Gartner Research

Self-Service Provisioning for Internal Clouds: Buy or Build?

Published: 06 September 2011

ID: G00214664

Analyst(s): Alessandro Perilli

Summary

A fundamental requirement of internal clouds is the provision of on-demand self-service. Provisioning portals and IT service catalogs help reduce operating expense, thus providing benefits for both IT and organization users. IT can reduce architecture approval cycles and provisioning time, while users benefit from increased productivity and easier access to IT services. However, in a market with many immature products, IT must decide whether to buy a commercial solution or build a homegrown self-service platform. In this assessment, Research Director Alessandro Perilli reviews alternatives and provides guidance on how to engineer the internal cloud provisioning stack.

Table Of Contents

Summary of Findings

Analysis

  • Self-Service Provisioning Role and Architecture
  • The Provisioning Experience: Infrastructure-Centric or Service-Centric?
    • Infrastructure-Centric Provisioning
    • Service-Centric Provisioning
    • Both Approaches Are Important
  • Buy or Build?
    • The "Buy" Path
    • The "Build" Path
  • Six Main Alternatives
    • Buy an "All-in-One" Cloud Management Platform
    • Buy a Dedicated Provisioning Portal
    • Build a Homegrown Solution Based on an Orchestrator
    • Build a Homegrown Solution Based on a Cloud Management Framework
    • Build a Homegrown Solution by Repurposing Existing Tools
    • Build a Homegrown Solution From Scratch

Comparison

The Details

  • Self-Service Provisioning Workflow
  • Self-Service Provisioning Enablers

Conclusion

Recommended Reading

Revision History

Notes

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