future of work enabler: flexible service delivery

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  • 7/31/2019 Future of Work Enabler: Flexible Service Delivery

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    Future of Work Enabler:Flexible Service DeliveryA exible service delivery model is essential or enabling

    the agility, responsiveness and innovation needed orsurviving in business today. This report is an installmentin our multi-part series that explores the shits necessaryor uture-proofng your company.

    Making the Shit to the Next-Generation Enterprise(a multi-part series)

    | FUTURE OF WORK

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    2 FUTURE OF WORK September 2012

    Executive SummaryBusiness success today hinges on ast response, whether to

    market orces, global catastrophes or new customer desires.

    Speed and agility are the new core competencies or any 21st

    century business.

    However, technology inrastructure is oten the long pole in

    the innovation tent. In the time it takes to stand up the serv-

    ers, storage, networking and security capabilities to develop

    a new product or service, an unanticipated competitor rom

    anywhere in the world and with little technology investment or

    overhead can easily steal the show. And at the slightest hint

    o yet another shit on the global stage or in consumer taste,

    these same light-ooted competitors can efciently morph, addonto or even withdraw their current oerings and move on to

    the next best thing.

    The time has come or companies to rewire their operations to

    minimize the technology overhead and investment required or

    eective delivery o IT services. This is possible with a exible

    service delivery model, whether through utility and on-demand

    computing; as-a-service applications, inrastructures and plat-

    orms; and private, public and hybrid clouds. All o these ap-proaches also allow or businesses to extend their capabilities

    into an emerging new master IT architecture, which combines

    social, mobile, analytic and cloud technologies (the SMAC

    stack) to create a exible, scalable platorm that supports more

    collaborative and boundaryless ways o working.

    A exible services delivery model is one o the eight enablers

    companies need to consider when mapping their journey o

    reinvention or the new world o work, as described in our

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: FLEXIBLE SERVICE DELIVERY (A MULTI-PART SERIES) 3

    overview paper, Making the Shit to the Next-Generation

    Enterprise. In this installment, we will look at some o the

    drivers propelling companies toward a exible service deliv-

    ery model, as well as the many choices and considerations

    they must make when adopting a more agile and adaptable IT

    inrastructure.

    Figure 1

    Mapping the Enablers to the 3 Rs

    1Community

    Interaction

    2Innovation

    3Worker

    Empowerment

    4Virtual

    Collaboration

    5Customer

    Empowerment

    6Commercial

    Model Flexibility

    7Value Chain

    Flexibility

    8Flexible Service

    Delivery

    RETHINK

    theBusinessModel

    3 3 3 3 3

    REINVENT

    BusinessProcesses

    3 3 3 3 3 3

    REWIRE

    Operations

    3 3 3 3 3 3

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdfhttp://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdfhttp://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdfhttp://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdfhttp://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdfhttp://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/Making-the-Shift-to-the-Next-Generation-Enterprise.pdf
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    Quick Take

    Here is a summary o considerations or

    deciding which business unctions to transition

    to a exible service delivery model:

    Determine your primary pain points: What

    keeps you up at night: long time to market,

    lack o exibility and agility, low perormance,

    security gaps, high costs, poor processes,

    immature service management?

    Do a core vs. context analysis: Which busi-

    ness activities does your company excel at vs.

    which could be ooaded to external providers?

    Start with lower risk processes: Common

    targets are non-production or back-ofce

    unctions.

    Consider resource requirements: What are

    the applications needed levels o availability

    and resource consumption?

    Dont overlook change management: It will

    take education and communication to shit the

    corporate mindset and conduct business in a

    new and aster way.

    Analyze your service requirements: Most

    public cloud providers oer standard, non-cus-

    tomizable service level agreements.

    Check for security qualications: Security

    is a top-o-mind consideration, particularly

    or applications and systems that deal with

    personally identifable inormation.

    Require a high level of transparency:

    Companies should be able to view and monitor

    the entire environment through a dashboard

    to make day-to-day capacity decisions.

    4 FUTURE OF WORK September 2012

    Business DriversTo survive in business today, companies need an IT inrastructure that minimizes

    costs, reliably scales resources according to need and enables quick introduction

    o new oerings. And they need to do this without incurring the static overhead

    and long lead times associated with traditional build-deploy-manage technology

    models. Not all o these new product and service initiatives will be successul, so

    companies also need the ability to quickly remove the underlying costs associated

    with ailed endeavors and reallocate those unds to other innovative ideas. This isthe new standard by which businesses will remain competitive.

