Cloud Service Management

Re-imagine how.

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Cloud Service Management

Many UK organisations are either in the process of migrating to the cloud or have already made the transition. A successful cloud-based strategy goes beyond the migration phase though. Technology advances are inevitable, but to reap the long-term benefits, and to address the challenges, organisations must be prepared to evolve.

The many business and IT benefits of a cloud-based strategy are widely understood. Cloud is cheaper, more scalable, flexible and it can be easier to upgrade and to optimise. There are many valid reasons to move to the cloud, in doing-so however, there are a broad range of day-to-day challenges that must be carefully managed.

Market issues and challenges

Living with the cloud – the day-to-day challenge

Cloud experienceFor many organisations, cloud skills can be in short supply. Those that are at the start of their cloud journey in particular often simply don’t have the experience to draw on. What you have to do may not necessarily change too much, but the way that you do it in the cloud can be very different.

24x7 operationFor many internal IT teams, running a 24x7 operation can be difficult to manage, requiring 3-4 times FTE (Full-Time Equivalent). Increasing the size of internal teams is unlikelyto be the most efficient way to ensure your services are running smoothly every minute of every day.

ExpertiseSpecialist cloud expertise is invaluable to organisations looking to make the most of their cloud environment - being able to depend on a trusted partner can be hugely beneficial.

24/7

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Cloud Service Management

KCOM has over 20 years’ experience delivering complex cloud solutions for a wide range of customers from many different industries. We’re different to other cloud Managed Service Providers (MSPs); we offer in-life support for complete solutions and go beyond the cloud components.

We provide a single managed service wrapper on deployments from multiple cloud providers. By adopting this approach we’re able to give our customers the consistent high levels of service they desire, all from a single point of contact. Our highly skilled and experienced teams eliminate complexity to improve response times, speed up decision making and drive efficiencies. Supported by an ecosystem of industry-leading partners, we help create value fororganisations and their customers alike.

Flexible solution streamsKCOM Cloud Service Management is made up of three solution streams: Analyse, Assure and Accelerate. Together, these provide organisations with a single, managed service. Each stream is suitable for public cloud workloads designed, developed and migrated by KCOM, as well as those implemented by internal teams or alternative MSPs.

The KCOM solution

AnalyseUnderstanding your situationWhen working with any organisation it’s important to gain a clear understanding of what is required and how we can help. During this phase we assess the current situation and identify areas that can be optimised.

Assure Daily managementof your cloudOur teams provide a wide range of functions to help manage day-to-day cloud tasks as part of the Assure solution stream. Our customers often refer to this activity as ‘keeping the green lights on’, crucial tasks that should never be overlooked. This includes operating system support for those functions which comprise IAAS components such as AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Azure Virtual Machines (VM). While we manage these activities, internal teams can focus on areas where they can add business value to their organisation.

AccelerateDriving enhanced performance As we all know, technology never stands still. These advances can represent both opportunities and threats to organisations. To succeed, IT departments must always have one eye on the future. Our Accelerate solution stream is focussed firmly on what’s next. With a consultative approach, we continually look to improve processes, procedures and the technical solutions that help our customers to get the very most from their cloud-based strategy today and in the future.

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Cloud Service Management

A solution built to meet your needs

No two organisations have the same IT requirements, which is why we designed our Cloud Service Management to be flexible. Depending on where your organisation needs support, we provide a package that meets your individual needs.

The KCOM solution

Analyse

Assure Accelerate

Accelerate

Alert management

Incident management

Problem management

Change management

Request fulfilment

System administration

Service dashboard

Patch management

Service asset management

Cloud billing

Cloud optimisation

KCOM experts

Performance report

Continual service improvement

Full stack support

SIAM / Service desk

Cloud Maturity Review

Cloud Financial Snapshot

Only available alongside Assure stream

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Cloud Service Management

AnalyseUnderstanding your situation

All reviews are conducted by a certified KCOM architect at no cost to our customers. The resulting report identifies current strengths and opportunities for improvement across five key areas; security, reliability, cost, performance and operational excellence.

As part of our analyse phase we identify hidden resource costs, areas of rapidly growing spend and identity potential security risks.

Cloud maturity review

Cloud financial snapshot

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Cloud Service Management

AssureDaily managementof your cloud

Our next generation tools utilise machine learning technologies to identify anomaly detection, outlier detection and forecasting of infrastructure and applications. All associated remediation activities are performed under incident management.

We manage incident lifecycle in accordance with ITIL best practices. This involves taking responsibility for the initial triage and then managing the resolution of the incident working with the cloud vendors on behalf of our customer to resolve issues as soon as possible.

We understand that when working with cloud services it can be tempting for organisations to “scale out” of problems. We believe, however, that it’s important to always identify and address the root cause of issues.

We utilise the latest tools and frameworks to ensure that changes can be deployed seamlessly and underpinned by automated testing and governance controls.

We provide easy ways to engage with our teamsso that activities such as password changes or requests for information or guidance are always quickly addressed.

Our teams undertake routine activities that include creating new accounts, adding and removing users to cloud roles, taking ad-hoc backups or restores and much more. We also ensure that automated backups are in place for all operating systems and databases.

