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Administer Your VMware Cloud Effectively and Centrally With CSEP

Like the idea of monitoring, managing and controlling all your VMware Cloud services in one place? Now, you can. The Cloud Services Engagement Platform is your central hub for easily administering all your organization’s VMware SaaS solutions.

 

As organizations continue to adopt cloud technologies at a rapid pace, administering all the services within your cloud portfolio can be challenging. Inconsistent experiences across each service create friction, making it hard to engage effectively. When VMware digitally transformed, it was critical that we reduced this friction to deliver consistent and delightful experiences across our entire portfolio – particularly given that we are positioned as a multi-cloud leader. 

VMware’s Cloud Services Engagement Platform (CSEP) is a standardized portfolio of foundational components and business services for effective engagement and central administration of VMware Cloud Services. For internal VMware business units, the platform accelerates delivery of SaaS services and provides consistency across the VMware Cloud portfolio. 

CSEP enables VMware customers to access all of the features with none of the mess. At a glance, it gives our customers consistency (with the same administrative experience, every time) and simplicity (it’s easy for everyone to use and understand). For our internal business units, it enables acceleration (the fastest go-to-market route for software as a service (SaaS)). 

 

Why CSEP?

CSEP was built in response to key challenges that product owners and developers face in the current software development industry – not just within VMware, but among our customers as well. We identified four priorities when building out a future-ready software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for software solutions. Companies need to:

  • Invest time, money and other resources to build foundational, cross-functional SaaS components or business capabilities at the cost of core features
  • Ensure a consistent user experience is maintained across its portfolio of VMware Cloud services
  • Re-adapt and re-build business capabilities and user experience during business change, at the cost of building core features
  • Navigate lengthy legal and business processes if they wish to connect to third-party, open-source and even first-party tools and services

By exploring these issues internally at VMware, we postulated that there was a clear need for a central administrative and engagement platform that accelerates and simplifies the go-to-market timeline for SaaS solutions – and thus, CSEP was born.

A modular approach to solving customer needs

CSEP is made up of several key building blocks, each of which play an important role in serving our users – whether they are customers using a VMware SaaS solution, VMware service owners and developers building these solutions, or VMware operators who provide support to our SaaS customers. In essence, the CSEP structure includes:

  • Foundational components, including modules (Commerce, Onboarding, Support, etc.) that offer a consistent user experience across all VMware Cloud services
  • Integrated services, including two shared ecosystem services (VMware Marketplace and Cloud Provider Hub)
  • APIs and customer experience standards for SaaS solutions powered by and built on CSEP
  • A CSEP service provider interface, enabling easy connectivity for SaaS solutions to back-office engines for commerce and support

As of October 2020, CSEP is the underlying administrative portal driving more than 25 VMware SaaS solutions, known as CSEP Powered Services. Examples include VMware Cloud on AWS, Workspace ONE, VMware Cloud Director, the Tanzu portfolio of services, and many more. 

CSEP empowers VMware Cloud 

CSEP drives many aspects of our customers’ interactions with VMware Cloud. At the outset, as our new customers discover and evaluate services within the VMware Cloud portfolio, it provides a handy, easily accessible catalog of SaaS solutions that are readily available to try and buy. 

When customers are ready to purchase new services or renew existing ones from the VMware Cloud portfolio, CSEP offers a simple and consistent billing experience – with all transactions managed from the same location. 

Once purchased, customers are able to quickly onboard via CSEP’s smooth Onboarding module, with a consistent user experience across all of our services. For active users of VMware Cloud, CSEP also acts as the single location to manage troubleshooting and other support requests. Furthermore, it’s also the single location to manage roles, users and more, making it easier to adopt VMware’s SaaS portfolio throughout an organization.

Next steps 

Interested in learning more about CSEP? Visit our webpage for up-to-date content and updates on CSEP. And be sure to keep an eye out for lots of great content coming up from the CSEP team – including blogs, webinars and more!

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