reducing risk and cost in with a linux infrastructure maturity assessment

Maturing Your Linux

Linux Infrastructure Maturity Assessment


To provide a Linux operating environment that is fully aligned to your technical and business requirements, dramatically reduce deployment time, simplify maintenance, increase stability, and reduce support and management costs.

LIMA Objective


01. Linux – The State of Play

02. Linux - The Current Challenge?

03. What is Required to Mitigate Risk?

04. The Proven Fast Track - LIMA

Structure


Structure

Linux – The State of Play

01.


Linux 201060%

201169%

201273% 80%

1%

80%

20%Windows

Increasing

Decreasing

5 year plan for increased OS investments

The results of this survey were based on responses from 355 IT professionals from organizations with £250 million or more per year in revenues and/or 500+ employees.

Maintaining or increasing Linux to

support cloud

Enterprises increasing use of Linux for mission

critical workloads

Linux Adoption Trends


Stock Exchange use Linux

The automotive trade uses Linux

Movies are made on Linux

Banks use Linux

International Space Station uses Linux

Linux Is Being Used Everywhere

New York LondonSingapore


*Source: LinuxIT Survey (February 2013)

What our customers tell us motivates them to adopt more Open Architectures*

01. Technical agility 04. End-users 07. Reduced costs

02. Cost agility 05. Customers 08. Innovation

03. Cloud 06. Collaboration 09. Quality

Why Linux?


Preferred OS for Tier-1

Applications

Preferred OS for Cloud

Preferred OS for Big Data

Preferred OS Certification for

CV’s

93% of employers plan to hire a

Linux pro in the next 12 months

The results of this survey were based on responses from 850 hiring managers from corporations, small and medium businesses (SMBs), government organizations, and staffing agencies.

What Are The Market Forces Behind Linux Adoption Trends


Structure

Linux – The Current Challenge

02.


OSS empowers organisations to increase innovation, efficiency and competitiveness.

As OSS becomes more pervasive, the need for governance increases exponentially. Open source governance should be embedded in broader governance to insure IT supports the business goals, and appropriately manages IT-related risks and opportunities.

As the use of OSS is growing and maturing, the need for governance has become an integral part of mainstream IT management. OSS is ubiquitous and unavoidable - having a policy against it is impractical and may place you at a competitive disadvantage and more.

Current Challenges For Linux



By 2014 Through 2015

50% of Global 2000 organisations will experience technology cost and security challenges due to lack of Open Source governance

Less than 50% of IT organisations will have effective Open Source governance programs in placeSource: Gartner

Poor governance can expose organisations to potential quality and business risks, putting organisations in a vulnerable position.



However, the very nature of OSS and historically the way in which it has proliferated outside of corporate governance filters now means it suffers from a lack of quality and adherence to governance policies. This makes it appear inferior and riskier than governed IT estates,

explains Curtis.

Slashed IT budgets are forcing organisations to look at cost effective alternatives like OSS whilst delivering quality and innovation. However, lack of knowledge and information has driven organisations to act outside normal governance when adopting Linux and OSS.

Mike Curtis, Executive Director at LinuxIT



Why your organisation will benefit from best practice Linux architectures and systems management

• Linux often entered into the organisation via the backdoor many years ago and has proliferated organically, rather than against a strategy or plan.

• It has not, therefore, been subject to the same rigorus standards or ROI assessments applied across the UNIX and Microsoft estates.

• This very often leads to multiple, undocumented builds of variable standards across numerous Linux distributions.

The common issues



• Some of these distributions do not carry the enterprise assurances demanded of a mission critical environment.

• They are often not optimised for the application in terms of performance or security.

• Without a standardised architecture design and documentation, there is a great deal of risk through dependency on the engineer that built the servers.

• Servers are not built with operational efficiencies in mind, so scaling up capacity is complex, expensive and does not benefit from any economies of scale.

• It also often means they are not regularly updated with security patches and fixes which can introduce risk into the organisation.



• Because they have not been built against best practice, there is often no facility to detect, isolate and correct problems before they impact on the business.

• Very often, security has not been considered to the extent that it should have been when building these servers, particularly in terms of identity management, activity monitoring and virus/malware management.

• Ultimately poor practice around Linux causes an increase in failure rates, security risk and costs while decreasing productivity, operational efficiencies and the value your organisation is able to deliver.

