5. Organizing for vCloud Operations : 5.3 vCloud Tenant Operations
   
5.3 vCloud Tenant Operations
vCloud Tenant Operations is central to governing, developing, and providing vCloud service offerings. It incorporates the Service Control layer of the vCloud Operations Framework and the Consumer Management component of the IT Business and Consumer Control layer. It also includes an Operations Control layer specifically applied to services. A high level view of Tenant Operations and its ecosystem is shown in the following figure.
Figure 8. Tenant Operations
 
The following roles and responsibilities are involved in vCloud Tenant Operations:
*vCloud Service Leader:
*Provides leadership and guidance to vCloud Tenant Operations members.
*Has a direct line of communication to the executive sponsors.
*Maintains a working relationship with the vCloud Infrastructure Operations leader.
*Actively promotes awareness of tenant operations team to end-user organizations.
*Maintains management level relationships with the tenant operations ecosystem teams.
*Assigns vCloud Service Offering responsibilities to service owners.
*Customer Manager:
*Responsible for establishing and maintaining a working relationship with end-user organizations.
*Determines and collects business requirements for end-user organization service offerings. Works with the designated vCloud Service Owner to translate the business requirements into a vCloud Service Definition.
*Works with end-user organizations to understand project service offering demand.
*Responsible for end-user organization issue escalation.
*vCloud Service Owner:
*Responsible for overall definition and delivery of the vCloud service offering.
*Works with vCloud Consumer Management to collect end-user requirements and translate them into a vCloud service definition.
*Works with IT Financial Management to determine a price for the vCloud service offering, and determine whether multiple prices are appropriate if the service offering is provided in multiple service tiers.
*Provides the required information to Service Catalog Management to correctly set up the service catalog offering.
*Develops Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Operating Level Agreements (OLA) for the vCloud service offerings for which they are responsible. Also, negotiates updated SLAs and OLAs as the service offering is updated.
*Leads development and enhancement efforts and works with vCloud Service Architects on the vCloud service offerings.
*Responsible for Tier 3 support and escalations for the vCloud service offerings.
*Makes sure that the service levels are met through corresponding OLAs with vCloud Infrastructure Operations.
*Regularly monitors and reports on service level attainment for the vCloud service offerings.
*vCloud Service Portfolio Manager:
*Develops and maintains vCloud Service Portfolio policy, including criteria for acceptance and rejection.
*Manages the portfolio of vCloud services and works with IT management to develop the vCloud service offering strategy that determines what services are included in the portfolio. Makes sure that the service offering strategy aligns with IT strategy.
*Proactively identifies potential vCloud service offerings based on demand information gathered from vCloud Consumer Managers or other sources, such as requests coming in through the Service Desk.
*vCloud Service Catalog Manager
*Manages the vCloud service offering catalog and makes sure that all of the information contained in the catalog is accurate and up-to-date.
*Maintains the consumer self-service catalog portal information.
*vCloud Service Architect
*Defines a vCloud service offering based on the requirements provided by the vCloud service owner after it is determined that the service offering is to be included in the vCloud Service Portfolio.
*Translates vCloud business requirements into technical requirements that can be used to architect a vCloud service offering.
*vCloud Service Developer:
*Works with the vCloud Service Architect to understand technical requirements for the vCloud service offering.
*Works with the application development team to incorporate custom or third-party applications into vCloud service offerings as needed.
*Develops new vCloud service offering components into blueprints, or constructs blueprints from existing vCloud service offering components for automatic provisioning.
*Develops and maintains vCloud service offering blueprint documentation.
*Works with vCloud Service Analyst and Application Development to define service monitoring.
*Works with vCloud Service Analyst and Application Development to establish automated event remediation wherever possible and appropriate.
*Works with vCloud Service Analyst and Application Development to make sure security, operations, and chargeback metering capabilities are built into vCloud service offerings.
*Provides support for Tier 3 vCloud service offerings.
*Develops service-related and service integration workflows
*Develops customizations for and maintains the online consumer self-service catalog capability.
*vCloud Service QA:
*Develops test plans and tests and accepts services as ready for release to production, regardless of whether the services were developed in-house, by third parties, or are SaaS-based. Performs post-release validation of services.
*Develops test plans and tests and accepts service-related and service integration workflows as ready for release to production as well as post-release validation.
*Develops test plans, and tests and accepts on-line consumer self-service catalog capabilities as ready for release to production. Also performs post-release validation.
*Responsible for making sure that service desk personnel are trained to support the services that are put into production.
*vCloud Service Analyst:
*Develops and maintains service capacity forecasts.
*Responsible for the day-to-day capacity and resource management of services.
*Works with the IT security team to verify that services align with IT security and compliance policies. Assists in developing automated compliance policies.
*Initiates requests for new or expanded service capacity.
*Assists with Tier 3 support for issues related to tenant-deployed services.
*Monitors and analyzes service performance, availability, usage, and other operational analytics.
*Verifies that the NOC is able to support released services.
*Works with service QA to release services into production and coordinates any required change management. This responsibility decreases over time as the release process is automated and services consisting of previously released components are considered preapproved from a change management perspective.
*vCloud Service Administrator:
*Administers tools used by vCloud Tenant Operations to govern, develop, and operate services.
*Administers customer vCloud environments.
*Administers customer vApps and applications contained in vApps, if offered as a service. This is not usually applicable for development and test customers.
These roles and responsibilities can be satisfied by a single person or multiple people. The decision to employ one or multiple people depends on the number of vCloud service offerings. For a new vCloud environment, initial staffing should include the following roles and responsibilities:
*A single Consumer Manager.
*A single vCloud Service Portfolio Manager who is also responsible for vCloud Service Catalog management.
*One or more vCloud Service Owners, each responsible for vCloud service development and working with other teams to make sure that the agreed vCloud service levels for their vCloud service offering or suite of vCloud service offerings are maintained. The number of vCloud Service Owners depends on the number and complexity of the services to be offered as well as the rate of service offering change.
*A single vCloud Service Architect.
*One or more vCloud Service Developers, depending on the number and complexity of the services to be offered and the rate of service offering change.