We were recently invited by a customer to share on how we do managed services at Kloud, particularly around Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
During the conversation, I landed on an analogy that best articulated how we envision delivering service through the Cloud computing model.
I thought I would share that analogy.
Simply put service is a means of delivering value to customers, minus all the overhead of actually operating the service.
With that in mind let’s think about the service coin in terms of value in the economy called the cloud.
A service coin has three sides to it.
The first side of the coin can be known as the service management layer. It’s how the service will actually be delivered from a management perspective.
The framework that gets implemented, how we respond to demands, how we ensure availability, Incident Management, Change Management, Problem Management and various key processes that ensure services are being delivered.
The second side of the coin can be known as the operational layer. It’s how the service gets engineered.
We spend a lot of time at Kloud investing into this layer, instilling operational run books amongst other initiatives that will provide comprehensive steps on how to successfully run the service. They serve as an open book on how we engineer the service in the complexities of our customer’s environments.
At this layer, we will find;
Checklists, configuration documentation, patching cycles and so forth. It reads like a novel, well more of a technical manual to be precise. Our talented engineers love it.
Last but not least there is a third side of the coin, it’s actually the side on which it all rests, this can be known as the adoption layer. It’s where we ultimately take people on a journey on how to use the technology. I think it’s here that we find that a shift has taken place. People have started to explore technology. The Mobile age has stimulated this shift. The slogan “There is an app for that” could well be the tag line that has encouraged end users to explore the tools that are available to them.
Yes, some require hand holding but on the whole if we foster an adoption strategy that encourages people to explore what they have at their disposal we just might take productivity to a whole new level. Yes, we might have some other challenges, but these challenges are the one’s worth taking.
The adoption layer is potentially the most important layer in terms of service success, it’s what will introduce the value and actually introduce the coin into the organisations economy. Resulting in net productivity and the ultimate effect which is value.
The coin’s ultimate purpose is a medium for exchange. In the context of the service coin, it’s purpose is to ensure healthy exchange between the three sides.
One has to be prepared to spin the coin to get that perfect pattern.
Finally, the coin has an imprint; this is the part that signifies who the Coin belongs to. In our case, the Service Coin ultimately belongs to our customer. It’s their service, they entrust us to run the service, it’s of tremendous value to them. We get to hold it for the time that they allow us to.
Judging by the response from our client I think it resonated with what had always just been in his pocket. The Service Coin.