7 Tips to Maximizing Effectiveness and Minimizing Service Disruption

Become an IT Service Broker

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• IT brokers services from multiple vendors to delivery the most efficient, lease costly, and most timely solution possible

• To facilitate the brokering of services, some enterprises may adopt a self-service platform

• Transitioning to this model requires a cultural shift in IT to manage service delivery rather than applications and infrastructure

What’s an IT Service Broker?

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7 Tips to Strategic IT Management

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2. Catalog all current and near-term applications

1. Admit you can’t do everything yourself

3. Categorize each app for the cloud

4. Develop a list of possible providers

6. Pick the best candidate for each workload

5. Do your due diligence

7. Monitor each vendor with a scorecard

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2000CIO DECISION FLOW

Admit You Can’t Do Everything Yourself

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STAKEHOLDER REQUIREMENTS

BUILD BUY

CIO

5

2014CIO DECISION FLOW

Admit You Can’t Do Everything Yourself

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STAKEHOLDER REQUIREMENTS

CIO

CLOUD

PUBLIC HYBRIDPRIVATE

BUILD BUY

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• Understand what is running internally and externally – Begin with your corporate-standard disk image

– Check expense reports to determine IT services being paid by credit card

– Query line-of-business stakeholders about which software-as-a-service and cloud applications they are using

Catalog All Current and Near-Term Applications

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Categorize Each Application for the Cloud

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PublicCloud

Multi-tenant solutions generally housed off-premises; hosted by a third party and can scale up or down to meet demand

Private Cloud

Doesn’t share disk space with other tenants; suitable for more demanding workloads; pay for privacy

HybridCloud

A combination of public and private clouds, operating together as a cohesive unit.

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Categorize Each Application for the Cloud

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• Evaluate each application in terms of:– Sensitivity to associated data

– Security provisions required for regulatory purposes

– Integrations to interoperate with other applications

TYPE OF CLOUD

Application Public Private Hybrid

Archiving/Off-site Backup ✔

CRM ✔Ecommerce (with

PCI security) ✔

Email ✔ERP (with

compliance) ✔

HR Portal (HRIS) ✔Development, Test

or QA ✔Web portal (user-

generated content)

✔

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Develop a List of Possible Providers

• Sort stakeholder requirements list into – High-priority requirements (“must-haves”)

– Lower-priority requirements (“nice-to-haves”)

• Research providers

• Match list of applications and providers that can meet them

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Do Your Due Diligence

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• See a cloud demo to evaluate offerings

• Determine whether you want a single provider or multiple providers

• Single vendor advantages:– Similar interfaces

– Consistent API for integrations

– Transparent monitoring

– More reliable support

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Pick the Best Candidate for Each Workload

• Must be able to support public, private and hybrid cloud

• Must be able to handle provisioning and configurations

• Should also provide you with– Robust networking

– Flexibility

– Online dashboard

– Outstanding support

– No vendor lock-in

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Monitor Each Vendor with a Scorecard

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• Establish key metrics/outcomes and evaluate providers in five critical areas:– Price

– Performance

– Security

– Service-Level Agreement (SLA)

– Support

• Measure expectations versus actual delivery based on empirical data

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Reboot the Role of IT in Your Organization

• The new model of IT as a service broker means becoming more strategic IT thinkers and trusted advisors:– Gathering internal requirements

– Selecting cost-effective services from an expanding range of third-party providers

– Evaluating vendors

– Managing on-premises and off-premises services

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Is your organization ready to transition from doing routine maintenance to making a

strategic contribution to revenues and profits?

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Next Steps

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Rackspace has the expertise to help you move to an IT service broker model, and can help support at any point in the process.

Contact Rackspace or read more at

7 Tips on Becoming an IT Service Broker – White Paper

Rackspace consultants have years of experience and Rackspace offers a Cloud Readiness Assessment to begin your transition to an IT service broker.

Call Rackspace at 800-961-2888 to get started today.

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About Rackspace

9 Worldwide Data Centers

Nearly 6,000 Rackers

200,000+ Customers90,000+ Servers45,000+ VM

70 ≅ PB Stored

Global FootprintCustomers in 120+ Countries

Portfolio of Hosted SolutionsDedicated - Cloud - Hybrid

Annualized Revenue$1.7B

60% 100OFTHE

We Serve FORTUNE®

OV

ER

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About Rackspace

Named a Top Performer for Hosted Private Cloud by Forrester Research Inc. in “The Forrester Wave™: Q1 2013

A Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, 2014 North America & Europe

Founder

OpenStack®

Open source software for building private and public clouds

THANK YOU

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