• Customers may not return if they’ve suffered from a bad experience - for example, on an e-commerce or m-commerce website, leading to lost sales opportunities.


Structure

What is Required to Mitigate Risk?

03.


Audit Linux Significance

Perform a thorough audit of your current Linux environments

Including what varieties of distributions, versions and configurations exist and where, why and how they are deployed and managed.

This includes all instances of Linux existing and planned, the hardware it sits on and applications it underpins, and how it integrates into the environment. Be sure to document.


Audit Linux Competencies

Undertake a skills assessment

To establish whether the necessary competencies exist in-house or indeed with your service provider.

Beware, there are very few service providers that have these competencies themselves and contractors simply cannot offer the integrated services approach.


Implement Best Practice

• Manage your systems in such a way that you are aware of problems before your customers are - implement fault management systems that are designed specifically to provide a greater return on investment in your Linux estate.

• Secure your Linux infrastructure with best practice Linux security management that addresses access controls, user activity, data privacy, viruses and malware and denial of service attacks.

• Adopt best practice Linux as the foundation for value recognition further up the stack.


Structure

The Proven Fast Track- LIMA

04.


Evaluate Maturity

Define

Assess

Envision

Transform


Linux Infrastructure Maturity Model

No Linux

Ad-hoc

Controlled

Standardised

Optim

ised

0 1 2 3 4

or none has been identified in the infrastructure

Undocumented strategy

Unpredictable, Uncoordinated

Lack of capability

Reactive

Lack of reporting or MI

No/low budget

No Backups or DREmergent Linux strategy

Basic documentation

Coordinated plans

Some systems integration

No configuration management

Less reactive

Basic management processes

Some cost control

Some monitoring & reporting

Backups and some DR exists



Ad-hoc

No Linux

Controlled

Standardised

Optim

ised

10 2 3 4

Undocumented strategy

Unpredictable, Uncoordinated

Lack of capability

Reactive

Lack of reporting or MI

No/low budget

No Backups or DR



Controlled

No Linux

Standardised

Optim

ised

20 3 4

Emergent Linux strategy

Basic documentation

Coordinated plans

Some systems integration

No configuration management

Less reactive

Basic management processes

Some cost control

Some monitoring & reporting

Backups and some DR exists

Ad-hoc

1



Standardised

No Linux

Controlled

Optim

ised

30 2 4

Mature Strategy Configurations managed

systems integrated

Effective monitoring & reporting with detailed MI Proactive management focus

Consolidated and rationalised

Details SLA’s

Effective backup policy

Effective DR (manual intervention required)

Budget and costs managed

Most risk identified

Capability to deploy new resources in days and hours

Ad-hoc

1



Optimised

No Linux

Controlled

Standardised

40 2 3

Dynamic & flexible strategy

Scalability to accommodate new requirements (deployable in minutes and seconds)

Lean & agile processes

highly integrated

Real time MI fed into KPI’s, Business-based SLA’s (reflects availability & capacity requirements)

Automated systems management

Highest levels of auditability and security

Full BCP and DR systems in place, regularly tested

Fully identifiable cost and risks

Proactively focused on improvement

Ad-hoc

1


LIMA Process

Presentation & Discussion

Assessment

Discovery

Analysis

Reporting

StrategyConsulting

Current StateAnalysis

TransformationEnablement Program

Future StateVision

Scope Phases


Assess Maturity

Groundbreaking Assessment Toolkit Integrated and Holistic Conceptual Framework


Envision Appropriate Level of Maturity

Identify Appropriate Future State of Maturity

...informed by technology and business requirements and strategy

Pragmatically Designed by Qualified Consultants

Standardised

No Linux

Controlled

Optim

ised

30 2 4

Mature Strategy Configurations managed

systems integrated

Effective monitoring & reporting with detailed MI Proactive management focus

Consolidated and rationalised

Details SLA’s

Effective backup policy

Effective DR (manual intervention required)

Budget and costs managed

Most risk identified

Capability to deploy new resources in days and hours

Ad-hoc

1


Transformation

Ambitious but Achievablebalances costs, scope, pace, capabilities, benefits and timing

Gap Analysis

Prioritise Requirements

to Bridge Gap

Design Transformation

Enablement Program

Implement Discrete

Transformation Elements

Reassess Maturity



Reporting Maturity

70 page report designed to inform and advise with degrees of granularity appropriate to different readers


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