NAVIGATING

THE CLOUD

CLOUD COMPUTING: EMPOWERING BUSINESS

TO CREATE AND EXPLOIT NEW SERVICES
Copyright © 2011 ValueTeam.

All rights reserved.

The current challenge for companies is
“change management“ (from culture, to
the organisation, to technology).
Organisations face many challenges: competition coming out of nowhere , international
turmoil, rising costs of raw materials, energy and labour, access to qualified knowledge
workers and an ever accelerating of technological innovation.
In this environment, it is not easy to stay on course, have a coherent strategy and at the
same time maintain costs under control.
CEOs, CTOs and CIOs have to provide their companies and organisations with a set of
solutions where the orchestration of a huge array of resources is the key success factor.
In this paper, Value Team states how it can support its clients in attaining this ability to
orchestrate and govern their organisations through an adaptive use of disruptive
technologies such as Cloud Computing.

The revenues generated by Cloud Computing services are growing worldwide 148.8 US$
billion forecast by Gartner for 2014.
What is also thought to increase is the adoption of cloud services by both companies and
end-users. Over the next 5 years, they will spend US $ 112 billion on software-as-a-service
(SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Coping with the world of Cloud Computing implies a mindset shift and requires the know-
how and experience from those who have it. It is the combined knowledge of the assets
involved, like that of technology, organisation and resources together with that of the
environments, like the infrastructure, the platforms and the applications.

Value Team, with competences, methodologies and experiences, aims today to serve the
market as a Cloud Services Enabler. ICT governance in this relatively new paradigm, is a
question of balancing the competitive cost of not using the cloud, against the risks of actually
using it. There are opportunities and risks to take into account. This requires a fair
assessment of the situation, and to face and address themes such as data and infrastructure
security as well as quality of service requirements.

So how are organisations reacting to the “paradigm shift” which “cloud” stimulates?
Telecommunications operators are investing in the development of those advanced services
which Cloud Computing enables to introduce ICT cloud offerings to their markets.
Financial Services and Insurance are looking to Cloud Computing not only to optimise costs
and deliver efficiency, but also to improve existing channels and exploit new ones.
In the Utilities market, remote-reading and remote-management are areas where governed
Cloud Computing delivers interesting real-time synergies when combined with innovative
CRM platforms and the “internet of things”.

3
For Government (both central and local) the role of Cloud Computing, along with the
adoption of “open source” technologies is even more crucial in delivering digital services to
the citizens.

We believe that the overall challenge can be paraphrased in “governing the context”.
This means to address ever-growing expectations of users towards technology (don’t we all
expect our ICT operations to run as smoothly as the commodities we use every day: easy as
the music on our iPod? safe as our Volvo, and as much fun as drinking our Coke?). It means
to control securely virtual environments, deliver services seamlessly on time, on budget and
in an elastic fashion.
It means to make more and more services available on a self-provisioning and self-serving
basis. It means to run business-oriented

“The revenues
services in the cloud.

generated by cloud
The managers of our clients and prospects

computing services
are all facing this “shift” and we are aware of
that. We are also aware that Cloud

are growing
Computing can be a very “democratic”
technology. For example it allows even small

worldwide; 148.8
companies to access very powerful

US$ billion forecast

solutions easily. Ten years ago only large
corporations could afford CRM systems.

by Gartner for
Nowadays even the bakery in your
neighbourhood could have a

2014.”
“salesforce.com” account (and it could have
it within minutes from ordering online) to
better serve his/her clientele.

Then there is the widespread availability of super-functional mobile technology with the likes
of smart-phones, tablets, thin clients etc. This mobile technology responds very well to the
new ways of conducting business and to what we now call “mobile workers”. Finally there is
the emergence of strong business models that leverage the “social” side of internet
computing. Facebook, Twitter, Google mail, Dropbox etc. are now household names.
These disruptive tools (and others) have boosted overall productivity and are a strong
reinforcing trend in the adoption of Cloud Computing which exalt the horizontal scalability,
typical of “social networks”.

The provisioning of these services, which when you look at Amazon or Google, seems to be
performed effortlessly, actually requires massive preparation and a general mobilisation of IT
resources which is far from easy to execute.

In this ever-changing framework, the Value Team value proposition is independent of the
Cloud Computing services and IT offerings currently on the market. At our core, as a

4
strategic consulting company specialised in ICT themes and as a systems integrator, Value
Team has the capability to design and enable Cloud Computing, and also to engineer and
deliver the instruments necessary to govern the cloud and eliminate the risk. That’s why we
describe ourselves as a Cloud Services Enabler.
In fact, in spite of the great hype which surrounds “cloud”, we are fully aware of the fact that
although “cloud” is often referred to as a “game changer”, so have the rules of the game
changed!. Best practices in the cloud are yet to be established and the integration of
systems, business rules and legal frameworks is far from simple in terms of analysis,
process and execution. It is facing and overcoming these various degrees of complexity that
we aim to deliver to our clients and prospects.

Finally we also offer a selection of Software-as-a-Service turnkey solutions built upon our
direct experience in the market. This serves also to prove our ability to implement in the first
person cloud services, and to build our credibility in the eyes of our clients and prospects
when it come to putting our money where our mouth is.

Navigating the cloud is not easy but Value Team is ready to guide you.

