Symptoms Automation Framework (SAF) for Cloud Business Alignment

1. Symptoms Automation Framework (SAF) for Cloud Business Alignment OASIS SAF TC Working Draft 06 06 August2010

2. Cloud Management Challenge Human experts in specific IT infrastructure and business domains possess substantial knowledge about prevention, remediation, and optimization of systems based on business conditions. The Cloud breaks down opportunities for these experts (often residing in multiple cloud consumers and providers) to collaborate in order to effectively capture, combine, and leverage this silo-ed knowledge across their various multiple domains in an automated fashion. Thus, while cloud providers will be able to provide standardized management interfaces to control their services, business consumers will be unable to adequately automate and obtain value for their business using these management interfaces. The SAF is a catalog-based XML collaborative knowledge framework that is designed to address these challenges by automating appropriate responses to changing business conditions and integrating contributions from diverse domains. SAF has applicability to cloud computing (using the SAF Cloud Profile) as well as many other architectures and disciplines.

3. What is SAF? • An information model and set of architectural roles • Describing, recognizing, and reacting to multi-domain problems/opportunities • Enabling vendors, integrators, and organizations to codify their best practices • And share/automate them in a machine readable, interoperable way

4. What is SAF? • Information Model • Symptom • An event indicating that a business condition is present • Syndrome • A rule identifying meaningful pattern of Symptoms • Protocol • An action defining a template to create a Prescription • Prescription • a concrete instance of a Protocol • Typically used for remediation, diagnostics, prevention, or optimization

5. What is SAF? • Architectural Roles (slightly simplified) • Syndrome and Protocol Catalog (a.k.a. SAF catalog) • Domains collaborate by contributing to this repository • Diagnostician • Recognizes conditions by matching Symptoms to Syndromes in the SAF catalog. Identifies related Protocols. • Practitioner • Uses Protocols to take actions by creating Prescriptions • Case Manager • Acts as the coordinator of the framework. Directs the actions of the above-mentioned roles as it keeps track of the of Symptoms and the diagnose-prescribe cycle.

6. Cloud/Business Alignment Scenario • Online sales company (and Cloud Consumer) • Multi-domain conditions indicate upcoming sales surge • More web site browsing (operations) • A call from a regional sales manager (field organization) • A small increase in online sales system (accounting) • Media endorsement (marketing) • Lots of buzz in blogs (RSS feeds – independent service) • Problem (business perspective) • Scattered, un-integrated, unleveraged knowledge • What business conditions are relevant and when? • How do we integrate diverse knowledge? • How do we rapidly respond to changing conditions?

7. Business/Cloud Alignment Scenario • Business/IT alignment... How did that work out in the past? Not well! • Problem (general IT perspective) • Widely distributed business/IT knowledge • How can business/IT collaborate, analyze & respond quickly? • It’s much more difficult in the cloud! • Simple challenge in this scenario: adjust cloud capacity across multiple systems and providers as needed by each provider... quickly, automatically, appropriately • We can’t meet this challenge!Cloud capacity is not ready to handle the sudden rise! Business unresponsive... Lost profit... • Let’s revisit the scenario with SAF...

8. consumer provider A Cloud consumer wants to do business with a Cloud provider. They will use SAF to bridge their knowledge domains. Consumer will also use SAF to merge data from the many different business aspects. catalogue * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

9. consumer provider catalogue Let’s collaborate to understand each other better! Cool! I’ll provide a SAF catalogue where we can link your business concepts to my cloud operations * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

10. consumer provider catalogue I will provide an action (Protocol) template that modifies server capacity –since I know how to do this. * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

11. consumer provider catalogue I also have the ability to emit Symptoms about server outages. I’ll add patterns (Syndromes) to the catalogue to match these types of Symptoms (similar to events) . * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

12. consumer provider catalogue And since I know my business, I will provide a Syndrome to identify important business conditions For example, I will merge descriptions (Syndromes) from all my departments and external sources pertaining to my sales... ...so that I can identify potential sudden increase in my sales! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

13. consumer provider catalogue Finally, I will associate Syndromes to the actions (Protocols) that you have provided. In other words, map business decisions to desired responses. For example, if my “Sales Increase Syndrome” is triggered, I’ll invoke your Protocol to increase my server capacity! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

14. consumer provider catalogue practitioner diagnostician I work for the provider, and I will be “implementing” Prescriptions relevant to him. I work for the consumer, and I’ll be constantly and iteratively checking incoming data (Symptoms) to see if I identify some important business condition (Syndrome)! For example, I will be arranging to increase server capacity whenever needed. *Although the Diagnostician is supplied by the Consumer in this example to show the flexibility of SAF, it will typically be supplied by the Provider along with Catalogue authoring tools, so as to increase the service value provided to the customers * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

15. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis This is the operations department. We will automatically be emitting low level Symptoms with web site browsing rates This is the sales department. We will periodically emit Symptoms with the rate of shop sales This is marketing. I will manually emit Symptoms over email or phone whenever near-term our forecasts change. *Some Symptoms will be low level mechanically produced (web site hits) while other high level ones can be derived or be manually emitted (marketing calls). Some emitters may not even know they participate in SAF –merely sending data or notifications around! I am a contractor service provider. I analyze news and RSS feeds and send statistics on the ‘buzz’/hype about the company * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

16. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis with all the roles introduced, and the Catalogue collaboratively filled in by Consumer and Provider, this merged environment begins to operate iteratively under normal business conditions, when at some point an interesting situation appears... * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

17. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis Web site browsing has gone up! Call: CEO interviewed and endorsed on CNN! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

18. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis Store sales have upward trend There is lots of talk/buzz/hype about the company in the blogosphere! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

19. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis Combining all this info (Symptoms), I found the business condition (Syndrome) of potential sudden, large increase in sales! I’ll use the relevant Protocol to create and send a Prescription to the practitioner to increase server capacity! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

20. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis I know how to increase capacity cause I run in the Cloud Provider’s infrastructure. I can be anything from a script to a BPEL process. It doesn’t matter. * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

21. consumer provider catalogue operations practitioner marketing diagnostician sales 3rd part news analysis Here you are, I’ve provided some more servers proactively so you can accommodate the anticipated growth! * These are roles in the framework, not necessarily people! They will usually be software entities. ** The Catalogue, Diagnostician, and Practitioner(s) could be implemented in various ways, e.g. Provider provides the Catalogue and Practitioner, and the Consumer the Diagnostician.

22. SAF for Cloud Business Alignment • With SAF • Consumers can map their business conditions to Cloud management operations • It becomes possible to blend information from many domains and for automation to act on that information

23. SAF for Cloud Business Alignment • Benefits for cloud consumer • Improved operations and understanding by merging info from different business aspects • Better positioned to accommodate sudden business changes (also threats, etc.) • Cloud provider actions maps naturally to business requirements of consumer • Benefits for cloud provider • Significant differentiator and value added capabilities • Automated and improved responses to meet changing customer needs

24. Invitation • More use cases for SAF Cloud Profiles • Cloud business conditions (for Syndromes) • Cloud provider interfaces (for Protocols) • So we can map to diverse provider capabilities • Validation of our Cloud use cases • Use cases for other SAF profiles • e.g., identity, policy management, QoS, financial, etc. • Join the OASIS SAF Technical Committee

25. Information and Contacts • TC Chairs (contacts) • Stavros Isaiadis, Fujitsu (SAF TC Co-chair)Stavros.Isaiadis@uk.fujitsu.com • Jeff Vaught, CA (SAF TC Co-chair)vauje01@ca.com • OASIS SAF Technical Committee • http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/saf/ • Current Working Documents • http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=saf