January 2015, IDC #253611
Industry Developments and Models
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management
Mary Johnston Turner
IDC OPINION
While most enterprises are accelerating their organization's shift to the cloud, the majority of IT leaders
expect that, for the next five years or more, their computing requirements will be supported by hybrid
environments built on a mix of public cloud services; offsite, dedicated private cloud datacenters; on-
premise private clouds; and traditional noncloud on-premise, outsourced, and hosted IT resources.
The mix will change dynamically depending on the development of new applications and the evolution
of mature mission-critical systems of record. These systems of record will coexist and integrate with
rapidly changing Web and mobile systems of engagement for some time. Cloud provides line-of-
business (LOB) teams with greater flexibility, control, and access to innovative services than has been
possible in traditional enterprise IT environments. With the swipe of a credit card, developers, business
analysts, and marketing strategists can take advantage of robust public cloud services for rapid
development and advanced data analytics. In the early days of cloud, the viral proliferation of
individual cloud projects helped to accelerate adoption and highlight the need for IT to adapt to an on-
demand IT economy. However, as the use of cloud has escalated, business leaders are discovering
that it can be costly and risky to rely on line-of-business end users and departments to manage a
myriad of independent public cloud services. Confidential data needs to be protected, compliance
reporting needs to be completed, and large organizations need to ensure that they are taking full
advantage of their buying power to keep costs low. In addition, lessons learned by one team need to
be shared with others and end users need consistent access to, reporting of, and support for all types
of IT. As enterprises embrace hybrid cloud architectures, IT organizations must partner with business
stakeholders to evolve management processes, people, and technologies in ways that empower LOB
end users and improve business agility, even as the mix of enabling services and resources evolves.
IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape will enable IT decision makers to:
Reduce business risk, improve productivity, and accelerate agility by better managing hybrid
cloud resources and services using common, integrated workflows, tools, and standards.
Create a road map and vision for delivering hybrid cloud IT as a service (ITaaS) based on end-user and business needs, independent of where the infrastructure or software is deployed.
Evolve business and IT governance processes and SLAs to enable more effective use of
cloud self-service, automation, and analytics technologies.
Evaluate and update IT skills, policies, standards, and best practices to improve the
organization's delivery of services across a hybrid cloud environment.
©2015 IDC #253611 1
IN THIS STUDY
The purpose of this IDC MaturityScape is to assist senior IT leaders in assessing the current state of
their hybrid cloud management processes, governance models, technologies, and skills in order to
identify gaps and create a road map for better aligning the organization's management model and
tools with the emerging needs of complex, dynamic self-service hybrid cloud environments. This
document identifies five maturity stages for hybrid cloud management based on a set of specific
people, process, and technology dimensions and outcomes. The document provides actionable
guidance to senior IT decision makers and line-of-business stakeholders who are tasked with ensuring
that their organization is effectively embracing cloud-based innovation.
Executive Summary
By design, hybrid cloud environments shift the focus of IT management away from the simple
configuration, provisioning, and support of individual IT components to prioritize the automated, policy-
based optimization of resource utilization, workload consumption, and user self-service — across a
range of diverse public cloud services, on-premise IT, and hosted or colocated resources that include
traditional physical and virtual server platforms as well as modern pooled and shared cloud
architectures.
In this type of environment, IT teams may not always have direct access to all the infrastructure and
middleware components or application code that supports their mission-critical business processes.
Where it was once good enough for IT teams to keep servers up and running and patch software as
needed, now they must monitor a range of services, platforms, and workflows and ensure that
business users are getting what they need in a manner that is consistent with corporate compliance,
security, and data protection requirements, regardless of whether IT directly owns and operates the
resources. Consistent use of open industry standards, automation, orchestration, and analytics —
paired with collaborative business and IT governance — is critical for IT teams that need to ensure
SLAs for high-value business services across these complex environments.
To achieve these goals, most organizations will need to gradually mature their management strategies
over time as their organization's use of hybrid cloud solutions evolves. Figure 1 summarizes these five
stages of maturity.
