Focusing the Plan on Providing Services to Your Constituents

Once you have a concrete understanding of the technical and business considerations, it’s time to put the strategy into a technical architectural plan. This technical plan must mirror the requirements and changes in the business strategy. It is helpful to think about what type of customers or consumers you are supporting. It is also important to understand where those services will come from. Your organization may provide some services directly while you will contract with commercial service providers for other services. And you also have to determine how you will create or select those providers who will create services. You need to plan for three different types of services, as we discuss in this section.

Cloud service consumer services

These are the services that touch your employees, your partners, and customers. Although there are sophisticated services underlying these services — for example, business process, cloud-based application, and infrastructure services — they are hidden from the consumer. The consumer wants to see fast performance and security.

Comprehensive cloud provider services

Cloud providers typically offer public cloud services to a range of constituents. In some cases, the services are designed to create a high level of service and security for corporations. Therefore, these companies will offer support for cloud applications ranging from PaaS, BPaaS, SaaS, as well as infrastructure services. They will also create their own service management platform and integration services. These service providers often offer a range of services depending on the level of service required by your company.

Cloud service creation services

Cloud creation services are offered by service provides as a way to create new, innovative business services from a variety of platforms and IP from your industry or company. These runtime services can be designed to create new innovative services that sit on top of a service delivery platform either from a cloud provider or within your private environment. It’s common for these creation services to leverage both public and private offerings based on business strategy.