5

1
“Cloud computing is a model for
enabling convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool
of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks,
servers, storage, applications,
and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or
service provider interaction”. The
NIST Definition of Cloud
Computing , Authors: Peter Mell
and Tim Grance, Version 15, 10-
7-09
“CLOUD COMPUTING” :
A SERVICE ORIENTED ECONOMY.
DEVELOPMENT AND
BUSINESS MODELS
As we anticipated earlier, Cloud Computing
developed thanks to the convergence of at
least three major trends over the last few
years: service orientation of IT, virtualisation,
and simplified access to resources via the
Internet. Its diffusion is due to the
development of large-scale data centers,
broadband connections and pay-per-use
payment models.
Cloud Computing is differentiated by three
service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) and
three deployment models (Public, Private,
Hybrid). [Fig. 1]
Internet and mobile markets are moving the
attention of both businesses and consumers
to “service oriented” models. Therefore
Information and Communication
6
1
Technologies (ICT) are an enabling factor of
contemporary society and the very sectors
which are driving the economy are
experiencing parallel organisational evolution
solicited by the availability of new
communications channels and devices.
For ICT, the change is driven by both
external factors, such as the evolution of
services from large providers (infrastructure
and application), the availability of new
instruments and the penetration of Internet
usage [Fig 2], but also internal factors, such
as aggressive IT cost control and
technological and product innovation have a
big impact.
In this sense opportunities have arisen which
certain companies have managed to take
timely advantage of, such as Rentokil Initial
for example2 , which is implementing Cloud
 Fig.1

CLOUD TYPOLOGIES:

PRIVATE, PUBLIC E HYBRID

solutions to handle e-mail and collaboration NAVIGATION THROUGH THE

systems and cutting its’ costs in this area by
70%.
The current challenge for companies is
“change management“ (from culture, to the
organisation, to technology). Cloud
Computing, in this sense, is similar to the
urban development of a large metropolis:
one may decide to govern the growth of a
city following a regulatory plan or suffer
random growth, witnessing the development
of unstructured suburban areas, which future
generations will then have to deal with and
manage.
CLOUDS
Cloud Computing requires decisions made in
a framework of both opportunities and risks:
OPPORTUNITIES
• Newly defined business models;
• Economic sustainability;
• Maturity of the model and services;
• Solidity of SLAs and infrastructures;
• Flexible governance of fragmented,
distributed services;
• Management of the transformation process
of the architectural model.

FIG.2

DIFFUSION OF INTERNET

AND PERCENTAGE OF

USERS BY COUNTRY.

2
BBC Business News, May 5,
2010, “Cloud Computing for
business foes mainstream”, Tim
Weber

7
 RISKS The diffusion of Cloud Computing is also

• Low level of penetration; driven by benefits including:

• Offer not very clear; • Access to distributed resources: Cloud

• Lack of clear evolutionary roadmap; services fit well with mobile interaction, for

• Infrastructural problems for external/public example from a optimised web interface on

cloud; a handheld device. This applied in a global

• Difficulty of data management in Clouds market with distributed organisation means

(e.g., person data privacy laws in different the ability to access services regarless of

countries). the location (think of the workforce

management systems or the sales force

Value Team is proposing to its clients and tools).

prospects a model for active risk • Velocity: basic Cloud services are

management and to control the virtual “transparent” and designed for enabling

environment, rendering the cloud elastic for direct or even self-procurement of hardware

business use while offering secure services. and software systems (for example on
Amazon AWS you can get “virtual”

WHY CHOOSING CLOUD resources less than15 minutes)

Gartner and other international research and • Value for money providers operate

analysts companies3 have highlighted the systems for multiple organisations on a very

fact that Cloud Computing is a technology large scale. Sharing the resources and

“which cannot be ignored”. [Table1] obtaining greater economies of scale at a

The major analyst firms estimate that some lower cost for the organisation is a direct

4 billion people worldwide use a mobile benefit which IT can pass on to the

phone, and some 450 million connect to the business side.

Internet mainly via a mobile device. • Scalability: Cloud enables rapid growth,

TABLE 1 NEEDS USE

VIRTUALISATION OF ICT
Handling enormous quantities of data Distributed computing
RESOURCES FIRST AND CLOUD
Remote storage

Designing distributed products and Blog

COMPUTING TODAY PROVIDE A

services (co-creation) Messaging and collaboration and/or

RESPONSE TO CONSUMER AND

distributed supply chain management

BUSINESS NEEDS

platforms
Horizontal communications (between Machine to machine communication
OVUM, “2010 Trend to Watch: persons, persona-to-thing, and thing-to-
3
(remote metering & reading in utilitiesQ)
cloud computing”, 2010, thing)
Laurence Lachal, Steve Domotics (intelligent building)
Hodgkinson - “Computer
mediated transaction” Hal R. Eco-sustainability of IT Green IT
Varian, Ely lecture to the Shared resources.
american economics association,
Atlanta GA, 2010 - “The data Collaboration and interaction in mobility, Social CRM
deluge” The Economist, in real time eLearning
Economist Special report, 2010 Video Conferencing
“The Big Switch: rewiring the
world from Edison to Google”
Nicholas Carr, 2009

