Cisco Domain Ten: Domain 10: Process and Governance – Part (b)

Operational process and governance, as I discussed last month, is “Domain 10” in the Cisco Domain Ten(SM) model for data center transformation.  It’s so important in my opinion, and so often disregarded or de-prioritised when planning and executing data center transformation, that I’ll cover it twice!

Domain Ten: Process and Governance aka Operations Management

Last time, I discussed some of the “Process and Governance” questions that may- indeed should – be on your mind when planning data center changes.   While you may think of Cisco Services as primarily an architecture and design specialist organization, I hope my Cisco Domain Ten blogs series has shown you we can help you with a lot more than infrastructure design.

In fact, recently, we revised our data center operations management services that we offer to help customers like you accelerate operational success with the new technologies and solutions that they are deploying.  We’ve consolidated the best of our service provider and enterprise operations management service offerings, including ITIL focus, together with our internal experience in running “Cisco on Cisco” – resulting in what we now call Cisco Data Center Services for Operations Enablement, illustrated below.

Cisco Data Center Services for Operations Enablement – Addressing the needs of “Domain Ten”

Cisco Data Center Services for Operations Enablement comprise a number of optional modules to accelerate the operational maturity of your Data Center management tools and processes. Across Plan, Build and Manage lifecycle stages. The services address your challenges around the operational tools and processes you will need to efficiently and effectively operate their data center environment. Distinct from managed services, Cisco Data Center Services for Operations Enablement focus on enabling you to more efficiently and effectively operate your own data center.  We deliver wide ranging operations enablement capabilities – ranging from how we can assess gaps in your current process, for example as you introduce a Vblock converged infrastructure platform, to providing on-site expertise for a pre-defined time period to help your team get up to speed with the best operational practices and new management tools once the equipment is live.

Note again that we’re not providing the increasingly discredited “your mess for less” type managed services.  Rather, we are focused on how we help enable targeted improvements to your operational processes and management tools architecture, so that you reduce your costs of managing your data center and cloud environment, while at the same time improving SLAs and customer satisfaction.

How, then, do you know if you should consider help from Cisco in the area of Data Center Operations Enhancement? Typically if you ….

Are introducing a new technology and are unsure of topics such as how best to manage this or even not quite sure of what are the important SNMP traps and syslog to use

Need help to align your support organizations with the benefits of the technologies.  For example, we’ve helped many organizations devise far more effective and responsive cross functional operational support teams to replace the outdated network, storage and compute “silos”.

Have acquired a new business and need to align and standardize operational processes

Need to understand how your current operational processes match to industry best practices

Have recently experience a unexpected major service outage or data center downtime

Have identified a need for improved operational skill sets

Need help to streamline your fault management and troubleshooting process flows, escalation processes and response times

Need to supplement your staff with targeted areas of Cisco equipment and software expertise

Need to increase automation further and improve your management tools architecture to reduce OpEx (Operational Expenditure)

… then you should talk to us about the Cisco Data Center Services for Operations Enablement (DCSOE).   These professional services fill the often forgotten gap that exists when you  deploy new data center technologies or revise your architecture.  In summary, you can rely on Cisco when you are asking: “How do we ensure the IT services my Data Center provides are realized with the right operational skills, processes and tools to fully leverage the investment we just made?  – and at the same time, how do we ensure that the Service Level Objectives we committed to are met?”.    So if you have questions like the above on your mind, Cisco Services can help you – get in touch!

I do hope you have found my discussions around the ten domains of data center transformation informative, and that you think about the Cisco Domain Ten(SM) framework as a holistic approach to plan your data center changes and understand the cross domain implications.  I do hope that you choose Cisco Services to be your data center and cloud transformation partner and I look forward to your success stories! Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have questions on Cisco Domain Ten and your data center transformation challenges.  And follow me @StephenSatCisco on Twitter for my latest updates around data center deployment challenges and Cisco Domain Ten.