With complete access to the interfaces of all of the elements used to build a customer solution, service providers can use the entire range of capabilities exposed through those interfaces so that each customer receives a bespoke environment, perfectly suited to meet their requirements. However, this presents challenges across the service provider organization. Each bespoke design must be carefully “documented” so that operations and support teams can understand a solution when they are asked to work on it or for infrastructure teams when work is required on the data center’s power or cooling systems. In the commercial side of the business, tariffs and billing systems must be able to cope with each customer’s individual configuration, and the complexities of carrying out changes reflected in any associated charges.

Standardizing network topologies while still offering customers sufficient flexibility is key to increased speed and efficiency in the service delivery. The introduction of a Cloud Management Platform (CMP) by its nature abstracts the users, both service provider and customer, from the interfaces of the underlying infrastructure. In doing so it brings some constraints to the range of features it exposes from that underlying infrastructure. However, by adding cloud capabilities, a Managed Service Provider can begin to realize these speed and efficiency gains which the enforced “standardization” of the CMP brings.