8
 the management of peaks and
overloads is catered of. Even small and
medium firms can easily access these
large-scale operations.
• Continuous innovation:
the majority of providers continuouslupdate
their infrastructures, regularly
proposing new
services and functionalities that are made
readily available to organisations
regardless of size, ability to invest and
more and more often, their ability to
understand technology.
Value Team has worked accurately in order
to build a new capability within its
organisation to help customers and
prospects to assess, case by case, which
benefits can be effectively obtained given a
specific company background. Finally to
enable these through the implementation of
a customised Cloud strategy programme
which fits the organisation and its ability to
actually implement such a plan.
THE ECONOMICS OF CLOUD
In these times of financial discontinuity and
economic turmoil, reflected in the media and
experienced directly through domestic
markets, Cloud Computing is sometimes
perceived as the response to a greater
demand for rationalisation of ICT costs. This
demand is what every CTO or CIO has to
deal with everyday in their own organisation
and about which every CEO and CFO is
asking these key IT roles. The request to
“reduce cost” is hard to answer to. Which
costs then? How? What is the business
impact?
Value Team believes that the actual problem
lies in the alignment of costs to business
value (e.g., revenue, profit, market share,
etc.).
This imposes a discipline and a novel ability
to answer key questions such as:
• How to quantify and qualify the impact of ICT
costs by service on the businesses they
support?
FIG.3
NEW CHALLENGES: COMPANIES
MUST BE ABLE TO MATCH LEGACY
SOLUTIONS WITH THE INTERNET
AND CLOUD APPLICATIONS
BROUGHT INTO THE COMPANY
9
• How do you make these costs visible in a
clear and transparent manner to the
business?
• Which performance indicators do you use?
• What are the business KPIs?
• What does “pay-for-use” mean in your
organisation?
• How can this model be defined and
integrated in your company accounting
system?
• How do we measure the “added value” of
this effort in business terms (for example in
terms of indicators such as the reduction of
client and contact acquisition costs etc.)?
From our standpoint, the massive and
pervasive presence of ICT in all of the
company’s processes and activities, the
increasing complexity of ICT let alone its
“global” character (no -related to domestic
issues), non conventional competition and
rapid adoption of new enabling technologies,
are exposing in all of the organisations we
work with, both large and small ones, that a
new model of governance is mandatory.
organisations we work with, nor does it works
for all business processes, we think it may be
sensible to commence measuring ourselves
against Cloud Computing on terrains which,
by their nature, are better suited to
experimentation.
The experience which emerges from the
analysis of the conduct of the most
innovative companies in the field of Cloud
Computing indicates that it may be sensible
to “move” services such as collaboration (e-
mail, messaging etc.), personnel accounting,
Enterprise Content and Document
Management, CRM applications. Cloud
Computing can also assist peak traffic
management when dealing with Portals and
e-Commerce sites.

The concept of “ICT Governance” when

applied to Cloud Computing, indicates the
process of controlling all of the ICT resources
in order to manage and guarantee that the
organisation reaches its own objectives:
• Strategic alignment of ICT to the
business;
• Control of the costs and value which the
use of ICT generates or may generate;
• Management of ICT related risks;
• Infrastructure management;
• Management and measurements of
performance on hybrid systems (internal
and external to the organisation) [Fig.3]

Although we are aware that caution is

required and that it is true that this model
does not necessarily fits to all the

10
 NAVIGATING THROUGH
THE CLOUD

VALUE TEAM VISION organisative which have been more

To achieve a “governed Cloud” means being innovate in adopting Cloud Computing, one

able to offer business and IT services rapidly observes that two further reasons push

with an underpinning economic logic of “pay- towards the Cloud: on one hand the growing

per-use”. In further detail it means to have need to co-create content, products and

put together a clear cost-assignment model services (the “Facebook” model, which is

for the use of the resources, their availability addictive and self-sustaining) and on the

level of reliability, and their horizontal other hand their highly distributed nature (just

scalability etc. Cloud in this sense represents think about the mobile technologies available

the idea of provisioning services and today vs. 5 years ago).

resources oriented towards key business

performance indicators (KPIs, Service Levels The infrastructures on which this massive

or SLAs). collaboration is occurring today (and will

The elastic delivery of resources on a pay- occur with increasing frequency in the future)

per-use basis however, is founded on top of are distributed. They are virtualised

real infrastructures, and although they are architectures, that is; Cloud Computing.

aimed to respond to the evolution of As we have said, this “virtualisation” depends

organisational necessities, albeit now directly on physical elements of the

virtualised, they are still real. infrastructure. Furthermore it is important to

Again exploiting the experience of those make our clients and prospects consider the