©2015 IDC #253611 2
FIGURE 1
IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape Stage Overview
Source: IDC, 2014
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Effective cloud computing environments empower end users, facilitate business agility, optimize cost
and resource consumption, control business risk, and enforce regulatory compliance via the use of
automation, analytics, and standards. In so doing, cloud transforms IT priorities from supporting
individual components and devices to enabling the on-demand delivery of mission-critical business
services anytime and anywhere.
In most enterprise-class IT organizations, large-scale use of cloud demands significant departures
from the IT management status quo. Traditionally, IT management skills, organizational structures,
processes, governance, and tools have been optimized for control and support of dedicated, physical
IT assets. Skills, processes, and tools have been aligned around specific segments of the technology
stacks (servers, storage, network, database, middleware, security, monitoring, service desk, etc.).
©2015 IDC #253611 3
Internal IT organizations, or their outsourcers, typically had dedicated access and control over the
enabling technologies and worked closely with business stakeholders to procure, develop, deploy, and
manage specific applications. The rate and pace of change to the datacenter and application
architectures were heavily controlled and modulated by IT (see Figure 2).
FIGURE 2
Traditional IT Enterprise Computing Management and Sourcing Model
Source: IDC, 2014
©2015 IDC #253611 4
By comparison, cloud architectures shift the balance of control significantly while opening the doors for
a much wider range of sourcing choices and trade-offs. As shown in Figure 3, in dynamic cloud
environments, business and IT teams must embrace a much more collaborative approach to IT
planning, sourcing, and provisioning to empower end users and improve business agility. They must
also navigate a much wider array of sourcing choices for infrastructure and services.
FIGURE 3
Hybrid Cloud Demands Collaborative Business and IT Management
Source: IDC, 2014
©2015 IDC #253611 5
Most organizations will transition through several stages of maturity before they achieve an optimized
state of hybrid cloud management. In a fully mature environment, LOB end users will have on-demand
access to a wide range of business services defined in terms of policies and SLAs. IT organizations
will optimize the provisioning and performance of the services while masking the underlying complexity
caused by the interplay of multiple generations of technologies and the use of on-premise and third-
party service providers.
Stages of IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape
IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape identifies the five stages most organizations will move
through as they shift the focus of IT management from hardware and in-house resources to optimized
on-demand delivery of ITaaS — enabled by a broad range of cloud and noncloud resources (refer back
to Figure 1).
Stage 1: Ad Hoc
Description: Risky business. The ad hoc stage is characterized as a period of haphazard, often business-led, experimentation with a wide range of public cloud services including IaaS,
PaaS, and SaaS. Individual LOB users can quickly access new capabilities and resources at a speed and cost far superior to what they achieved working with corporate IT. LOB users embrace self-service and essentially become their own IT support staff. In many cases,
corporate IT may be unaware of LOB public cloud use. Over time, however, concerns about security, compliance, costs, and lost LOB productivity come into play. Internal IT teams become involved and begin the process of bringing order to the madness. Gradually, the
organization recognizes that IT and LOB teams need new models for collaborative governance and IT investment planning.
Business outcomes. After the first wave of innovation, the challenges of managing confidential data, optimizing IT spend, dealing with a large number of vendors, leveraging business insight
and information across services, and integrating more traditional systems all become too complex and cumbersome for LOB teams to manage on their own. IT teams respond with innovation of their own including private cloud pilots and developing corporate policies for
working with public cloud vendors. Gradually, IT and LOB recognize a new set of ground rules are required.
Stage 2: Opportunistic
Description: Better together. A hallmark of the opportunistic stage is recognition that IT and
LOB decision makers need to find a new way to collaborate in the planning, design, sourcing,and operation of cloud solutions. Generally, in this phase, the day-to-day management of
cloud solutions is largely separate from the management of traditional IT assets. The emphasis is on defining common standards, SLAs, and security templates and developing agreement on the types of configurations, templates, and personas that will be used to drive
more automated and consistent provisioning across multiple cloud services. The organization begins to pilot unified self-service solutions, and IT begins to ramp up use of automation and orchestration for application and middleware as well as infrastructure provisioning and
support.
