Service catalog establishment
At its most basic, a service catalog is a listing of services from which a user can drive the provisioning process. The challenge lies in the natural tension between users, who want to completely customize their offerings, and the IT group, which has to maintain tight controls on the services in the environment.
The role of the service catalog is to bridge that gap. The service catalog enables IT to define the areas of configuration and choice that users can select, according to their role. As a result, users feel some measure of customizability of their cloud services. Each service offering has attributes that IT defines, including who can see and select this service, what service levels or constraints are important to this service, and what the service costs (for calculating chargebacks).
In other words, the service catalog houses the service offerings, which communicate a set of technology specifications in business language. Cloud services might be multi-tier or single-tier application stacks. They may have differing deployment alternatives based on size and service tier. Finally, they might offer all the configuration options a user might require. These elements are defined as individual service blueprints within the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution. Once defined functionally, they are then characterized in business language as service offerings which are stored in the service catalog. It is from these offerings that end users select their cloud services.
Service catalog establishment overview diagram
The following attributes are often defined in the service blueprints:
- Resource configurations
- Operating systems
- Middleware stacks
- Application alternatives
- Networking options
- Compliance packages
- Monitoring tools
- Service levels
- Prices
IT can choose which cloud services to offer to users and how customizable those services will be. At one extreme, users can be offered a choice between only two or three non-customizable full-stack configurations. On the other extreme, users can be offered an extensive set of choices for each component, enabling them to fully customize their stack. A common middle-ground approach is for IT to determine which broad offerings should be presented, which elements should be optional and which should be required (like compliance or monitoring), and which users will be presented with which options.
The user is exposed to the service catalog only through their self-service request and management portal. BMC's user-friendly interface, the My Cloud Services portal, guides users through the service request process, showing them only those options available to them based on their role. In addition to placing new requests, users can manage the services they've requested from the cloud, turn them on or off, and request additional time or resources in the My Cloud Services portal. The portal is customizable to match the look and feel of the company, as well.
Once a service is requested, the approval process is initiated according to policies defined by IT. This process may be fully automated or may require manual approval. The key is that this process is determined by IT, and can be different for each service type.
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management provides the capability to define the service blueprints, expose them through the service catalog into the user's request and management My Cloud Services portal, and ensure that requests are approved according to policy. By enabling highly configurable cloud services to be delivered in scalable, automated manner, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management ensures that business users are given the cloud services they need.
Key benefits of service catalog establishment:
- Enable self-service request and administration
- Offer tiered, configurable services
- Customize role-based access and flexible approval workflows
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