11
 fact that virtualisation is never free of charge,
nor does it deliver benefits by itself, without
impacting management of the complexity of
the underlying ICT infrastructure.
For example the virtualisation of physical
resources (a pre-requisite of Cloud
Computing ) operationally imposes
maintaining control of many aspects,
including:
• proliferation of virtual servers;
• the increment in physical storage;
• system configurations;
• the management of peaks in workload;
• the heterogeneous nature of the platforms;
• the complexity of the architectures;
• data security.
In this sense Value Team can support clients
and prospects in assessing the impact of
Cloud Computing on IT investment plans.
One typical assignment which VT performs is
assessing the need to purchase new, large,
costly proprietary infrastructures vs.
outsourcing into public, hybrid and private
clouds “hosted” by cloud providers such as
Telecom Italia, BT, NTT Data, Verizon or
international players such as Microsoft-
Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rackspace
Hosting, etc..
FIG.4
THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE
CLOUD: ENABLING
TECHNOLOGIES,
GOVERNANCE PROCESSES
AND SLA COMPLIANCE, AS
SEEN WITH A SECURITY
VIEWPOINT
12
SCALABILITY AND ELASTIC
COMPUTING
The association between service oriented
economy and Cloud Computing has its’
origins in the model of virtualisation, of
abstraction and definition of software
architecture which was anticipated an lead
by SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
some years ago. Successfully operating on
services that expand and contract
dynamically as needed according to
business policies means approaching a cost
model which adapts elastically to business
needs and objectives. Many international
vendors are moving in this direction. Each of
the players we observed are working mainly
in a single layer (generally their strengths or
core business) focussing on criteria of
technical elasticity and often not bound by
economic and business value criteria.
Value Team is not limited to a single layer of
the Cloud computing services (i.e.: IaaS,
SaaS, PaaS) but carries forward a vision
aimed at governing the trends in peaks,
allocation and the relative impacts on the
ROI of all services across all models of the
Cloud Computing.
 FIG. 5

SETTING UP THE

OPERATIONAL MODEL

PROCESSES & TOOLS OF health of services, guarantees the security of

GOVERNANCE FOR the environment, provides visibility of critical

APPLICATIONS & components, and delivers effectiveness in

INFRASTRUCTURE respecting Service Levels (Security,

The growing evolution of IT applications and Management & Control, Application

services imposes on the platforms and Performance Monitoring, Adaptable

infrastructures, as on the processes which Automation).

govern them, deal with variable workloads • SLA Compliance between business KPIs

and respond to business requirements in and ICT services/resources (e.g., Intercloud

terms of availability, costs, performance, SLA Broker, Peak Overload, Dynamic Work

scalability, reliability and agility. Load Management, etc.);

The same underlying technological

components must have characteristics of In addition to these dimensions there is the

granularity, inter-operability, portability and integration to and with security services,

independence of the hardware layer in order which enables user and access

to permit their dynamic organisation, management, handling data privacy issues,

operation and delivery on the basis of audit independence, Business Continuity

service criteria that comply with these and Disaster Recovery. Value Team has the

objectives. competencies to support the design and

Cloud Computing is characterised by 3 construction of solutions with structured

dimensions: [Fig.4] operational models [Fig. 5], guaranteeing

• Enabling technologies and solutions, high standards of security, performance,

which provide elasticity, security and availability, flexibility and automation

scalability of data and application THE ENABLING

management (vStorage, vNetwork, TECHNOLOGIES
vComputing). This paradigm of delivery requires

• Governance processes and solutions substantial re-engineering of the

which deliver direct feedback on the state of technologies and methodologies in the field