Business outcomes. Business and IT teams develop more collaborative and productive
governance processes that allow many groups across the organization to more effectively
©2015 IDC #253611 6
learn from one another and lay the groundwork for a more consistent, integrated, and enterprise-strength hybrid cloud environment. Risk management improves as the organization
begins to more consistently enforce access control and data management policies. This more collaborative, policy-based approach to planning, sourcing, and provisioning of IT capabilities sets the stage for more flexible hybrid cloud operations in the future.
Stage 3: Repeatable
Description: Automated agility. This stage represents a significant step in the maturity of an organization's hybrid cloud management strategy. By embracing a standards-based, policy-
driven model for defining business needs and service levels, IT and LOB teams are now able to extend on-demand self-service management and provisioning capabilities across the organization. Increasingly, LOB users are freed from the need to worry about which vendor
enables a business service or thinking about whether it is an on-premise or hosted solution.
Business outcomes. Repeatable, automated business service provisioning and workload
portability allows IT to scale resources, optimize costs, and respond more rapidly to business needs. It also improves the overall cost model by making it easier to optimize resources and
service consumption. Business innovation, productivity, and agility improve.
Stage 4: Managed
Description: Predictive performance. As the provisioning and configuration of hybrid cloud
environments become more repeatable, standardized, and automated, IT and LOB teams move on to Stage 4, which is characterized by proactive and predictive management of hybrid environments using sophisticated application and end-user performance monitoring and
advanced predictive IT and business analytics. In Stage 4, insights pulled from public and private cloud resources, as well as traditional IT, can be correlated and combined to provide insights about IT consumption and end-user behavior — including customers, partners, and
suppliers. As more and more business moves online, application and end-user performance monitoring becomes business performance monitoring. Advanced analytics allow collaborative business and IT teams to better predict IT requirements and business activity.
Business outcomes. Organizations that are most effective in deriving business insights across
their online applications and assets will gain competitive business advantage as they anticipate customer and partner priorities and position to effectively scale, migrate, and innovate as needed.
Stage 5: Optimized
Description: Dynamic ITaaS. Organizations at the most mature level of hybrid cloud management have implemented real-time, policy-based, unified self-service portals that
automatically broker and optimize the selection of enabling resources and services used to provision requested business services. These organizations take full advantage of open standards, automation, orchestration, and advanced IT and business operations analytics to
empower end users, promote business agility, and facilitate rapid and ongoing business innovation.
Business outcomes. LOB end users and business strategists are able to rapidly access required services, gain deep insight for real-time user behaviors and performance, and adapt
and innovate more rapidly and proactively than competitors that have not yet achieved this stage. Effective hybrid cloud management has become a critical enabler of the business.
©2015 IDC #253611 7
Dimensions of IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape
Table 1 describes the vision, technology, people, process, and portability and integration dimensions
of IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management MaturityScape, along with their sub-dimensions.
©2015 IDC #253611 8
TABLE 1
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Overview of Stages, Dimensions, and Sub-Dimensions
Dimensions/
Sub-Dimensions Stage Names
Ad Hoc Opportunistic Repeatable Managed Optimized
Vision
Strategy Project-driven cloud
management investment
is based on immediate
project or LOB needs.
The organization pilots
and evaluates the
benefits of unified and
automated approaches to
hybrid cloud
management.
Selected cloud
workloads and services
are managed using
common open
standards, automation,
and analytics.
Business and IT leaders
are committed to broad
use of automated self-
service for hybrid cloud
access and control.
The dynamic, automated
management environment
optimizes cost,
performance, security, and
innovation across hybrid
resources.
Leadership Individual project heads
and departments adopt
solutions that are best for
their own needs.
Business and IT decision
makers pilot the use of
jointly developed
provisioning standards
and automated
deployment tools.
