud platforms. Many self provisioning users show pairing up with a service catalog which is managed by any enterprise. The user buys cloud resources from any cloud provider using a portal or interface directly in which you only have to do is just a sign up in your recently made account and you pay as you go basis via credit or a debit card.
- Advanced provisioning
In the advanced provisioning, the user has to deal with the contract of the service with the cloud service provider. It takes the slightly advanced payment method. It allows you to choose and configure your own topology environment, and you don’t have to forcely choose the basic preset. It all depends on your choice and needs. You will have to pay on the monthly basis for the resources you are using for cloud computing.
- Dynamic Provisioning
Dynamic provisioning helps the customer to get the cloud services with flexible deployment which matches the customer’s changing demands. It gives the scalability to the cloud so that it can itself scale up or down according to the increasing or decreasing demands and the user has to pay according to the usage by pay per usage. Cloud bursting is the term used in dynamic provision when it is used in hybrid clouds.
Characteristics of Cloud Service Management
Cloud service management is a combination of softwares and technologies for the proper management and functioning of cloud servers. It has many added tools and methodologies for facing the fluctuating demands of the IT era. These tools not only have public cloud reference but also the third party alliance for smooth functioning and it will bring consistency to your business with much efficiency. In a hybrid cloud, there is slightly greater complexity in comparison to other clouds. So, in this the compute network and the storage resources must be managed across multiple domains which needs a unique, clear and good strategy for its maintenance and monitoring. Hence, cloud service management provides the best infrastructure and policies to run this complexity. The best management must have the qualities of smooth guidance and the administrator must balance the competing requirements ensuring the business consistency as well as continuity. The cloud service management must have some key qualities to match the modernisation in IT sectors.
- Provisioning
Provisioning is the very important part in cloud computing whose functioning is based upon the services that are used by the customer from the cloud providers. The best service management can easily create, modify, rearrange and delete the resources, which means it must be scalable to provide flexibility and liability in business works. It also orchestrates the workflow and distributes it seamlessly, reduces workload as well.
- Automation & Security
Sometimes, it takes a lot of effort and manforce to monitor the resources which wastes a lot of time and money, which is not a good sign for a rapidly growing business at all. So, automation must be there to enable the cloud consumption and deployment of the app services rapidly. This will reduce the usage time which you can invest in the company’s growth. The second pillar of any cloud management service is its security. It must enforce the security configurations and manage the role access of cloud models.
- Pricing
It must be cost efficient and user friendly so that it gets fit in any IT budget and focuses on identifying and optimizing the actual demand.
Other than this, the cloud management services must ensure the safe and fastest recovery of data if the company faces any disaster or a loss. It also has to enable Data mobility and data replication to store your data safely.
- Monitoring and Management
The cloud service management has to be so accurate to collect the performance and track the exact analytics to check the company’s performance. It must have automated management and log aggregation to easily monitor the servers.
The large enterprises which have to host its applications in a wide network must have robust cloud service management which includes some specified characteristics from other services. It must have the ability to easily monitor and manage multiple platforms at a time from a single point of reference. It must have a strong and simplified analytics to understand the data accessing and have automated application access to skip the manual and time taking process as you are handling a vast business network.