13
at both the infrastructure level and that of
applications and services:
INFRASTRUCTURE
The network, as the storage systems and
servers, must offer elevated performance so
as to constitute an ample reservoir to draw
on and to instantiate the necessary
resources, assigning them configurable
levels of service (Quality of Service) on the
basis of the criticality of the data, the
importance of the user and the application
context, with the ability to handle any
possible peak overloads drawing, for
example, on a pool of external resources
(previously negotiated), applying clear
business rules (e.g., to protect the paying
user, preserve the availability and execution
of the showcase components, etc.).
PLATFORM
Selected platform containers must be
engineered to enable and guarantee high
standardisation of the application layer, and
at the same time guaranteeing high level of
scalability and reliability as well as efficient
use of resources.
APPLICATION
Service oriented architectures have the
objective of transforming complex processes
into the controlled orchestration of more
simple and discrete application components
or services. It is therefore also possible to
modify and simplify the interaction between
services, and it is easier to add new services
or modify processes to respond to changing
business requirements, given the
independence of binding to a specific
platform or to a monolithic application
architecture. In this sense the service may be
considered as a component in a wider
process, which can be re-used and modified.
14
PROCESSES, TOOLS AND
INTEGRATION
The ease of use and speed of adoption
introduced by Cloud Computing is reflected
in a greater complexity of the architectures
and technologies, and in greater stratification
of the application context. This poses new,
more challenging problems with respect to
the traditional “silos” models, such as
contention for hardware resources, the
reconciliation of application priorities, and the
fragmentation of governance responsibilities.
In Value Team’s view, the definition and
enforcement of Service Levels (SLA) is the
critical element of delivery of ICT services in
the cloud. For example, one might
hypothesise sizing an application or a portal
on the basis of its actual adoption, privileging
business users (e.g., “Gold” or “VIPs”Q) over
guest users and predicting dynamic growth
of the resources against peaks in utilisation
through opportunistically configured
automation measures.
This permits a significant reduction in the
initial investment (usually CAPEX) and by
introducing a pay-per-use model correlates
effective use of the resources (costs) to
business growth (revenues, share, customer
satisfaction, etc.) not to mention the ability to
discriminate among users and the impact
that can have on your CRM’s capabilities
SECURITY INTHE CLOUDS
An integrated approach to Cloud Computing
cannot ignore data and infrastructure related
security themes. The security themes
requiring attention in the move to Cloud
Computing solutions may be summarised as
follows:
• User and Access management (certified
authentication and traceability of operations).
Cloud Computing exacerbates the problems
 of managing users: the multitudes of
accounts, the management of diverse silos
linked with identities, the use of
heterogeneous administration tools are some
of the aspects to be considered. In the case of
use of Cloud Computing services split over
diverse providers the governance of the life
cycle of users becomes even more important
in order to guarantee effective control. The
user federation mechanism too, if on the one
hand guarantees easy user access to
services operated by distinct providers, poses
a series of operational and technological
challenges, which must be comprehensively
addressed.
• Provisioning. This aspect takes on particular
relevance where account management is
delegated to diverse providers, each with their
own management method. In this case it is
important to rely on identity management
services integrated with the principal private or
public Cloud service providers. Some security
technology (Identity & Access Management)
service providers are thus beginning to supply
integrated services, which can fully manage
users, even in the environments of external
public cloud providers.
• Data privacy problems.
Legislative regulations (Italian, EU and
international) impose strict obligations, which
can also set limitations on the country for
storage of the data. The European
Community, for example, with Data Protection
Directive 95/46/EC, mandated that the data
must be handled/processed in European
Union nations or, where outside the EU, which
have adopted specific protection measures in
line with EU legislation.
• Audit independence. The faculty to perform
independent audits on the infrastructure
delivering the service, in technological and
legal terms, is another factor guaranteeing a
company wishing to approach the world of
Cloud Computing. It becomes even more
important, in the specific case of SaaS, to be
able to verify opportune levels of logical, and
eventually physical, data segregation
respecting the regulations cited above.
• Business Continuity and Disaster
Recovery. If, on the one hand, Cloud
Computing offers a greater degree of flexibility
than normal BC solution, on the other it
requires careful assessment, including
contractual terms, so that the business
FIG.6
SETTING UP THE SERVICE MODEL
15
 processes managed by Cloud Computing
continue to respect their respective planned
recovery limitations.
Security is today probably the biggest
concern of IT executives weighing the
adoption of cloud. Issues such as how do
users authenticate into the cloud? Who’s
responsible for data? Where are services
being hosted? What is the back-up policy of
data? How can we be sure that a given
provider is “trusted” and that they adhere to a
given policy?
However Cloud Computing is rapidly
addressing such concerns. Several
organisations have been operating mission-
critical operation in the cloud. For example,
since October 2008 Wall Street Systems has
announced its cloud based Electronic
Settlement Network (a pay-as-you-go post-
trade processing tool for the capital markets),
which has been used by five mid-tier, banks
for a couple of years already.
So although we are fully aware that there are
security concerns, we also know that as
soon as business will be satisfied with the
security offered by Cloud Computing, this will
transform the world.
THE SERVICES OFFERED
The Value Team offer consists of
consultancy services, together with
governance tools and solutions already
developed and operational, thanks to which
it is possible to define and navigate a custom
route to and through the Cloud. [Fig.6]
A) DESIGNING THE CLOUD
Definition of a personalised Checklist
In Value Team’s methodology, the approach
to Cloud Computing begins with the
assessment of client “cloud-readiness”. This
can be achieved through a set of
16
personalised questions that helps us to
address the specific nature and needs of our
clients and prospects. The following is an
example of our checklists
• What is the priority for the general
business and the specific department?
• How is it possible to deliver “just-in-time”
resources to support business objectives?
• How can costs for determined services or
service types be identified, measured and
controlled?
• How is it possible to align resources with
the service levels expected by the
business?
• How is it possible to govern a system in a
Cloud where the application has been
developed and/or used by third parties?
• How is it possible to establish a software
development service directed solely to the
most important services with frequent
releases to production environments?
• What are the key application and
architectural parameters (review of multi-
tenancy of services)?
• Should “Mock-up” techniques (simulation)
be used?
• How can precise access privilege
management be assured?
• How to handle sensitive and personal data
for Cloud infrastructure delivery and
correctly map the counter measures to be
