Overview
Applies To: System Center 2012 - Service Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Service Manager
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a service-centric model for the request and provisioning of data center resources. System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is Microsoft’s infrastructure as a service solution built on the Microsoft® System Center platform.
With the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack, enterprises can realize the benefits of infrastructure as a service while simultaneously leveraging their existing investments in the System Center 2012 – Service Manager, System Center 2012 - Orchestrator, System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), and System Center 2012 – Operations Manager platforms.
Corporate data centers are in transition. The recent shift from physical to virtual environments is now being replaced by an interest in moving to the cloud - specifically both private and public cloud infrastructures. Private cloud management assets are being delivered with System Center 2012 – Service Manager and a key part of this solution is the self-service experience. This experience is now significantly enhanced by the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack.
Introduction
Information technology (IT) organizations considering IaaS need to examine and adapt their existing tools, processes, workflows, and automation to meet the requirements of an effective cloud services implementation. While it is critical that the underlying features (such as Self-Service Portal, ticketing infrastructure, notifications, workflows, and automation) integrate well with each other and account for industry-wide best practices, the work involved to ensure an effective cloud services implementation can be daunting and time-consuming.
System Center Cloud Services Process Pack addresses these concerns by enabling IaaS while incorporating domain expertise and best practices from enterprises that have successfully deployed IaaS. These best practices are made available out of the box and are evident in all aspects of the solution.
In adopting System Center Cloud Services Process Pack, enterprises can benefit from platform flexibility that is inherent in the System Center suite of products. IT can tailor the solution for a specific IaaS experience that meets the needs of the business—for example, the Service Manager platform allows organizations to customize individual questions and inputs of the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack offering on the Self-Service Portal, and the Orchestrator platform allows creation of custom runbooks that can be run as part of infrastructure service requests.
The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for the enterprise include:
A well-tested and fully supported cloud services solution that accounts for industry-wide best practices.
Deep customization and extension of the cloud services experience, natively supported by the System Center suite of products.
Reduced cost, effort, and time to deploy cloud services to organizations that already leverage the System Center platform.
The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for consumers of IT within the enterprise include:
Standardized and well-defined processes for requesting and managing cloud services, including the ability to define tenants, cloud resources, and virtual machines. See the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack User Guide at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=231143 for details.
Natively supported request, approval, and notification to enable businesses to effectively manage their own allocated infrastructure cloud resources. For example, tenant administrators can approve or reject cloud resource and virtual machine requests.
Given these benefits, organizations that are thinking about IaaS, especially those organizations with current investments in the System Center platform, stand to gain tremendously from evaluating and leveraging the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack solution in their environments.