CIF launches Operational Management Special Interest Group

The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) has today announced the launch of a Special Interest Group (SIG) to focus on cloud operations and management.

The group, which is to be chaired by Abiquo’s Vice President of Products, Lee Fisher, has been established to help cloud providers and end users alike develop cloud strategies that better define service goals and success criteria, plot migration paths for legacy technology and processes, and identify agnostic and future proof technologies.

Prior to joining Abiquo, Lee has been involved within the IT industry for over 20 years, working for leading technology firms Nokia Siemens Networks, SecurityMob and McAfee Solutions. Commenting on the new group, Lee said: “The benefits of cloud are proven but the majority of businesses fail to properly integrate cloud services into their broader IT ecosystems, effectively keeping cloud at arm’s length. The cloud allows for whole new approaches to business to be developed through linking the company’s own operations together with services provided by third parties, and, as such, deserves a place at the heart of IT operations.

“By establishing this group, we aim to develop and champion best practice for managing the complexity of a distributed IT estate which involves integrating multiple, disparate technologies and legacy process disciplines that are necessary to build, migrate to and operate in cloud services. We will also look to discuss, develop and provide guidance towards the appropriate steps that business should follow to ensure a seamless transition of today's traditional process driven IT controls into a future automated, frictionless cloud era. Simply put, to better operate the cloud."

Andy Burton, Chair of CIF, added: “More and more we expect to see organisation juggling a combination of on-premises, hosted, SaaS and private/hybrid cloud solutions, so good governance must be a component of any IT strategy. Clarity of controls, end-to-end monitoring, alerting, reporting and operational transparency are key to effective IT delivery to ensure that in driving up efficiency and driving down costs, that new risks are not created due to lack of skills or tools to manage the new order of IT services. As such this SIG cannot come soon enough to provide a platform for market collaboration and best practice advice.”