enacted to respect the legislative
regulations and guarantee correct
management of the risk scenarios?
• How to identify and map the perimeters of
the classic on-premise systems, private
Cloud infrastructures and services, which
can be operated on public or hybrid
Clouds?
• How to modify business continuity and
disaster recovery plans to take into
account the specific behaviours of Cloud
services?
Structuring by business priority.
Operationally the cloud strategy translates to
the ability to select the most critical business
applications or services and to assign them
additional resources only when needed from
the qualified pool of ICT services – in-house
data centre, hosted or partner DC, trusted or
private cloud services provider, public cloud
services provider or some combination of
these.
SLA Definition:
A consistent set of rules, that support a given
business policy, is defined to discipline the
provisioning and deprovisioning of resources
as needed, against a determined load and in
pursuit of specific service level objectives
(also know as KPIs – Key Performance
Indicators). Value Team offers solutions,
which permit agile management of ICT
resources respecting given sets of SLAs. It
also proposes a well-defined service level
governance “within and among the clouds”
(known as “SLA Brokerage”). This entire
solution can guarantees correct operation of
the applications even with the most elevated
loads requiring the highest level of reliability.
Modularity and risk mitigation:
It is possible to define a series of detailed
rules tailored to specific business
requirements, for example, enable for certain
users the use of determined resources, and
redirect others to a controlled ‘No’ or invite
them to take up some kind of engagement or
special offer. Also, you can govern the type,
number and size of the resource or even its
usage cost can be limited to certain users (or
user classes). A secure web portal can be
used to control and manage the usage status
of all services and to obtain reports on
service level delivery and SLA ‘health’.
Further, through continuous monitoring of
service health against KPIs, real-time actions
can be automated to handle risk situations.
For example, if SLA adherence is at risk, a
series of actions and notifications cloud be
set up to return the situation to normal.
B) GOVERNANCE TOOLS
Intelligent workload balancing.
It is possible to configure a minimum kit
internally for a new to-be-offered service or a
new campaign, and set trigger values
beyond which additional resources must be
provisioned “just-in-time” to balance the
workload across the system. Once a stable
workload is identified, a decision on
incrementing/decreasing the dedicated
resources can be taken (with resources from
the in house DC or from a partner/provider).
Once the desired workload is set up for each
application, this load is constantly monitored
and where there are indications of overload
or ‘stressed’ service levels, the application is
supplied in near real-time with additional
resources from the “virtualised environment”
(e.g. CPU, memory, data storage from the
virtualised Data Center, etc.) or cloud, with
the mission of balancing the workload during
these peaks. The additional resources are
then released when the workload returns to
normal. All scaling operations and the KPIs
that triggered them are recorded and
available for analysis, billing or charge-back,
SLA outage reports, etc.
So not only is the workload optimized to
operate with just the right amount of ‘power’
the IT and business owners are provided
with details of the exact cause and resolution
of SLA outages for future improvements and
customer satisfaction management.
Application performance monitoring
It is possible to provide timely control of
increasingly complex applications with
distributed critical components, using an
Application Performance Monitoring solution,
17
which enables real time observations of
business transactions and intervention to
improve adherence to agreed Service
Levels.
For example, one might consider an e-
commerce portal where it may be opportune
to identify and monitor the more critical
business transactions, such as the addition
of a product to a basket or the conclusion of
a purchase. During the effective execution of
the transactions by users, it is possible to
identify the application components involved
and visualise the relationship between these
and the effective usage experience of the
end user. Analysis of the results provides the
basis for construction of intervention actions
on the infrastructure and in the application.
C) “SAAS” SOLUTIONS
Workforce Management
Value Team supports all phases of Work
Force (WFM) and Field Force Management
(FFM) projects with a flexible, modular,
scalable, integrated approach: from definition
of the strategy, to the model and roadmap,
and to solution design, development,
implementation and operation/management.
The WFM and FFM products on the market
cover distinct yet limited areas, while the
solution developed by Value Team presents
a wider functional coverage than most
market products. The solution plans and
distributes the workforce in an optimal
manner. In particular, it enables requirements
forecasting, resource and working hours/shift
planning and management and monitoring of
the correspondence between planned and
effective use. Nor should it be forgotten that,
also in the case of SaaS delivery, a project of
this type also implies accurate Change
Management activities to manage the
impacts from viewpoint of personnel
management.
18
In Italy, in particular, the FFM products on the
market require ad hoc customisation to
comply with current national legislation in
matters of labour control. Value Team WFM
solution implements all the legislation
foreseen for shift workers. The optional SaaS
delivery model, further enables the
implementation of home/remote working
while maintaining control of the infrastructural
impacts.
Payment as a Service ( VTPie)
The VTPie solution provides the full set of
tools needed for flexible payment
management, delivered as a service.
The architecture and technologies selected
from the inception are open to the adoption
of Cloud models.
VTPie was conceived for core banking
application management and supports
elevated volumes of events and operations.
Indeed the architecture is fully scalable in
order to handle increased calculation
capacity, while maintaining the same
structure. VTPie modules handle “client-
bank”, bank-bank” and “interbank network”
processes.
Adoption of the Cloud model, on the one
hand, guarantees data security and
segregation in compliance with banking
regulations, and on the other hand process
customisation on the basis of client needs in
order to maintain a differentiation of the
services offered to their markets.
The offer provides both a user license
approach and a service approach. In the first
case, it addresses banks, which intend using
their own IT structures and acquire VTPie
user licenses to fully govern within their
environments. The service model enables
Banks adopting an outsourcing strategy to
exploit fully turn key services with pricing
policies based on the effective use of
infrastructures (for example the number of
transactions).
The heart of the VTPie platform provides the
elements to build the diverse front-end
modules and manages interactions with the
re-usable components (services, workflow
management, transaction engine, etc).
Starting from these principles, the
architectural orientation is service based
(100%) SOA, while development has
followed the J2EE standard and is 100%
Java.
Security
The Identity & Access Management solution
integrates account management and that of
the Cloud application identities through
specific security SaaS. On the one side these
interface with the applications/ services from
the service provider coherently managing the
user life cycle and the access management
aspects, on the other the SaaS security
services can expose the application
interfaces to integrate with the end user on-
premise Identity & Access management
systems.

