Hybrid Cloud For Dummies

The Reality of the Service Desk in Hybrid Clouds

Use of the hybrid cloud requires a process for managing the ongoing performance of public and private cloud services in connection with internal services. One fundamental issue in managing services is that when you do it well, the service management team is like the wizard behind the curtain in the Land of Oz. If your e-mail never goes down and your technical equipment never fails, you won’t go looking behind the curtain to understand why it works.

The reality is that services do fail and errors do occur — and when they do, customers (or service users) want questions answered and problems resolved.

For many businesses, the service desk is the first port of call when an incident or a problem occurs. A service desk provides a single point of contact for IT users and customers to report issues they have with the service. The service desk is generally responsible to receive information when an incident is reported, ensure that the problem is properly diagnosed and evaluated, and then make sure the problem is fixed quickly. However, in hybrid cloud environments, your service desk may find it challenging to integrate service information across the internal data center and public and private clouds.

How can your service desk provide an accurate and timely response to requests from internal users without controlling the management of your public cloud resources? When public cloud services are well managed, your cloud service providers can ...