Business and IT leaders
test and evaluate
automated, policy-based
provisioning and access
across selected hybrid
resources.
Business and IT leaders
expand collaboration on
defining SLAs,
configuration standards,
and self-service offerings.
Business and IT leaders
actively collaborate on
defining SLAs,
configuration standards,
and self-service offerings.
Risk management The monitoring and
enforcing of consistent
data protection,
compliance, and SLAs
are difficult.
Business and IT leaders
identify how hybrid cloud
architectures change the
needs for data protection,
security, and disaster
recovery.
The organization tests
and validates automated
data protection,
compliance, DR, and
access control across
hybrid cloud resources.
The enforcement of data
protection, compliance,
DR, and access control is
automated selectively
across hybrid cloud
resources.
The enforcement of data
protection, compliance,
and access control is
automated consistently
across hybrid cloud
resources.
©2015 IDC #253611 9
TABLE 1
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Overview of Stages, Dimensions, and Sub-Dimensions
Dimensions/
Sub-Dimensions Stage Names
Ad Hoc Opportunistic Repeatable Managed Optimized
Technology
Management solution
scalability/extensibility
Management solutions
are chosen without
regard for scalability,
integration, or reuse;
immediate priorities drive
choices.
The organization
experiments with unified
monitoring across
multiple public cloud,
private cloud, and
noncloud resources.
Hybrid clouds use
common monitoring and
configuration tools;
legacy system plug-ins
enable broader
integrations.
The organization adds
deeper infrastructure and
middleware monitoring
and analytics combined
with self-service
provisioning and
configuration automation.
Hybrid cloud management
is highly extensible and
integrates on-prem and
cloud seamlessly.
Policy-driven
automation and
orchestration
Administrators create
and maintain their own
scripts and product-
specific automation tools.
Administrators and
developers implement
open source automation;
central IT experiments
with self-service.
Broad-based
orchestration integrates
and streamlines many
cloud and noncloud
workflows.
The organization begins
to move beyond simple
IaaS to offer
comprehensive
automated workflows and
processes.
Workload, middleware,
and infrastructure
configurations are
consistently provisioned
and maintained across
hybrid resources.
Self-service
empowerment
The organization has a
traditional ITIL-based
approach to service
request, problem,
incident, and
configuration
management.
Selected end users get
self-service from the
public cloud.
A unified self-service
portal is introduced to
streamline self-service
provisioning and control
for selected services.
Access to IT resources
via a self-service portal is
becoming the norm but is
not available for all cloud
and noncloud IT
solutions.
LOB end users
consistently request,
monitor, and provision a
wide range of services via
a common portal/service
catalog.
Monitoring and
analytics
Traditional monitoring
supports the legacy, but
many cloud solutions
have minimal visibility.
Monitoring is selectively
extended to cloud but is
still not well integrated
with legacy systems.
The use of APM and
end-user monitoring as
well as IT operations
analytics is growing.
Real-time user insights
and predictive analytics is
applied to IT and selected
business performance
requirements.
Predictive end-user
insights become critical
business differentiators
while helping to improve
service performance.
©2015 IDC #253611 10
TABLE 1
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Overview of Stages, Dimensions, and Sub-Dimensions
Dimensions/
Sub-Dimensions Stage Names
Ad Hoc Opportunistic Repeatable Managed Optimized
People
Skills Many cloud projects are
self-managed by users.
Individual administrators
begin to experiment with
configuration automation
for core provisioning
services.
Designated staff builds
skills in key areas such
as open source,
automation, and CSP
management.
Hiring priorities shift to
emphasize business
awareness, IT-as-a-
service, and hybrid cloud
management skills.
Cloud management skills
including CSP evaluation,
SLA management,
automation, and LOB
collaboration are
expected.
Training On-the-job learning is on
a need-to-know basis.
Individual departments
may send selected
employees for training as
needed.
IT and LOB teams
conduct gap analysis to
identify hiring and
training priorities.
The enterprise invests in
employee training on new
management tools,
processes, and standards
based on gap analysis.