    In addition to extremely uncertain and highly variable processing needs, business

    will also need various options or rightsizing their fnancial models. All will need

    to balance Cap-Ex vs. Op-Ex expenditures; or instance, some may need to drive

    toward more o an Op-Ex approach, while others remain tethered to Cap-Ex models.

    Dierent computing models oer dierent levels o capital spending; or instance,

    companies still purchase their own hardware or private clouds, while they maintain

    no equipment with public cloud-based inrastructure-as-a-service. All the while,

    they also need heightened levels o transparency, control and visibility into their

    expenditures, independent o how the services and compute resources are being

    provided, and how their technology inrastructures are serving them.

    More companies are realizing they need a exible services delivery platorm that

    meets the needs o the uture o work (see Figure 1). No matter which platorm

    the business chooses private or public cloud, as-a-service or a hybrid approach

    a move away rom rigid IT inrastructures will enable improved agility in a cost-

    eective way.

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: FLEXIBLE SERVICE DELIVERY (A MULTI-PART SERIES) 5

    Choices and ConsiderationsWhen it comes to designing a exible service delivery model, many actors come

    into play, including the companys maturity, appetite or risk, competitive stance

    and strategic goals. Decision points include perormance levels, security, dynamic

    requirements and impact on end users. Here are some o the top considerations and

    recommendations or making the transormation to a exible service delivery model.

    Determine your primary pain points: The frst step is to determine your busi-nesss major area o weakness. What keeps you up at night: Is it long time tomarket, lack o exibility and agility, low perormance, security gaps, high costs,

    poor processes, immature service management?

    Many companies would want to improve in several or even

    all o these areas, so they need to establish priorities. I

    the business is constantly pushing or the capability to

    introduce new products and services, then time to market

    is the most critical actor. You may want to become more

    agile in your ability to make business decisions and react

    to market changes, or instance, but i service perormance

    is poor whether process-, operations- or compute-wise

    that needs to be addressed frst. Other companies may

    be under heavy pressure to reduce costs. Still others may

    be highly agile and need help with compliance or reliable

    service delivery.

    All o these areas can be addressed through exible service

    delivery, but the actual model you choose will depend on

    your top pain point.

    Take a staged approach: Next, you need to select which unctions and process-es to shit to the exible service delivery model. This entails a core vs. context

    analysis, in which you identiy the business activities your company excels at,

    which ones provide competitive dierentiation and which should be ooaded

    to external providers.

    Very oten today, what was previously considered core is now viewed as context.Examples rom an IT inrastructure management perspective include network

    management or Tier 1 support or internal customers. In fnance and accounting,

    context unctions might include perormance measurement or budget/fnancial

    planning.

    Start with lower risk processes: Many companies choose to begin the trans-ormation with non-production environments, such as testing and development,

    that have lower perormance requirements and less impact on end-user clients

    and customers. Another option is to leverage the model or back-ofce unc-

    tions, such as e-mail and time entry.

    A national hotel chain, or instance, began with back-ofce unctions and is now

    experimenting with the new model or its room-booking applications. However,

    there are also companies that start with customer-acing applications when theyhave a pressing need to quickly bring to market new products and services (see

    business case, next page).

    Consider application resource requirements: Another step is to look at theapplications themselves and determine the levels o availability and resource

    consumption required, such as CPU, memory, network and disk requirements.

    Applications can sometimes incur surprising network charges, particularly

    chatty applications that traverse the network between the cloud provider and

    the business. This can result in a much higher bill than expected because the

    application is using network resources that the company was unaware o.

    When it comes to designing

    a exible service delivery

    model, many actors come

    into play, including the

    companys maturity, appetiteor risk, competitive stance

    and strategic goals.

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    6 FUTURE OF WORK September 2012

    Dont overlook change management: Cultural challenges are a reality, as in-ternal IT and even business units are accustomed to stoic processes and tech-

    nologies and need to understand how to optimize the dynamic capabilities o a

    exible service delivery model. It takes education and communication to shit the

    corporate mindset and conduct business in a new and aster way.

    For instance, once the technology inrastructure can be provisioned quickly,

    the application development and testing organizations need to change their

    processes so they dont become the bottleneck. In other words, i IT has deliveredthe equivalent o a 12-lane highway, other parts o the organization cannot

    remain in horse-and-buggy mode. The challenge is to eectively leverage the

    change in cycle time and optimize it across the entire enterprise so that other

    areas dont hold up the sotware liecycle.

    Analyze your service requirements: Most public cloud providers oer stan-dard service level agreements that cannot be customized according to client

    needs. The service levels oered may be sufcient or a development environ-

    ment but all ar short o the demands o a production environment.

