Technology company CSC has announced its deployment of a cloud lifecycle management tool in an effort to provide its customers with a self-service web portal aimed at controlling multiple cloud models.
With AMP recently announcing its plans to use CSC for its move to the cloud, CSC’s CTO, Bob Hayward, said the move will expand CSC’s cloud capability.
“It’s a natural progression for us from our perspective,” he said. “From outsourcing to managed services to cloud, it’s really an evolutionary path that’s not particularly radically new.”
Hayward said a close working relationship with BMC allowed for a more collaborative cloud based solution to emerge during the development stage of the project.
“It wasn’t the ‘take a piece of software and install it’ [attitude],” he said. “It was very much about them working collaboratively with us to adjust the software to the needs we were identifying.”
While CSC has a close relationship with BMC, Hayward said he initially looked to other cloud providers before choosing to deploy the BMC solution.
“We talked to a few other companies and we looked at other offerings out there,” he said. “I’d say the fact that BMC’s an independent company and that they aren’t associated with any of our competitors helped.”
The lifecycle management and web portal system, which includes a policy-driven service catalogue and personalised service offerings, will allow CSC’s customer base greater access to services, with Hayward saying that the software provides the front-end for its customers.
Flexibility was vital for Hayward when developing the cloud offering with BMC, with the CTO saying that he was able to incorporate multiple cloud platforms into the one piece of software.
“It would be very easy to build a solution that only worked for an x86 platform that only worked for infrastructure as a service, and we thought this was a multi-year transition and something we’ll probably do for multiple customers,” he said.
“We didn’t want to be narrowed in on a very specific environment and a very narrow solution. We wanted to have something that was a bit more holistic and heterogeneous.”
While the deployment took around six months for CSC, Hayward said the offering would be easier for other organisations to install now that the software has been launched.
CSC’s deployment comes as its CIO, Ben Patey, recently revealed that the company had deployed a social networking platform, that is still engaging some 55,000 employees a year after its deployment.