The enterprise continues
to invest in additional
training as needed.
Process
Controls/
governance
IT and business teams
pursue individual
agendas, inconsistent
efforts are made to align
agendas, and
consumption-aware
chargeback is rarely
implemented.
IT and business teams
partner to selectively
evaluate public cloud
services and define
private cloud templates.
IT and business teams
partner to expand shared
efforts. Consumption-
aware showback is
considered by some.
Highly collaborative
business and IT decision
making is in place,
including consumption-
aware showback or
chargeback.
The collaborative LOB/IT
governance process is
institutionalized and
provides ongoing cloud
management leadership.
©2015 IDC #253611 11
TABLE 1
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Overview of Stages, Dimensions, and Sub-Dimensions
Dimensions/
Sub-Dimensions Stage Names
Ad Hoc Opportunistic Repeatable Managed Optimized
Management
integration
Management solutions
and workflows supporting
different public cloud,
private cloud, and
noncloud platforms are
rarely integrated.
IT teams are learning how
to leverage cloud service
management features;
teams test integrations
with on-prem
management.
IT commits to transition
to a hybrid management
strategy that integrates
data feeds and
workflows across public,
private, and noncloud
platforms.
IT extends transition to a
hybrid management
environment that
integrates data feeds and
workflows across public,
private, and noncloud
platforms.
Management solutions
and workflows are fully
integrated across all
resources regardless if
they are public or private.
Cloud service provider
(CSP)
evaluation/contract
management
CSP evaluations and
contracts are managed
by individual groups with
no coordination.
Individual groups run
evaluations; CSP
contracts are extended
internally based on word
of mouth.
The enterprise aligns
around a minimal set of
CSP evaluation criteria
and centralizes larger
contracts.
Collaborative LOB and IT
teams define preferred
CSPs and implement
enterprisewide contracts
and SLAs.
CSP evaluations and
contracts are based on
measurable metrics and
policies defined by a
collaborative LOB/IT
process.
Portability and
integration
Workload SLAs Cloud services and
workload SLAs are rarely
documented, making it
difficult to optimize
workload placement.
Selected public and
private cloud services
provide access to real-
time management insight,
but services are managed
independently.
IT and LOB begin to
proactively monitor end-
to-end service levels for
many cloud workloads
and focus on availability
and performance.
Enhanced hybrid cloud
SLA monitoring adds
advanced analytics and
end-to-end root cause
analysis.
IT automates policy-based
brokering of service
requests across hybrid
resources.
©2015 IDC #253611 12
TABLE 1
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Overview of Stages, Dimensions, and Sub-Dimensions
Dimensions/
Sub-Dimensions Stage Names
Ad Hoc Opportunistic Repeatable Managed Optimized
DevOps automation
and analytics
Configuration and
release automation are
limited, with little use of
open solutions. There is
no real analytics.
Individual
administrators/developers
use internal scripts, but
corporate libraries and
configuration standards
are lacking.
Modern applications are
being designed for
continuous release and
constant APM monitoring
and analytics.
The organization ramps
up use of configuration
automation and
introduces consistent use
of predictive analytics.
Life-cycle management
processes are highly
proactive and informed by
near-real-time application
and public cloud service
monitoring and predictive
analytics.
Open standards The organization has no
current strategy to
leverage open standards
such as OpenStack,
Docker, or TOSCA.
Individual cloud
management standards
experts emerge internally.
The organization aligns
around OpenStack,
Docker, and TOSCA to
promote seamless
workload portability
across hybrid resources.
Hybrid cloud
management extends the
use of open APIs,
configuration automation,
and software-defined
datacenter communities.
The hybrid cloud
management environment
takes full advantage of
appropriate open
standards for APIs,
configuration automation,
and software-defined
datacenter operations.
Source: IDC, 2014
©2015 IDC #253611 13
FUTURE OUTLOOK
IDC expects that most enterprise-scale organizations will need three to five years to transition from ad
hoc to optimized hybrid cloud management at scale. Even at that point, pockets of more traditional
management and monitoring are likely to remain for systems and applications that are reaching end of
life. IT organizations and their business partners will need to maintain an active collaborative
governance process throughout this transition.
