Personalized Cloud Assessment

Classify your computing environment. Please select one of the options below the question

1: How would you describe your enterprise architecture?

We don't have a formalized enterprise architecture.

Our enterprise architecture is mostly for reference purposes.

Our enterprise architecture is used to support technology selection.

We have a formalized enterprise architecture.

2: To what extent is your computing infrastructure virtualized?

We don't use virtualization yet.

We are using virtualization primarily for test and development.

We're using virtualization for many of our workloads, including production applications.

Virtualization is our default environment and is used very broadly.

3: Have you been challenged when deploying storage in a virtualized environment?

No, not yet.

Yes, we are struggling to provision storage for virtualized environments.

Yes, we can provision storage, but we are struggling to ensure the efficiency of our storage utilization.

Yes, we can provision storage and use it efficiently, but we are struggling to optimize performance.

4: Have you run into network bandwidth constraints in your virtualized server environment?

No, not yet.

Yes, we have started to see network bandwidth constraints.

Yes, and we have addressed the problem by implementing 10GbE connections to the server.

Yes, and we have addressed the problem by implementing 10GbE connections to the server and also flattening our network.

5: In your current environment, how do you provision services?

We use manual installs.

We use standardized server image deployment.

We can automatically deploy an infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking.

We can automatically deploy/manage/decommission a complete service, including infrastructure, operating systems and applications.

Assess your service orientation

6: How long does it take you to deploy a change or a new service once the infrastructure is in place?

We don't track or measure the time it takes to deploy a change or a new service.

It takes two days or more to deploy a change or a new service.

It takes about one day to deploy a change or a new service.

It takes about an hour or less to deploy a change or a new service.

7: How would you rate your ability to measure and track service performance?

We don't measure performance consistently within our IT operations.

We can measure and track performance at the component (network, platform, application) level, but not at the service level.

We can measure and track performance at the service level, but we have limited capabilities when it comes to troubleshooting the root cause of a performance degradation.

We can measure end-to-end service performance across the service portfolio and can troubleshoot issues occurring within each underlying component of the service.

8: How do you track changes to your infrastructure?

We use manual reporting processes, such as spreadsheets.

We are in the process of creating a configuration management database.

We have a robust configuration management database already in place.

We have a fully integrated system across service desk, configuration management, and asset management.

9: How formalized is your IT organization's continuous improvement process?

We don't have a formalized continuous improvement process.

We execute improvement programs on an ad hoc basis, depending on need.

Our continuous improvement program is formalized using Six Sigma or other formal processes.

We have a formalized improvement process that leverages extensive historical data to prioritize our improvement programs.

10: Can you track the costs of a service rollout and do you stay within budget?

We do not or cannot track rollout costs for frequently-used services.

Rollout costs for frequently-used services often exceed the planned budget.

We understand the underlying reasons why we have variances in the rollout costs for our frequently-used services.

We publish a dashboard of cost against plan and consistently come in under budget for rollout costs for frequently-used services.

Measure your management and methodology

11: Do you have a catalog that presents the services your IT organization offers?

We don't have a service catalog.

We have a spreadsheet we use for budget justification.

We have a formal service catalog.

We have a formal service catalog that can be accessed through a self-service portal.

12: Do you have some form of process certification? (E.g., ITIL, COBIT, Basel?)

We don't have formal processes.

We have formalized our processes, but we are not certified.

We have at least one formal certification.

We have at least one formal certification and we conduct regular process audits and implement improvements.

13: Have you benchmarked the productivity of your IT staff?

We cannot benchmark our environment.

We investigated benchmarks but have not implemented them.

We implemented benchmarks and we are working to meet them.

Our productivity is much better than benchmarks.

14: Are the costs of your IT services transparent to users?

We have not considered making the cost of IT services transparent.

We would like to move in this direction, but are unable to.

We can provide limited cost transparency.

We are able to provide full service cost transparency to our users.

15: How would you describe the working relationship between your IT department and your end users?

IT provides the technologies that the business asks for.

IT provides solutions based on business requirements.

IT provides some standardized service offerings to our business.

IT provides business services as if it were an external service provider.