Document Management
Our solutions are VTDocs and Cruisenet.
The first is a document management system
vertically integrated for Italian regulation of
the so called “dematerialisation” (e-
document or e-paper), which supports the
digital signature, IT protocol and
interoperability via certified e-mail.
The second is a support system for

“The system is
adaptation to regulations (for example for

structured to
ISO certification) and to describe enterprise
processes and organisations.

Both are framework based using Microsoft™ deliver solution

under the SaaS
technology, modular, scalable structures fully

model: each client

customisable on the basis of client
requirements. They can, naturally, be

activates a
integrated with the major document

maximum number
management systems and SSO( Single Sign
On) systems in the market today. The

of users, profiled
system is designed to supply solutions under
a SaaS model: each client activates a

for the specific

maximum number of user accounts, profiles

needs”
as per the specific needs (pay-per-use). The
service provision mode is multi-tenant, multi-
instance.

19
 CLOUD ON THE MARKETS

CLOUD IN THE requires guarantees at service and security

TELCO & MEDIA MARKET levels for “solutions”. The most typical of

With the premise that without a good these are generally: collaboration

network, talking about Cloud Computing has applications, connectivity services, on

no sense whatever, in Italy, the adoption of a demand processing resources and CRM.

structured ICT governance system is In general, TLC operators aim to propose

generally the prerogative of large industrial three macro-service types:

companies and certain local and central • IT infrastructure and communications

public administrations. So any proposal of integration;

value in the Cloud Computing arena, must • virtualisation of physical assets;

be based on a reliable, redundant, resilient, • de-coupling of applications from physical

high performance communications system. infrastructures.

With specific reference to the Telco market, Although it is true that the large carriers

Cloud Computing is a contemporary have, to date, had a marginal role in the set

challenge for adaption of infrastructures and up and sale of generally defined public

an opportunity for the diffusion of a new Clouds services (mostly IaaS), some are

business model by Telco and Media now making significant investments for the

companies. development of the advanced services which

The demand for Cloud Computing services Cloud Computing enables.

20

In this scenario, Value Team is aiming above
all to play the role of enabler thanks to its
competency in sector specific processes:
• Mission critical applications (e.g. mobile
operator top up systems, provisioning
systems, billing, etc.);
• System operations support applications
(OSS such as Trouble management for
the field, trouble management for
customer operations);
• Business support applications (BSS such
as CRM, Human Digital Assistants,
Federated Identity Management,
Workforce Management).
CLOUD IN THE
FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
MARKET
Major banking and insurance groups are
looking at this combination of technologies
FIG 7
“WITH REFERENCE TO THE TELCO
MARKET, CLOUD COMPUTING IS A
CHALLENGE FOR ADAPTATION OF
INFRASTRUCTURES AND AN
OPPORTUNITY FOR THE
DIFFUSION OF A NEW BUSINESS
MODEL ”
as an opportunity to improve their services
and reduce operating costs. Cloud
Computing is a technology which is reaching
interesting levels of maturity for many
decidedly heterogeneous sectors, from on-
line collaboration to entertainment.
In the world of Financial Services and
Insurance, the need to deliver services to
employees and partners contrasts with the
necessity for a capillary infrastructure
requiring complex maintenance. Making
information available to be shared by diverse
actors, thus having by necessity to manage
a diversified infrastructure, is often the
reason for costs spiralling out of control.
Further, the lack of agility of processes, often
does not permit taking business
opportunities as they are presented.
Cloud Computing, however, not only enables
cost optimisation and delivers efficiency; it
21
 also permits better exploitation of new
information distribution channels. Thanks to
Cloud Computing it is possible to provide
access to one or more databases in real time
from any device utilised by a broker/agent.
For brokers, real time mobile systems
access is a critical factor for success,
especially where a broker is multi-
representative.
A study performed in the United States (by
International Data Corporation IDC))
indicates that 25% of US banking institutions
use web-based technologies to supply on-
demand services to their clients/partners,
while a solid 20% of financial institutions
foresee passing to Cloud Computing over
the next 3 years.
Cloud Computing is used in the anti-money
laundering filed, where distributed calculation
FIG 8
“25% OF US BANKS USE WEB-BASED
TECHNOLOGIES TO DELIVER ON-
DEMAND SERVICES TO THEIR
CLIENTS/”
22
capacity enables analysis of an extraordinary
number of transactions and also in Financial
Provisioning and market analysis, to rapidly
execute simulations without requiring the
setup and operation of a costly infrastructure.
The flexibility, which Cloud-based solutions
can deliver in the business model, is highly
significant. In particular, the facility to have
only the services really needed available, is
a source of significant savings in a period in
which cost saving is more important than
ever.
Value Team plays the role of enabler in many
business areas in this sector where this
technology can be employed effectively.
Among the most important we can cite:
• Enterprise content management
• Document archiving and search solutions,
e-mail archiving and security;
• Back-office activities;
• Credit card processing
• Management and consolidation of diverse
payment process types;
• Enterprise risk management – dedicated
IT framework for financial services
• Enterprise portals;
• Extreme Transaction Processing
Platforms;
• Enterprise CRM;
• Consumer credit reporting;
• Client support systems;
• Retail banking and stock trading;
• Sales support (Sales force automation).
CLOUD FOR THE ENERGY
MARKET AND PUBBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Operators in the Energy field have to deal
with a “mixed bag” of an application
portfolios, because there are so many
specific operation areas to cover, from
communications with customers to energy
resource management. In this context, the
role of ICT is increasingly strategic in
delivering competitiveness and differentiation
that offers the business rapid responses to
fast changing needs, preferably leveraging
the infrastructural assets available.
There already many applications, which
have switched from dedicated to virtual
infrastructure for diverse motives, or they
have been subjected to consolidation
processes due to overlap of the services
supported. Here a Cloud governance
solution finds immediate application in the
systems supporting simulation activities oil
exploration and production models, at the
front-end towards the retail clients, on the
CRM, through field force management
systems.
For example, in field force management, the
Value Team offer can also escape the limits
of the private cloud to become hybrid with
use of state of the art solutions already
existing for other primary industrial realities.
Tele-metering, tele-management and tele-
reading are other areas where governed
Cloud offers interesting real time synergies
with CRM platforms. Think of a future where
intelligent meters can communicate, and
power distribution is effected in peer to peer
mode as the Internet of Things paradigm is
realised.
Finally, harmonising the
operation/management of multiple data
centres, now migrated to a Cloud Computing
model, is hitting that target of mobility, agility,
economy and scalability which have been
the centre of presentations by industry
analysts for years.
For Energy operators, creating their own
Cloud means taking the opportunity to
maximise investments, free processing
resources and, at the same time, prepare for
the challenges of the future.
For public administration (Defence, Welfare,
central, regional and local government, etc.)
the need to use Cloud applications becomes
fundamental where services shared by
several administrations (private Clouds) to
offer added value services to citizens in the
areas of revenue management, health,
welfare also from a regional view.
The boundaries among the diverse sectors
are becoming less distinct and we often hear
of “open government” where information
(e.g. civil state data) is owned by
Government, while the services built on top
of these data may be offered by third parties,
though regulated and guided by the public
administration (e.g. city councils, regional
government, etc.).
23
 FIG. 9

