Wednesday Sept 2
By Andy Troup
Kevin Lees, our principal architect in our Operations Transformation Services practice, spoke today about Best Practice Approaches to Transformation with the Software Defined Data Center. Kevin speaks from experience, spending most of his time with customers on-site with transformation projects. Kevin has seen firsthand what works and what certainly doesn’t. Recommendations he shared this morning included:
- Start with a formal service definition process—include all stakeholders (LoB, Ops, Infrastructure, Dev, Finance)
- Include Security and Compliance right off the bat
- A 360 degree service definition exercise drives technology decisions, not the other way around
- Look at the new roles that will be needed: e.g. Business Relationship Manager, Service Owner
- Create a Service Marketing Plan for key stakeholders in the organization
- Assume change will be constant—adopt an agile planning methods (e.g. 2 week sprints); release features on a regular basis rather than waiting for final project completion
- Take an iterative approach rather than a sequential approach. Start simple, gradually expand (this applies to the process side as well as the service offering side.)
- Merge workstreams: technical workstream, operations transformation workstream, cloud service management
- Break down silo’s (Kevin has some really good advice here arming and rewarding champions or change agents in the functional groups to help this happen. Exec sponsorship is also critical.)
You can find the session recording on the VMworld mobile app or vmworld.com to get the benefit of all of Kevin’s insights.
Last day of the conference is tomorrow! Here’s what to attend:
- 10:30 AM
OPT 5029 How to Use Service Definitions to VMware vRealize Business to Build Highly effective, Service-Based Cost Models - 10:30 AM
OPT 4707 Integrating vRealize Automation with ITSM and Service Catalog - 12:00 PM
OPT5709 Building a SDDC with CIT (customer presentation) - 1:30 PM
OPT 5369 Proactive Monitoring of a Service: People, Process and Technology
Don’t forget to use the VMworld mobile app to easily locate these final day sessions.
And, thanks for sharing the week with us! Please do reply to this post with any observations about the subject of transformation of your own, either from your own experiences or as a result of any the Operations Transformation sessions you attended this week. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Andy Troup is a Cloud Operations Architect with over 25 years of IT experience. He specializes in Cloud Operations and Technology Consulting Service Development. Andy is also a vCAP DCA and VCP. Andy possesses a proven background in design, deployment and management of enterprise IT projects. Previously, Andy co-delivered the world’s first and subsequent vCloud Operational Assessments (Colt Telecomm & Norwegian Government Agency) to enable the early adoption of VMware’s vCloud implementation.
