Key ITIL Processes For Cloud Computing: Customer Perspective - Security Management

ITIL and Cloud Computing Series - Part 3

One of the key concern for any organization that wants to move their services to cloud is how secure their data and services would be. This is even more true if one wants to move their services to a Public cloud. This makes Security Management as one of the key processes that customers are concerned with.

It needs to be ensured that the IT security is integrated with the business security. Thus, a organization seeking cloud services has to ensure that their overall corporate and IT security governance framework is not compromised upon while moving their IT services to a cloud environment.

Initially moving the services, which has a high  security risk, to cloud should be avoided. These services should only be moved when all the concerned security risks are adequately addressed.

If the private cloud is set up internally then Security Management will not be of any concern as the services are still hosted internally. But the above discussion holds true if private cloud is provided by any vendor (in this case services are not hosted within the organizations own premises) or for a public cloud.

Key ITIL Processes For Cloud Computing

ITIL and Cloud Computing Series - Part 2

With cloud computing, the only difference that is going to be in ITIL world would be that the ITIL processes could no longer be ignored. In my experience, today in many organizations ITIL processes exist in silos. Key processes like configuration management are ignored. In most of the processes, an option to bypass the process exists, i.e. the process adherence and its compliance with best practices are significantly low.

But with cloud computing ITIL processes can no longer be neglected. Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) process will become utmost important along with the IT security and demand management processes. To highlight the key processes in cloud computing environment, I would prefer to list 5 key processes from customer's and service providers’ perspective in the order of their importance.

Customer perspective:

1) Security Management

2) Service Continuity Management

3) Incident Management

4) Change Management

5) Release & Deployment Management

This perspective is important for a customer while finalising a vendor. These are the processes which concerns a customer the most.

Service provider perspective – External Facing

1) Service Level Management

2) Service Portfolio Management

3) Service Catalog Management

4) Financial Management

5) Supplier Management

These are the key processes which the service provider needs to focus on while approaching a customer.

Service provider perspective – Internal Facing

1) Service Asset & Configuration Management

2) Demand Management

3) Financial Management

4) Request Fulfillment

5) Capacity Management

These processes are important for a cloud service provider for their internal organization in order to provision customers’ requests.

The subsequent post will highlight the importance of above processes in cloud computing environment.