    Check for security certications and qualications: Security is a top-o-mindconsideration, particularly or applications and systems that deal with person-

    ally identifable inormation. Cloud providers today typically conduct security

    audits at a more intensive level than companies hosting internal private clouds;thereore, some o the security concerns perceived today can be addressed by

    vetting providers security qualifcations.

    Require a high level of transparency: Lastly, companies should be able toview and monitor the entire environment and all o its operational parameters

    through a dashboard, straight down into the lowest end server. With this trans-

    parency, they can make day-to-day decisions about the level o CPU, memory

    and storage required and use metrics and trending dashboards to make uture

    decisions about capacity managing and fnancial modeling.

    A Business CaseWe recently worked with a large U.S.-based telecommunications frm to help it

    develop the best path or designing and building a exible inrastructure to supporta new set o digital products and services or its subscribers. Market pressures are

    high in the telecom industry, as customer habits and the services themselves are

    quickly evolving with the move to digital platorms. To secure a competitive edge,

    providers need to continuously innovate to provide dierentiating products and

    services.

    The client needed a delivery inrastructure that could quickly scale up to tens o

    millions o subscribers when required and release new services and updates quickly

    and on the y, without high overhead costs and with little or no disruption to sub-

    scribers. Subscribers needed the ability to change, modiy and remove services, and

    these changes needed to be quickly and automatically handled by the technology

    inrastructure.

    Because the digital services being developed were experimental and extremely

    leading edge, the client anticipated it would need to make several and requent

    changes to the product line. This introduced a challenge, as the client knew it was

    extremely likely that it would delete many product iterations beore the production

    versions were released. Even then, the product line would need to be expanded

    upon by continuously incorporating subscriber eedback and improving the service

    levels being provided.

    Originally, the company considered a traditional inrastructure, but it quickly

    determined that choice would not provide adequate levels o exibility or continuity.

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: FLEXIBLE SERVICE DELIVERY (A MULTI-PART SERIES) 7

    When we began working with the client, it was airly well down the path o choosing

    a public cloud provider to host the inrastructure. However, when we completed an

    analysis o using a public vs. an internally hosted private cloud within its own data

    center, we determined the public cloud would be the ar more expensive option

    not initially but over time because o the incremental costs. Our business case

    analysis urther determined that an internal private cloud was the model that

    would meet the clients primary requirements: time-to-market, minimal downtime

    and the ability to scale up and down very quickly. The model also let open the

    option or incorporating the public cloud in the uture.

    Our team helped the telecom provider design and implement an on-demand

    technology inrastructure that was virtualized across servers, storage and the

    network, with a high level o availability that ensured low impact o outages. The

    model included:

    Cloud-based sotware as a service or the applications.

    Open source tools or the application development environment.

    Platorm as a service or other devices, including enterprise service bus.

    A private cloud hosted internally.

    The open-source development tools provided the client with process change inte-grations to help expedite service delivery, with tighter control and more pronounced

    visibility into inrastructure perormance. This led to enhanced exibility and agility

    in the cloud environment with reduced costs and ensured that it could provide

    applications more quickly and robustly than with its traditional tools.

    The holistic goal o the environment was achieved, and the client was able to

    build upon established design principles, such as improved security, by ensuring

    that only projects appropriately selected within the enterprise could initially take

    advantage o the new inrastructure. Additionally, aspects traditionally considered

    an aterthought, like business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities, were

    (McKinsey deines lexible delivery as cloud- and mobile-based platorms. Respondents who answereddont know are not shown; igures do not sum to 100%.)Base: 1,469 C-level executivesSource: McKinsey & Co.

    Figure 1

    Increased Focus on Flexible Delivery PlatormsAlthough a third o respondents are not yet ocusing on exibleplatorms, more than hal say its a top priority.

    0%

    6%

    12%

    23% 23%

    15%17%

    5%

    10%

    15%

    20%

    25%

    Top corporatepriority

    Top 3corporate

    priority

    Top 10corporate

    priority

    Top priorityfor 1-2

    business units

    Not a toppriority or BU

    priority

    Not on theagenda

    Percentofrespondents

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    8 FUTURE OF WORK September 2012

    seamlessly integrated into the design and supported within the inrastructure rom

    the outset. The beta test phase confrmed that the model enabled rapid elasticity,

    with the ability to quickly add and subtract compute resources as needed, increase

    uptime and reduce time to market or new products and services. The client now

    deploys new and updated applications on the open and highly available environ-

    ment that can be seamlessly deployed with little or no downtime.

    Call to ActionThe traditional business-as-usual approach will stie most companies in todays

    competitive global economy. The lead times and upront knowledge required with

    traditional technology inrastructures are ar too great to keep up with market

    reaction in distant corners o the world.

