The New BEAM Cloud Manager

Alleviate cloud sprawl with the new BEAM Cloud Manager, a well-structured managed service for the cloud, which is part of the Bell Techlogix Enterprise Architecture Management (BEAM) platform.

A growing concern in the global marketplace, cloud sprawl, could become an IT leader’s biggest challenge in the coming years. As various enterprises, institutions (and the departments within) proliferate the use of the cloud in an ad hoc, almost retail-type fashion, versus leveraging a centrally managed service that quickly provisions and governs an overall cloud solution for their business, they will be forced to develop a strategy for a customized cloud solution that beats a one-size-fits-all mentality and can help control the unmanaged expansion, cost and risk of cloud resources.

As a managed service provider, we enable our clients to get their arms around that sprawl, as well as cut through the highly fractured, sometimes confusing marketplace of cloud management solutions, boiling it down to what they really need. It's a matter of controlling costs, controlling security, controlling governance, and service levels around the use of cloud, like any other well-structured managed service, while still offering flexibility, responsiveness and reliability.

Evolution of BEAM Cloud Manager

Over three years ago, we launched the innovativeBell Techlogix Enterprise Architecture Management (BEAM) platform to produce and deliver managed service to our clients within a buy-and-integrate strategy. It's the “best-of-breed” use of third-party tools and technologies that we integrated into a seamless workflows to automate various IT management functions and remain compliant with industry standards. To further enhance the BEAM platform, we also took a look at cloud computing and management. Nearly two years ago, Bell Techlogix joined the AT&T Partner Exchange, which allows us to create cloud capacity both in a private and public cloud as a managed service provider, leveraging AT&T's broad data center footprint and cloud-computing capacity.

As we developed our innovation road map around managed cloud services, we decided to build a platform that allows enterprise clients and educational intuitions alike to provision, deploy, manage, orchestrate and integrate cloud services in a very well-defined manner as a managed service. We’ve called this platform and solution, “BEAM Cloud Manager.”

Advantages of BEAM Cloud Manager

Because we take a managed services provider view, we're always thinking about the on-going operation of the cloud service and making sure it's being optimized and properly utilized. We looked at the various leading technologies that are available and where they are in the maturity curve; open-source initiatives, virtualization and various public cloud offerings that are starting to gain real momentum in the marketplace. We took a holistic view of what kind of cloud management platform and cloud service we wanted to adopt and integrate into this architecture. We wanted the ability to provide business function services such as a self-service catalog that quickly provisions and substantiates applications onto the cloud of choice, so that an end user with properly-entitled permission can go in and look for a bevy of services to be executed in the cloud. It has to give visibility into the performance layer and how the application is performing.

In the end, we built in several different integrations to achieve the robust functionality that we were looking for, broadly applied in a very well-structured way. The new BEAM Cloud Manager not only is a nice value proposition, it's an open platform. We offer our own cloud capacity or cloud capacity from the leading cloud providers, which lets the customer better control the use of cloud technology. Bell Techlogix is likely one of the few, if not the only company, that is integrating this type of comprehensive cloud lifecycle management technology and approach with the AT&T private cloud. That's pretty unique stuff.

Security and Data Privacy

For highly regulated businesses such as healthcare, financial services, public sector and others that are clearly concerned about security and data privacy, BEAM Cloud Manager allows them to virtualize cloud service models and test which environment makes the most sense from a security and compliance point of view, and thus select the best execution venue for the application. In addition, if a client is using one of many pervasive off-the-shelf applications, such as ERP systems, database management systems or a multitude of various third-party apps, the entire workflow for how those applications are pre-packaged and deployed into the cloud is pre-defined, allowing for rapid provisioning and execution of enterprise apps into the cloud. Of course, BEAM Cloud Manager also incorporates and manage a client's own internal private cloud as a potential execution vehicle of choice as well.

Cost Effective, Flexible

BEAM Cloud Manager is a cost-effective, flexible model that comes with all of the benefits of a managed service. We will customize the cost/value around economics based on the client's specific environment. Do you need a more heavily-secure, private cloud or are you okay with more open, public cloud? With BEAM Cloud Manager, a client can mix and match across venues, an array of choices for how they want to run their applications in the cloud. In other words, through a single pane of glass, enterprises can provision and manage their hybrid Cloud environment.

Best of Both Worlds

As a managed service provider, we want to offer the best, well-managed cloud service for the client that fits their economic performance and security profile. It's the right size, scope and level of performance that matters most. We're choosing the right venue for them and/or allowing them to flexibly choose as well, with the right governance and controls. We're managing it in a way that they can optimize, they can predict and rely on service levels and get a good, consistent utilization that alleviates cloud sprawl. From our point of view, the cloud needs to be incorporated into an IT operation as a managed service, providing the business with dynamic flexibility and availability to provision what they want, how they want the provision it. BEAM Cloud Manager creates the best of both worlds.

More and more feature-rich solutions are coming in the cloud that go well beyond infrastructure as a service, which we are really excited about. As these ideas progress, we’ll be adding more content, capability and features to BEAM Cloud Manager in the very near future.