1 Introduction

In the present era of digitalization, with the proliferation of cloud and mobility, there are a variety of services and applications available for access on demand over the internet. Services are ordered and consumed at an astounding rate today. Hence there is a need for enterprises to source and facilitate the consumption of their users’ services requirements, all on demand.

Hence, on demand and subscription-based models are becoming the new norm for enterprises to deliver their services to the business, which has resulted in an increase in the adoption of “everything as a service” or a XaaS model. XaaS is fast gaining popularity as it enables everything from technology services through to key business processes which can be delivered as a “Service”. With the increasing adoption of disruptive technologies (such as cloud), enterprises started embracing many third party provided services. In such situations, the enterprise IT departments are now transforming themselves as a broker of their own service offerings to the business in order derive the agility and consumerization experience for its consumer. This is now called a consumer driven IT operating model, where the consumer has been given the highest priority.

In this white paper, the focus is on how you can apply the VeriSM model in XaaS where cloud services become the preferred way of doing the business of IT. At HCL, we have applied the VeriSM model in its varied Service Management solutions. This is particularly designed to meet the requirements of a consumer driven operating model. This covers the new Service Management principles, a balanced management mesh & service lifecycle value steams that are required to manage disruptive delivery models like Cloud & DevOps, along with the highest level of autonomics and Orchestration.

VeriSM allows organizations to deliver services as desired by their business by reducing time-to-market to implement new requirements for new or modified services; or to fix problems or vulnerabilities that exists within the service. Thereby, creating a more flexible consumption model for using cloud services by focusing on automation and integration of the IT activities.

2 XaaS Model

As service management evolves, consumer centric operating models are at the forefront of service provision and consumption. Traditional operating models of IT service providers were designed around monolithic IT infrastructure, client server architecture and very limited virtualization. However, in today’s world, the IT infrastructure is highly virtualized and services are offered for consumption on a subscription basis, and this is rendering conventional service management practices irrelevant. For instance, the movement of a workload from one VM cluster to another and features like auto scaling, cloud busting, etc. are mostly system driven and automated, as opposed to traditional approaches with a lot of human involvement driven through a Request for Change (RFC).

Services are essentially composed of micro services and each micro service is independently supported by an unstructured database and non-relational database(ex-DynamoDB) sub systems. Additionally, the service supply chain roles such as service creator, service operator, service provider, service broker and service integrator have become active actors, performing various roles within the enterprise IT management. In order to consume these services dynamically, a robust service catalog which unifies the various micro-elements of a service and its supply chain roles is of paramount importance. The service catalog becomes the center of the universe and the heart of the management mesh. Put simply, unless a service is published in the catalog, it cannot be consumed by the consumer.

VeriSM is a next-gen consumer centric model where XaaS can be the embedded provision model and is a contemporary approach to enterprise service management. The letter ‘X’ stands for anything and everything as a service and is applicable for the services (both IT and non-IT services) at the enterprise level.

XaaS is a rapidly expanding model where everything is offered to consumers on a subscription basis through a next-generation consumer engagement portal. It is integral to cloud computing, and all cloud delivery models such as software as a service, infrastructure as a service and platform as a service are covered.

3 VeriSM model applied in XaaS

In the XaaS world where everything is offered as a service (on a subscription basis), the consumer portal and the service fulfilment system are the most vital components of the service lifecycle. This is where the Provide and Respond stages of the VeriSM model take place.

Figure 1 – The VeriSM Model Source: VeriSM™ – A service management approach for the digital age Consumers access the XaaS next-gen consumer engagement portal for availing services, which are processed through a completely automated process. The fulfilment engine orchestrates the provision of services using multiple service providers (fulfillers) who are part of the service supply chain.

The model allows both service orders (requests) and service maintenance (issues), and is based on an entitlement concept where consumers only have access to services which are pre-authorized, thereby eliminating the need for approvals.

Some may be wondering about what the distinction is between a traditional ‘service request’ catalog and a XaaS service catalog. Classic service request catalogs are part of the traditional request fulfilment Page 6 of 11 system which is merely focused on enabling the workflow for ordering, approval and fulfilment activities which are mostly carried out manually. These orders are related to consumable items such as laptop, mouse, password reset, data backup, and internet access, etc.

On the other hand, a true service catalog powered by the XaaS model provides anything and everything as a service to its consumers such as virtual machines, cloud instances, application services, and IT products. XaaS automates and orchestrates the provision of services using multiple service providers who are part of the supply chain.

The figure below provides an overview of a consumer service fulfilment system based on XaaS:

Figure 2 – Provide and Respond with XaaS

The key components in the Provide and Respond stages of the VeriSM model, which are applied in the XaaS world, are outlined in the table below:

4 Conclusion

As enterprises start to adopt more and more cloud services, they will eventually consume third party services on an ever-increasing basis. These services are usually complex and composite in nature, therefore, for their fulfilment, there is a need to engage multiple fulfillers who may belong to different service providers. This calls for a true Next-Gen SIAM orchestration which is powered by the VeriSM™ model in a XaaS provision system in order to facilitate the consumption of IT services across this complex IT landscape. In other words, it facilitates the development of new or enhanced services using automation and orchestration in a true SIAM model. The service fulfilment system and the consumer portal are the most vital components of the service lifecycle. The model allows both service orders (requests) and service maintenance (issues) and is based on an entitlement concept where consumers only have access to services which are pre-authorized. The availing services are processed in a completely automated manner. The fulfilment engine orchestrates the provision of services using multiple service providers who are part of the supply chain. This model is a perfect example of optimizing the Provide and Respond stages by integrating supply channels and offering them as a seamless one-stop-shop.

References:

HCL’s Foundation for XaaS: Service Architecture in 21CE

Service Integration: A practical guide to multivendor service management

IFDC VeriSM™ Model