So from a customer of a Cloud Computing providers’ point of view, the first two lifecycle phases get a lot more complex and gain a higher importance, whereas especially the Service Operation process becomes much less important and even less complex. Usually that is exactly what is of interest for the customer, since the Service Strategy and Service Design lifecycle phases are much more concentrated towards the core business of the company and the later lifecycle phase are simply necessary, but do usually (as long as the company is not an IT company ifself) not belong to the core business of the company. Therefore, reducing the complexity and importance of these lifecycle phase does perfectly make sense from a customers’ point of view.
complexity/ importance
Figure 3: The importance/complexity of the ITIL lifecycle phase from a Cloud Computing service providers’ point of view
Figure 3 now answers almost the same question about the increasing complexity and/or importance of the certain ITIL lifecycle phases for Cloud Computing based infrastructure, but this time from a Cloud Computing service providers’ point of view.
Basically, from the providers’ point of view it is just the other way round. Of course the most important lifecycle phase for the Cloud Computing Service provider is the Service Operation lifecycle, since he is responsible for the operation of the service and (at least partially) the generation of the added- value for the customers of his customer.
Of course from the service providers’ point of view, also the Continual Service Improvement lifecycle phase becomes more and more important. If the provider manages to continuously improve his services, he might probably convince more and more customers to deploy their services in a Cloud Computing based scenario, or he might convince his current customers to deploy more services in his cloud based environment.
With respect to the Service Transition lifecycle phase, as already said in the description from the customers’ point of view, there are usually almost no changes in complexity and/or importance to suspect.
The Service Design lifecycle phase is from a service providers’ point of view much less important in comparison to the customers’ point of view. The responsibility for the design of the service in question is with the customer of the provider. Of course the service provider has to provide input for the Cloud Computing specialities, but still the customer is in charge of the design of a certain service.
Also with respect to the Service Strategy lifecycle phase, the service provider is not in charge of this lifecycle phase. The strategic decisions about the service in question still needs to be performed by the customer itself. Here, again the cloud service provider might provide internal information about the Cloud Computing infrastructure, but these informations are just provided as input and the customer has to take the strategic decisions on the basis of this information. Therefore, from the service providers’ point of view, the importance and/or complexity of the Service Strategy lifecycle phase is pretty low.
complexity / importance
Figure 4: The importance/complexity of the ITIL lifecycle phase aggregated for the service provider and the customer
In Figure 4 the two different points of view, the one from the customer and the one of the service provider, are aggregated. The symmetry along the aches of the customer and the service provider shows that on the one hand ITIL is able to provide a solution for the management of cloud based environments, at least when the discussion that this paper provides for the ccrtain processes are taken into account. Furthermore, the symmetry of the aches of complexity/importance shows that an almost natural division of labor consists between the customer and the Cloud Computing service provider.
This two observations together provide (from the authors’ point of view) the proof the ITIL would not only be able, but be the right framework, also for Cloud Computing based infrastructures.
IV. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS (CSF) FOR ITIL AS THE IT- SERVICE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR CLOUD COMPUTING
BASED INFRASTRUCTURES
In IT-Service Management Critical Success Factors (CSF) provide necessities that need to be provided/fulfilled in order for a certain aspect to work.
This paragraph will now provide the CSFs’ that are necessary in order for making the IT Infrastructure Library ready for managing Cloud Computing based infrastructures.
On the one hand the results of the second paragraph, where this paper presented the discussion of the different ITIL processes, need to be considered before ITIL is used for the management of Cloud Computing based infrastructures.
One of the most important CSFs’, from the authors’ perspective, is the permanent and continuous negotiation of Service Level Agreements within the Service Level Management process. This is basically the only way for the customer and the provider for the negotiation of the ccrtain responsibilities and interfaces.