My first Magazine Nutanix Flash Forward | Page 34

30 Enterprise Cloud For Dummies, Nutanix Special Edition My, how times have changed! Today, hiding things seems to be the norm, and for a good reason. The right solution hides complexity from you. What you’re provided on‐screen is an outcomes‐based paradigm, not a bunch of knobs where you manage inputs. Some companies have realized that they can achieve better ROI by keeping the IT administrative paradigm simple. In the enterprise cloud, every aspect of the management experience must be built around the principle of consumer‐grade design to enable ease of use. Minimize the ramp‐up time needed to learn and become productive on the platform. Automation and analytics The goal is to remove operator involvement from everyday tasks. You need to provide true self‐service capabilities so that users can request their own resources without constantly interrupting IT staff. Self‐service requires high levels of automation so that results can happen without additional IT resources. For example, perhaps a developer can independently build a test/dev environment without working through an operations person. At the same time, high levels of automation mean that you need comprehensive analytics. Why? In essence, the goal of enterprise cloud is to move IT into an exception‐handling function. The routine things should just happen, whether that’s through built‐in machine intelligence mechanisms or user self‐service. When an exception occurs, an IT operations person should be immediately notified to take appropriate action. Automation doesn’t mean IT never touches infrastructure again; it simply means IT needn’t touch infrastructure on a daily basis. Figure 3‐2 helps you envision how the pieces fit together. At the bottom is a universal control plane upon which the enterprise infrastructure — public and private — resides. Above the environments are the three principles of zero‐click administration: consumer grade design, artificial intelligence, and automation/analytics. These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.