Agile infrastructure- IT as a service

Private cloud is the name of the game. To be able to quickly adapt to needs of the business we need to clearly identify our service catalog.  The system center suite is the tool set that we have to lay the ground work for our for moving forward with presenting IT as a service.  

There are a number of benefits to viewing IT as a service.  If done correctly this gives you the potential to provide turnkey services that can be deployed in a consistent fashion. This in turn reduces the need for involvement from multiple SMEs and eliminates inconsistencies in deployments.  Also because each deployment is consistent with the last it becomes easy to value the services that you offer.  This gives business leaders some insight into what costs are associated with each request and gives IT the ability to charge back for services provided.  This will allow for a clear view of the value add IT is providing.  

As I mentioned the System Center Suite is what will enable us to achieve this goal.  Through service manager we a defining our service catalog and are making this available to our users.  Through SCCM and SCVMM we are capturing and packaging those services for deployment.  Once those  services are deployed we use SCOM to monitor and alert on loss and degradation of service.  SCORCH is providing us the ability to orchestrate the processes we encounter on a regular basis.  And finally SCDPM provides us the ability to recover our services in the event data loss or corruption occurs.

Once this ground work is laid we will be able to rapidly respond to the needs of the business.  This will also give us the opportunity to develop new offerings and streamline processes through continuous improvement.