Some enterprises are building their own internal or private cloud, in order to improve IT responsiveness to business needs and drive down costs. Private clouds are also appealing to the enterprise or company looking for a very elastic, dynamic computing or storage capacity. With a private cloud, a business service that needs additional compute or storage resources can dynamically provision for it.

The benefit of a private cloud is that it enables an organization to manage the infrastructure and have more control. Doing so can put the burden of creating a secure, scalable, compliant cloud on the shoulders of IT organizations.

Any gains associated with better utilization and lower capital expenditures could be wiped out or significantly reduced by the increase in administrative costs and other operating expenditures. However, by using comprehensive “cloud” service management solutions many organizations are able to address these challenges.

Other enterprises may choose to implement a hybrid cloud, an environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers. The hybrid cloud offers the opportunity for providing the cost-saving benefits of public cloud services with some of the control and compliance required for private clouds.

For instance, the enterprise may have a private cloud, as well as a relationship with a cloud resource provider that provides additional storage or infrastructure computing power. When peak demand is increasing, the IT organization may not own the physical infrastructure to allocate for this demand, but may instead leverage a relationship with this resource provider to pay for the needed resources for a given period of time.

Your Cloud: New Technology, Same Management Requirements
In an environment where the ability to change and adapt is critical to business success, how does IT maintain control to ensure the required quality of service and still deliver the responsiveness and cost savings promised by cloud computing? The answer is the same as it is for your physical and virtual infrastructure: careful planning and choosing tools that provide best-practices service level management.

Committing to a strategic cloud initiative for your IT organization requires a clear understanding of the value you will receive, the resources required, and the most effective management approach.

The evolution of cloud computing has provided technology that has matured beyond simply providing a level of service to the business. For instance, the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. BMC Software recently announced it can optimize hybrid IT infrastructure deployments via the Amazon EC2, enabling customers to holistically manage physical, virtual and cloud environments. This helps companies to further reduce cost and complexity by using an integrated and unified set of management solutions.

Why Business Service Management Is Critical to Managing Your Cloud
Whether you decide to implement a public, private, or hybrid or private cloud strategy for your IT organization, you should apply the same level of service management capabilities to the cloud as you do for your physical and virtual infrastructure. All three types of cloud computing models need strong and rigorous IT processes to support service management objectives.