IT decision makers should expect to see significant change in their management software portfolio and
strategic vendor relationships as well. Many organizations will find that the shift to hybrid cloud
management allows them to consolidate and simplify the number and diversity of individual
management solutions that are actively used across the enterprise. In some cases, public cloud
services such as Amazon Web Services or IBM SoftLayer or integrated private cloud platforms such
as HP CloudSystem will include core monitoring and control capabilities that were once provided by
paid software. IDC expects most organizations will optimize around a mix of on-premise and cloud-
delivered management tools that are integrated using widely supported open standards.
ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE
As the use of cloud solutions increases, both business and IT leaders are recognizing that the safety
and success of their business depends on them finding ways to take full advantage of cloud innovation
while also ensuring consistent service levels, load testing, patching, security, data management, and
user experiences. Hybrid cloud management represents a new challenge and opportunity for corporate
IT leaders. Even as public and off-premise hosted or colocated private clouds reduce the need for in-
house IT to manage hardware and OS level resources, the organization will demand that the CIO lead
the charge when it comes to aligning the organization around service levels, cost control, security, and
IT-enabled innovation.
For organizations that are currently in the early stages of their hybrid cloud management maturity
journey, IDC offers the following guidance:
Now: Take stock of the current cloud initiatives under way across LOB teams and IT groups,and develop an inventory of management tools and processes being used. Begin to learn
about important open source efforts that will impact cloud management approaches. Engage with business stakeholders to better understand their needs and concerns with regard to sourcing, provisioning, configuration, migration, monitoring, and analytics, and jointly consult
with third-party experts to develop a best practices road map for addressing these management needs in a hybrid cloud environment. Recognize that changing processes and culture is often a critical, if overlooked, step in the successful execution of a hybrid cloud
management strategy.
In the next one to two years (next budget cycle): Set priorities around hybrid cloud
management functionality such as self-service provisioning of specific services or development of specific SLAs for evaluating public and private cloud trade-offs. Work with
business stakeholders to identify specific use cases and pilot projects that can validate the
©2015 IDC #253611 14
agility and productivity benefits, as well as cost savings, from implementing a policy-based, automated approach to provisioning, migrating, and managing hybrid cloud resources. Test
the use of a common self-service portal for multiple services. Develop a core set of open technologies and standards that will be used to underpin your hybrid cloud management architecture. Begin to invest in application and end-user performance monitoring for cloud
services in order to better understand end-to-end business service health and set the stage for proactive business and predictive capacity analytics. Invest in people and training to extend understanding of key open source technologies and best practices for managing cloud service
providers and collaborating with LOB leaders.
In the next three to five years: Continue to extend the service catalog, self-service automation,
and end-to-end service performance monitoring to include noncloud services and IT resources. Ramp up the use of open source and analytics. Take stock of the management
software and services portfolio, and identify opportunities to retire products that are no longer useful. Engage closely with business stakeholders to identify new requirements and to gain additional value from the use of application and end-user analytics to support business
innovation and differentiation. Continue to invest in people.
Table 2 presents guidance specific to each of the five stages of IDC's Hybrid Cloud Management
MaturityScape.
TABLE 2
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Progressing Through the Stages
Stage Guidance
Ad hoc
Develop inventory of public, private, and noncloud management tools already in-house.
Identify hybrid cloud management needs and gaps that are causing the most business disruption.
Engage a vendor or third-party consultant to better understand hybrid cloud management best
practices, processes, and metrics.
Identify two or three specific pilot projects to validate benefits of more unified, automated hybrid
cloud management initiatives such as the creation of a common self-service catalog spanning
several public and private cloud services used by specific user groups that are motivated to
collaborate with IT.
Define success metrics for each pilot and follow through with reporting on successes while
learning from failures.
