vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 is generally available on Jun 13, 2017! You can download the new release here and read the What’s New blog to learn more. For new customers who want to understand how cost management can drive higher cloud efficiency, here is one of the best examples for you.
Use Case: Do
n’t Run Your IT as a “$1 Any Size” Coffee Shop
One of the fast food chains is currently running a promotion: $1 any size coffee. No hard data point is available but it’s a no-brainer that many customers would order a bigger size of coffee during the promotion period. Whether they would actually be able to drink all they get is a different story, however.
Size goes up, cost goes up
In the world of IT infrastructure, most of business groups probably request a Venti size virtual machine without knowing which size they actually need. One of the reasons behind is lack of cost transparency. Lines-of-business (LOB) are probably seeing a fixed amount (just like $1 coffee) of IT expenses without aware of how they consume IT services; therefore, they often end up requesting bigger size of resources.
Two sides of cost transparency
Cloud cost management have become a hot topic in the era of cloud computing as IT is facing more challenges on delivering services faster at a lower cost.
However, there are two key areas to be addressed in order to achieve an effective cost management – cost and consumption, and we often overlook the latter: who is using what, where? Unless we truly understand the consumption side of the story, we won’t be able to recommend the right size to our customer, resulting in waste of resources.
Cloud Consumption and showback
VMware vRealize Business for Cloud addresses this issue, helping IT understand who is using what, where. Connected to VMware vCenter, vRealize Business for Cloud will not only show you the overall consumption (remember, not demand but actual consumption) trend but also allow you to double click to understand which business unit is consuming what and where. For the who part, if vRealize Automation or vCloud Director is in place, vRealize Business for Cloud will follow the define business groups in vRealize Automation, Organizations or Organization VDCs in vCloud Director; users can also use vCenter folders and tags to define business units and services with a great deal of flexibility.
Nicely summarized in a Showback statement, vRealize Business for Cloud can also help lines of businesses to operate under the IT budget. It will show the given budget of the month, month-to-date charge, and the projected month-end charge. In addition, it shows how much they can potentially save through quantifying the oversized, idle, and turned-off VM’s in the Private Cloud; vRealize Operations provides the data, and vRealize Business for Cloud quantifies the data with dollar value, a language that business groups can understand. Showback reports can enable a fact-based conversation between IT and business to drive higher efficiency of infrastructure utilization and achieve greater business value; it’s a win-win!
$1 any size coffee? Well, it is not here. In a company using vRealize Business for cloud, when business groups request a new service, they will consider ordering the right size they need rather than always going for a Venti size.
Learn more:
- Product page
- Try our Hands-on-lab ( part of the intelligent operation use case)
