Disruption is upending every industry. To ensure your organization can thrive, it needs to be built to change. Modern companies aggressively renew themselves to add value and avoid commoditization. A company that is built to change works hard to understand markets, find the underserved white spaces, and invent ways to serve customers better.
These modern companies get up and running quickly. By saving time and money, they can focus squarely on delivering products and experiences their customers want. A truly agile, built to change organization also puts the customer at the center of everything it does. It innovates and executes at high velocity. And it improves continuously.
That need for speed and customer-centricity is brought into sharp focus when you need to provision Microsoft Azure, open source OpenStack or other software. Here the goal is to rapidly create public or private clouds and bring apps and business solutions to life.
You might be thinking: "That's fine. Azure and OpenStack both have their own provisioning tools built-in. I can use those to quickly create a private or public cloud". However, it's not that simple. Cloud providers like Azure and OpenStack should be interchangeable, depending on what they can offer and at what price. You want the flexibility to switch between cloud providers and between cloud, on-premise and hybrid infrastructure as and when the business requires - with minimal effort and without losing any control. Sometimes you might want to use Azure, OpenStack and maybe another provider at the same time, leveraging the advantages of each provider simultaneously.
Step Forward Uber Orchestration
What is needed is an orchestration layer that remains constant while cloud services like Azure and OpenStack come and go - one that your enterprise owns along with their core apps. It's called Uber Orchestration.
So how does this Uber Orchestrator provide mastery over your core apps, enable you to be in full control and be built for change?
1. Simplify Complexity
Azure and OpenStack offer flexibility at short notice while reducing cost. However, both systems add yet another layer of complexity to an already complex IT landscape, especially as you can spread workloads around clouds and data centers. Uber Orchestration takes care of this complexity. The admin work around dedicating specific tasks to Azure, OpenStack or other cloud providers can be automated to save time and money, allowing IT staff to focus on more demanding work.
Moreover, a tool-agnostic Uber Orchestrator allows you to embrace Azure and OpenStack cloud services as fast as the business demands. You can quickly assimilate potentially disruptive technologies such as Azure and OpenStack and use them as enablers to drive your company's digital transformation. An Uber Orchestrator also fits around your existing toolset, so you do not have to rip and replace existing tools. Services of any complexity can be integrated in a short time frame, thanks to a large and ever-growing library of pre-defined integrations.
2. Maintain Control
As previously noted, Azure and OpenStack have their own individual orchestration and automation capabilities. However, only a single orchestration layer gives you end-to-end control and visibility over all the processes in the cloud or hybrid cloud - irrespective of the cloud provider. An Uber Orchestrator is also suitable for enterprises of any scale, all the way up to those who carry out millions of transactions or automated tasks every day, spread across up to hundreds of thousands of servers. It integrates with ITSM tools, orchestration tools, applications, operating systems, databases, CMDB, web services and many others to ensure integration of your existing environment.
3. Bridge Islands of Automation
The complexity of Azure, OpenStack or other cloud services running concurrently means yet another orchestration layer is needed. However, the orchestration tools offered by Azure and OpenStack will not suffice as they merely handle interactions with that specific cloud environment, while you may want to have the flexibility to switch providers or switch workloads to a different data center or a hybrid cloud configuration.
An Uber Orchestrator solution bridges these 'islands of automation', enabling Azure, OpenStack and other tools to work together cohesively, under one unified automation engine without bias to any particular element of the toolchain. This ensures the smooth-running automation of each tool and, crucially, between different tools.
Make no mistake, the basic provisioning processes in OpenStack and Azure are relatively straightforward. However, the advantages of an Uber Orchestrator - such as from CA Technologies - are end-to-end visibility and support for a 'built to change' strategy. Plus, you have the flexibility to optionally replace point solutions that are just one component of the whole release chain, without having to rebuild the entire chain.
