Flavors of Cloud

Cloud can be presented in three flavors. They are

· Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS), Eg: Amazon web services[ Amazon EC2], Rackspace etc

· Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) Eg: Microsoft Azure Platform, Google App Engine. and

· Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) Eg: SalesForce.com, Google Apps, Microsoft BPOs, Office365, SharePoint Online.

Depending upon the customer’s needs, one of the formats of cloud offering can be adopted. The benefits of each of the above flavors vary. In a nutshell, the benefits of the cloud offerings can be shown as under for the various flavors.

Problem Management

Problem Management is the Process responsible for managing the Lifecycle of all Problems. The primary Objectives of Problem Management are to prevent Incidents from happening, and to minimize the Impact of Incidents that cannot be prevented. (ITIL® V3 Glossary v3.1.24, 11 May 2007)

While Incident Management is responsible for the fix or workaround, ultimately it is the Problem Management that performs the root cause analysis for chronic Incidents and provides a permanent solution.

There are two approaches towards managing a problem

• When a problem has occurred and a solution need to be found, it is considered Reactive Problem Management
• Proactive problem Management helps to manage a problem proactively (opposite opposite of reactive) by trying to anticipate problems and prevent them from happening.

When a problem has occurred and a solution need to be found, it is considered Reactive Problem Management

See also

1. Change Management

Change Management

Change Management is an essential process of any IT department. Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Change Management ensures that only authorized and carefully considered Changes are implemented. Changes can be planned and unplanned and or emergency Changes and there is a process to handle both.

There are a number of business drivers for a change management process:

1. Compliance - Your industry may require that certain changes be reviewed, approved, documented, and deployed in a methodical way.
2. Productivity - The smallest change in a user interface can result in hours of lost productivity if users aren't given advance warning or training.
3. Reliability - Prevent the deployment of changes that may break existing workflows or processes.

Change management processes attempt to answer all or some of the following questions:

• Who approved and/or made the change?
• Why was the change needed?
• When was the change made?
• How was the change deployed?

See also

1. Problem Management