how citrix aligns it to business goals

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ALIGN IT RESOURCES TO BUSINESS DEMANDThe business value: cost visibility

Split by Cost

Center

Cost of each

‘Product’ over time


Renato Bonomini, Manager @ MoviriTroy Hall, Senior Systems Business Analyst @ Citrix OnlineOctober 14th, 2014

Effective Accounting and Chargeback with TrueSight Capacity Optimization


Agenda

1. Your speakersRenato Bonomini @ Moviri, and Troy Hall @ Citrix Online

2. The BusinessThe central role of IT in Citrix Online

3. Why Accounting and Chargeback?Making users pay for resources they consume fairly and accurately

4. How we leveraged TrueSight Capacity OptimizationLesson learned and best practices

5. Future stepsWhere do we go from here


Your SpeakersRenato Bonomini and Troy Hall


Renato Bonomini

• Background in DSP and HPC, manager of the US subsidiary of Moviri

• Expert in the architecture and design of Capacity Optimization and related processes

• Systems engineering experience in companies ranging from startups to larger brick-and-mortars

• Senior business systems analyst and developer for Citrix Online products

Troy Hall

@renatobonomini

renato.bonomini troy.hall

https://twitter.com/renatobonomini

https://communities.bmc.com/people/renato.bonomini

https://communities.bmc.com/people/troy.hall


The BusinessThe central role of IT in Citrix Online


A division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS)Citrix Online offers the leading Web-based remote access and collaboration services in the SaaS model, as well as high-definition audio conferencing

• GoToMeeting

• GoToMyPC

• GoToAssist

• GoToTraining

• GoToWebinar


How Business relies on IT

Fundamental company culture: “meeting customer needs”

Every product is designed to deliver exceptional reliability,

speed, security and ease of use

.. while being affordable to businesses of all sizes

“Citrix Online is considered a key example of the software as a services (SaaS) / application

service provider (ASP) software business model” [Wikipedia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Online


Why Accounting and Chargeback?Making users pay for resources they consume


TrueSight Capacity Optimization at Citrix Online

2011

Infrastructure Capacity

Managementfor CloudStack

How to simulate P2V, V2V

migrations?

How to optimize our services?

2012

Capacity Management

process is mature

Service capacity improved by a

factor of 2(= cost saving 50%)

How to tie Business to IT?

2011

Business Aligned Capacity

Management

Business Aligned Capacity, data

from Splunk and SalesForce

How much is our infrastructure

used?

2009

Infrastructure Capacity

Management

Visibility of infrastructure

capacity

2013

How do we identify which services are

costing more?

Support IT Financial

Management

Cost perService identifies

“offenders”


The model was updated once a year with % based on a single point in time of one KPI

Lack of trust from product owners asking “Which services are costing more than others?”

Lack of accuracy and visibility

Changes are rapid, manual maintenance of lists takes too much time and is error-prone

A small inaccuracy (even with a small impact) loses a lot confidence in the process

After Improving 2X the capacity of audio and video services to manage end-users, new challenges come from IT Financial Management

With so many products and resources, where should Capacity Planners spend their time?

Should each product deserve the same amount of effort?

How do we make cost show-back fair and accurate?

How do we deal with a constantly changing environment?

Who’s consuming resources?How do we focus on priorities?

Why Accounting and Chargeback?

ManualInfrequent

NoVisibility


What were the challenges?

Technical Challenges

• 8 cost centers: (compute, network, storage, data transfer, etc.)

• Hierarchy: Configuration Management

• ACB model: Allocated vs. Metered

• Model updated once a year

• Shared resources

• Virtualization

Social Challenges

• Ownership of data

• Ownership of process

• True comparison

• Acceptance


• Accuracy

• Frequency

• Priority based on cost

• Move capacity where needed

The effort required for monthly showback reporting is minimal, saving precious time and providing detail for even greater IT resources savings

• Automatic data collection

• Automatic hierarchy definition and update

• Automatic generation of reports

• Time and effort saved

Increased satisfaction of business units, more educated IT decisions

Resources are freed up and reallocated to more critical business objectives

Ability to quickly reconfigure models and automatically generate auditable results

Outcomes


How we leveraged Capacity OptimizationLesson learned and best practices


In your organization:

Is allocation andshowback of costs and

resources fair?