Alertmanagement

Incident management

Problem management

Change management

Requestfulfilment

System administration

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Cloud Service Management

Our service dashboard provides all customers withthe ability to create and amend any request type. These include incidents, service requests and changes. This tool allows our customers to havea single pane view of the status of any ticket.

We deploy cloud-native patch management solutions to manage and apply operating system updates. This ensures a repeatable and automatable approach, reducing the possibility of inconsistencies or human errors.

Our solutions automatically populate an asset database with details of the cloud product or service used by each workload. Our customers no longer have the administrative burden associated with managing a legacy CMDB (Configuration Management Database).

We provide a cloud billing service for all of our customer to reduce the administrative burden for financial departments. This includes utilisation and billing insights as well as identification of potential future cost savings.

We provide two levels of service for our customers – ‘Essential’ and ‘Prime’. Essential is our core service level provided for response and resolution during office hours. Vendor “basic” support definitions for prioritisation are based upon a standard impact and urgency matrix. Prime is for customers that require enhanced service levels – it includes 24x7 support and fourth line enhanced support provided by the cloud vendor such as AWS or Microsoft.

Servicedashboard

Patchmanagement

Service asset management

Cloud billing

Select

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AccelerateDriving enhanced performance

Customers that select KCOM’s continual service improvement are allocated a named Service Manager who quickly builds an understanding of the current IT estate and future requirements. As part of the ongoing activity we undertake a service review on a monthly basis which looks at the overall effectiveness of the services and also results in a service report.

We analyse all aspects of cloud usage to identify opportunities for improvement. With three core options to consider – Activate, Collaborate and Innovate, our teams establish which approach best suits our customer’s requirements and cloud management capabilities.

ActivateAfter installing and configuring CloudHealth software we produce an initial high-level saving and security recommendation report.

CollaborateBuilding on the activate phase, collaborate allows customers to benefit from our extensive experience and best practices to provide all the insight and analysis needed to optimise a cloud platform.

InnovateBy continually assessing areas such as workload, cost and security, we’re able to provide an ‘optimisation as a service’ option to our customers.

In contrast to other cloud-only MSPs, our rich heritage in systems development and integration enables us to provide in life support for all types of workloads. For cloud-native developments we have industry leading expertise in producing modern applications that utilise the very latest cloud technologies such as PAAS, FAAS and other serverless technologies.

Our teams can take any customer-developed application (either traditional, or cloud-native) and transition it to an in-life support and enhancement service. Our service also includes application monitoring and alerting, application incident management and system administration activities such as user creation.

Continual service improvement

Cloudoptimisation

Full stack support

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Cloud Service Management

Ensuring a smooth transition

Our team of experts deliver ongoing best practice advice, guidance and strategy support. With our broad set of team skills, we also provide experts in areas outside the current workload to look at how solutions can be enhanced using other technologies or integrations.

We provide a single point of contact to ensure consistent delivery across multiple suppliers. We triage issues and third-party challenges through to completion, ensuring end-to-end delivery underpinned by ITIL based processes and procedures

Our performance report helps organisations to identify and understand the potential impact of growth and usage of the cloud platform.

We employ a tried and tested transition framework that has evolved and matured over many previous successful transitions and is accredited to ISO20000 standards. For solutions previously managed by other MSPs or in-house, we carry out a managed transition that follows a clearly defined process. Throughout the transition, we work closely with our customers as we move towards the agreed service go-live date.

KCOM experts

Service integration and management /

service desk

Performancereport

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A history of success

“KCOM is an ideal partner for us because of their superior knowledge of deployments and scaling, as well as their deep technical expertise in cloud-based environments”

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

“It was very important for us to be able to work closely with a supplier who would continue to monitor and make improvements to the system, even after deployment”

NHS Business Services Authority

“We recognised that a cloud-based approach was the best way to achieve our objectives, especially ease of implementation and flexibility. KCOM’s ability to build upon and reuse the remaining viable infrastructure was a welcome bonus, both in terms of avoiding additional investment and user training”

Staffordshire Fire and Rescue

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Cloud Service Management

About KCOM

We’re re-imagining the power of cloud-based technologies. With technical expertise and consultancy at the core of what we do, we help enterprises and public-sector organisations transform their IT and communications infrastructure to solve their complex business challenges.

Our expert, highly experienced teams are working with businesses to find new ways of addressing the problems they face. Re-imagining their working practices and environments to achieve scale, flexibility, efficiency and security – all at the velocity that business demands.

Our key values are collaboration, innovation, integration and technical expertise.We’re in it for the long term, working with our customers to achieve shared objectives and treating their problems as our own. We employ some of the smartest minds in the industry and strive for impactful innovation, breaking new ground to enable business change. We make sure that old and new technology work together seamlessly, implementing the next generation of IT without disrupting existing operations.

From cloud migration, to customer contact services, identity management and cloud native innovation, we help organisations in the private and public sector re-imagine IT solutions for a better future.

Re-imagine how.

Get in touch

Email: cloud.team@kcom.comTweet: @KCOMbusinessLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/kcom

www.kcom.com

By combining ingenuity, agility and integrity,KCOM goes beyond the mandate: shaping solutions to meet the demands of emerging and future business challenges.

KCOM believes that the greatest opportunities lie in the unknown. That there is always an alternative, smarter way to achieve business goals.

To re-imagine how.