Overview
From a datacenter operator or cloud provider point of view, IT services are intangible entities which must run reliably 24/7, be provisioned on demand with the right scale, and be documented and certified properly. In the Service Operations research initiative of the Service Prototyping Lab, we take a closer look at the needs of businesses which operate infrastructure, platform and application software services. There are differences in the structural appearance of services (e.g. daemon, virtual machine, container, plugin archive) and in the level of assurance against risks (technical, legal). These differences need to be accounted for when planning and scheduling the service execution.
Objectives
- Operation of testbeds for service execution. A BladeCenter is already set up for this purpose.
- Solving business needs regarding service-level agreements (SLAs), software and process certifications, governance, high availability, failover, as well as further technical protection schemes.
Relevance to current and future markets
IT services are the foundation of all digital processes between individuals, enterprises and organisations. Increasingly, processes are going digital, which saves paper but demands fully reliable and automated IT service delivery and governance. Therefore, this initiative serves as enabler and helps in particular companies to dry-run their services in a controlled environment before rolling them out for the target consumers.
Contact
Pietro Brossi: brpi(at)zhaw.ch