    The changes required to move to a exible service delivery mode can seem over-

    whelming. But when you map out what needs to happen, you can more clearly ocus

    on the key choices and considerations you need to make.

    The frst step is to assess where you stand in several key areas, including business

    goals, core vs. context analysis, appetite or risk, service level requirements and the

    ability o your organization to absorb change. At that point, you can identiy your

    strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your strategic business priorities, andtarget specifc areas where improvement is necessary. From there, you can build

    a strategic roadmap to drive necessary change in a purposeul, eective manner.

    In the uture o work, companies need an IT inrastructure based on a exible

    service delivery model that can adapt quickly to todays swit-changing and unor-

    giving business world. It is only then that companies can respond to known changes,

    as well as the unknowns o tomorrow.

    About the Authors

    Marcello Burgio is Assistant Vice President and Global Practice Leader responsibleor Cognizants Inrastructure Consulting and Proessional Services business. He has

    25 years o IT industry experience as both an IT manager and consultant to Fortune

    100 companies. Beore becoming a consultant, Marcello was an executive at The

    Hartord Financial Group, responsible or IT inrastructure, and an IT manager with

    United Technologies Corp. He has extensive IT experience, including architecture

    development, systems design and integration, data center management, security

    and compliance management. Marcello has a degree in mathematics/computer

    science and an MBA with a concentration in operations management rom the

    University o Hartord. Marcello can be reached [email protected].

    Ryan Marquiss is a Principal Consultant and Enterprise Inrastructure Architect or

    the Consulting and Proessional Services group within Cognizants IT IS Business

    Unit. He has more than 10 years o experience in the IT industry, rom enterprisesotware development to large-scale virtualization deployments that support

    end-to-end business-enabling applications, including servers and desktops. Ryans

    primary ocus is enterprise inrastructure, specifcally virtual environments and

    cloud computing architecture ulfllment. He is a VMware Certifed Proessional

    (VCP); holds a masters o science degree in sotware engineering, with specializa-

    tions in e-commerce and relational database management systems, rom Pennsyl-

    vania State University; and a bachelors o science degree in computer engineering,

    specializing in operating systems and networking rom Drexel University. Ryan can

    be reached [email protected].

    http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/
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    FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: FLEXIBLE SERVICE DELIVERY (A MULTI-PART SERIES) 9

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    World Headquarters

    500 Frank W. Burr BlvdTeaneck, NJ 07666 USAPhone: +1 201 801 0233

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    [email protected]

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    Copyright 2012, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part o this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any orm or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission rom Cognizant. The inormation contained herein is subject tochange without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property o their respective owners.

    About CognizantBusiness ConsultingWith over 3,000 consultants worldwide,

    Cognizant Business Consulting (CBC) oershigh-value consulting services that improve

    business perormance and operational

    productivity, lower operational expenses

    and enhance overall perormance. Clients

    draw upon our deep industry expertise,

    program and change management capa-

    bilities and analytical objectivity to help

    improve business productivity, drive tech-

    nology-enabled business transormation

    and increase shareholder value. To learn

    more, please visit http://www.cognizant.

    com/business-consulting or email us at

    [email protected].

    About CognizantCognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading

    provider o inormation technology,

    consulting, and business process out-

    sourcing services, dedicated to helping the

    worlds leading companies build stronger

    businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck,

    New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a

    passion or client satisaction, technology

    innovation, deep industry and business

    process expertise, and a global, collabora-

    tive workorce that embodies the uture

    o work. With over 50 delivery centers

    worldwide and approximately 145,200

    employees as o June 30, 2012, Cognizant

    is a member o the NASDAQ-100, the

    S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and

    the Fortune 500 and is ranked among

    the top perorming and astest growing

    companies in the world. Visit us online at

    www.cognizant.com or ollow us on Twitter:

    Cognizant.

    http://www.cognizant.com/business-consultinghttp://www.cognizant.com/business-consultinghttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/current/tmp/scratch_5/[email protected]://www.cognizant.com/http://twitter.com/Cognizanthttp://twitter.com/Cognizanthttp://twitter.com/Cognizanthttp://www.cognizant.com/http://twitter.com/Cognizanthttp://www.cognizant.com/http://users/Fitter/Documents/WORK%20FILES%20MAXTOR/Cognizant/White%20Paper/WP-March2012/CBC-Manlog_20.20/Managing-auto_20.20.pdfhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/current/tmp/scratch_5/[email protected]://www.cognizant.com/business-consultinghttp://www.cognizant.com/business-consulting