Or in other words

Are our smaller services using most of your

resources?


Why TrueSight Capacity Optimization & Moviri

Why TrueSight Capacity Optimizationfor Accounting and Chargeback

• Configuration, utilization and operational data is available

• .. and if not: easily imported

• Analytics and reporting functionalities are automated

• Dedicated view to create, update, run ACB models

Why

• 10+ years of experience in Capacity Management

• 200+ enterprise customers worldwide, managed the majority of Capacity Optimization implementations

• BMC MarketZone integrations between TrueSight Capacity Optimization and

– Splunk, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Entuity


3 components of Accounting and Chargeback

Identify the actual costs to give transparency and to

allow control over spending (“metering”)

CostIdentification

Distribute the costs to the business units to control

where money goes(“showback”)

CostAllocation

CostRecovery

Each BU pays back according to identified usage (“chargeback”)

• Visibility of costs• Foundation for accounting

• Finance and IT costs don’t match• Who pays for what is unclear

• Visibility over where the money is spent in terms of BU

• Disagreements over method• Complex task

• Strong influence on behavior• Cost control becomes a discipline

• Trust is required and difficult to achieve, quick to lose


Choose your method for IT Service Cost Allocation

KPI DescriptionHigh/Low

Level Allocation

Direct Cost allocation

MeasuredResource

Utilization

Tiered or negogiated

rate

Service Based pricing

SimplicityA billing method that is easy to manage and invoices that

are easy to understand+++ ++ + ++ +

FairnessBUs want to pay only for their

own usage and avoid cross-subsidization

+ ++ +++ ++ +++

PredictabilityBUs seek little or no variation between their budgets for IT

services and actual++ + ++ +

ControllabilityA cost structure that will

enable BUs to actively manage their IT costs

+++ + ++ ++

ComplexityEffort to define, run and

update the model + ++ ++ +++ +++


Workflow & Tips

Target Hierarchy

Cost Objects

Cost Rates

Allocation

Charge-Show-back

Leverage automatic

relationships import

start from data

you are already

collecting

Use templates

Hourly resolution

for metered

accounting

Start with simple models

(allocation)

Iterate the cost model a

few times

Thanks to @michelefollo, @trivasco, @GalloAndreas for their bubbleheads


Lesson learned: not a linear but iterative V-process

Start from a simple model

organized with your complete

showback hierarchy

Use cost items that already exist in CO

to minimize complexity

Compute cost rates, input them in the

model, run & evaluate results

Check with stakeholders

Evaluate the current model for

the 4 KPIs: Simplicity, Fairness,

Predictability, Controllability

Expand to additional cost items

if necessary

Review cost rates, differentiate according

to type of hardware if necessary

Evaluate difference between expected

results and current scenario


Future StepsWhere do we go from here


• Extension of scope to additional cost items such as Network traffic

• Allow product owners to center their decisions around cost of the infrastructure on a consistent base

• Support simulation at cost level: “where is the cheapest DC for installing application X?”

Refine cost models with additional cost items Extend adoption Perform what-if on cost

Next steps for Accounting and Chargeback


No “one size fits all”

model: experiment in

V-cycles to find the

one that your

organization trusts

the most

Benefits go beyond

“who receive the bills”:

an effective way to

prioritize effort-

intenstive cost-saving

activities in Capacity

Management

Simplicity and

fairness are two of

the most important

factors

3 Key Take Aways

01 02 03“Demo or die”

“Money talks”

“KISS”


Thank You.

[email protected]

@renatobonomini

[email protected]

Moviri booth at Engage Solution ShowcaseAtlantic Hall B

512

how citrix aligns it to business goals

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