©2015 IDC #253611 15
TABLE 2
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Progressing Through the Stages
Stage Guidance
Opportunistic
Invest in staff training and research to increase internal knowledge of cloud management open
standards and to research available hybrid cloud management platforms and services.
Define critical requirements and develop gap analysis to inform the evaluation of hybrid cloud
management solutions.
Evaluate and test options for unified and automated hybrid cloud management and monitoring
across selected public and private (or noncloud) services and platforms.
Evaluate existing in-house talent to target staff for additional training to support larger-scale
hybrid cloud management environments. Develop a longer-term staffing plan that considers the
trade-offs between the cost of new hires and training the existing staff.
Continue to build relationships with LOB groups that are managing their own cloud services, and
explore how IT can best collaborate to improve service levels and drive down costs.
Repeatable
Create repeatable processes for integrating management of new cloud services and platforms
and ensuring consistent use of a management framework for new services.
Define corporate requirements for cloud management including specific open standards that
must be supported as well as required hardware and software certifications.
Create a collaborative business and IT governance process to drive corporate cloud standards,
SLAs, and success monitoring activities.
Invest in consistent cloud performance monitoring and log analytics to support more proactive
end-to-end management across hybrid cloud environments.
Continue to standardize, automate, and integrate as many cloud provisioning, migration, and
resource configuration workflows and management tools as possible.
©2015 IDC #253611 16
TABLE 2
IDC MaturityScape: Hybrid Cloud Management — Progressing Through the Stages
Stage Guidance
Managed
Provide robust, automated, persona-based end-user self-service capabilities across a spectrum
of public, private, and noncloud services.
Invest in predictive analytics to support hybrid cloud capacity planning and performance
optimization as well as business performance impact and insight.
Continue to build out standard corporate configuration libraries, templates, and tools leveraging
open source community initiatives wherever possible.
Promote active business and IT collaboration for ongoing governance of configurations, SLAs,
and service catalog structure and access controls.
Continue to monitor evolution of OpenStack and related cloud management standards, and
update requirements for RFPs and public cloud service evaluations as needed.
Optimized
Migrate existing noncloud management solutions to a unified hybrid cloud management
environment when possible.
Continue to track open cloud management standards and innovation.
Maintain an ongoing dialogue with strategic hybrid cloud management vendors.
Continue to actively support collaborative business and IT hybrid cloud governance processes
and partner on a way to leverage end-user insight and predictive analytics.
Continue to extend self-service hybrid cloud management, and empower end users as
appropriate based on business priorities.
Source: IDC, 2014
LEARN MORE
Related Research
Hybrid Cloud Strategies Create Management Challenges (IDC #252655, December 2014)
IT Operations Analytics Special Report: Buyer Interviews and Survey Results (IDC #252344, November 2014)
©2015 IDC #253611 17
Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software 2014–2018 Forecast Update: Open Source Accelerates Market Growth (IDC #251442, September 2014)
Open Source Configuration Automation: Evaluation Criteria and Implementation Best Practices (IDC #249913, July 2014)
Worldwide System Management Software as a Service 2014–2018 Forecast (IDC #249633,
June 2014)
Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #249131, June 2014)
Synopsis
This IDC study assists senior IT leaders in assessing the current state of their hybrid cloud
management processes, governance models, technologies, and skills to identify gaps and create a
road map for better aligning the organization's management model and tools with the emerging needs
of complex, dynamic self-service hybrid cloud environments. This IDC MaturityScape identifies five
maturity stages for hybrid cloud management based on a set of specific people, process, and
technology dimensions and outcomes. The document provides actionable guidance to senior IT
decision makers and line-of-business stakeholders who are tasked with ensuring that their
organization is effectively embracing cloud-based innovation.
"As the use of hybrid cloud solutions increases, both business and IT leaders recognize that the
success of their business depends on finding ways to take full advantage of cloud innovation while
ensuring consistent service levels, load testing, patching, security, data management, and user
experiences," explains Mary Johnston Turner, IDC research vice president, Enterprise Systems
Management Software.
About IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory
services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology
markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-
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