“CLOUD COMPUTING, IT AS A SERVICE, GREEN IT ARE BUT A

FEW OF THE TRENDS EMERGING”

Indeed, today in the world of public

“.. there is a need
to integrate
administration, there is a need to integrate
services to the public with financial or

services to the
administrative services. And nowhere is it

public with
more the mandate to ‘do more with less’.

financial or
administrative
services. And
nowhere is it more
the mandate to ‘do
more with less’”

24
HOW TO NAVIGATE IN THE CLOUDS
THE APPROACH PROPOSED.
To navigate in the vast world of Cloud Computing it is necessary to count on a consolidated
approach to methodology and use tools and applications suited to governance management of
‘services’’
.
Value Team’s Cloud offering can be summarised as follows:

DESIGN GOVERNANCE SaaS SERVICES

INSTRUMENTS

CONSULTANCY SERVICES & CONSULTANCY & OFF THE SHELF

APPROACH & SET UP IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS
METHODOLGY LINKED TO THE FOR THE ENTERPRISE
INFRASTRUCTURES AND MARKET
WITH OUSOURCING
SERVICES

Key factors Key factors Key factors

• Scouting and auditing of
the services, processes,
policies and the
supporting KPIS and
SLAs;
• Service simulation design,
validation to support the
economic models
• Audit of the governance
and “factory” infrastructure
• Re-engineering of
applications for Cloud
(physical to virtual) and of
the development, testing
and deployment
environments for elastic
delivery
• Internally developed
products which better meet
customer needs
• Technological competency
and installation at large
clients

Activities Activities Activities

1. Definition of custom check
lists
2. Structuring to business
priorities
3. SLA Definition
4. Modularity and risk
mitigation
1. Intelligent workload
balancing
2. Application performance
monitoringe
1. Work Force e Field Force
Management
2. VTPie: Payment as a
Service
3. Document Management
4. Identity & Access
Management

25
The method of approach for Cloud Computing applied by Value Team is advantageous because:
• it is action-based: it enables the set up of a series of preventive actions and risk mitigation;
• it is distributed and close to the potential points of failure of the systems and processes;
• it is independent and high level, integrating with the decision systems available on the market;
• it optimises just-in-time resource provisioning to respect the service levels required by
business;
• it enables a pay-for-use licensing model.

The challenge to private or public organisations is that of governing the risks while fully exploiting
the opportunities, which this new model proposes, that is succeeding in managing the Cloud,
which delivers business oriented added value services.
In this context, the key role is that of defining the operational model of Cloud utilisation within the
company, enabling services with defined, dynamic Service Levels and aggregating in house
functionalities and those sourced from other Clouds (private, public and hybrid).
With our experience all along the value chain (consultancy, projects and services), Value Team is
an international partner for both enterprise and government organisations, as well as for
infrastructure providers, who knows how to navigate You in the Cloud.

Value Team is an IT consultancy and services company developing innovative solutions for
business, whose offer covers the entire value chain.
Counting on more than 3000 professionals world wide, with a significant presence in Italy, Europe
and Latin America, Value Team works for major multinationals and leaders in their respective
sectors and geographic areas, and has always collaborated with the principal universities and
centres of research and innovation.
.

“Value Team is an
international partner for
both enterprise, government
organisations and for
infrastructure providers,
who knows how to
navigarte You to the Cloud”

26
Value Team is an IT consultancy and
service company developing innovative
solutions for business, whose offer
covers the entire value chain.
Counting on some 3000 professionals
world wide, with a significant presence
in Italy, Europe and Latin America,
Value Team works for major
multinationals and leaders in their
respective sectors and geographic
areas, and has always collaborated
with the principal universities and
centres of research and innovation.