The attraction of cloud computing – on-demand applications and services delivered by a highly scalable and cost-efficient infrastructure – is powerful, particularly in today’s cost-sensitive, services-oriented IT organization.

As many IT vendors struggle to create “cloud solutions,” savvy enterprises are already using BMC Software’s (NYSE:BMC) Business Service Management (BSM) platform to realize the benefits of the cloud using the tools, technologies, and processes in place in their current environments.

BMC is working with IT organizations and service providers to bring the same level of service management capabilities, automation and control expected from their physical and virtual environments to their cloud initiatives. These customers are finding that the core capabilities found in BSM – including Service Automation, Service Support, Service Assurance, Service Optimization, and the Atrium platform – can be used to do the following:

• Establish private clouds as the next generation of automated and virtualized data centers
• Establish a unified, actionable “service catalog” for internal and external IT services, associated service-level agreements and costs
• Set and manage tiered service levels for a diverse cloud customer set
• Provide self-service request and fulfillment of cloud resources and services to users
• Automate the orchestration, provisioning, service changes, monitoring and management of cloud resources
• Automate workload management, including real-time provisioning of virtual machines
• Accurately forecast and track the cost of delivering services in the cloud
• Maintain a “single source of truth” in a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) even as the cloud environment evolves

Today, most enterprises and analysts view private clouds as the highest-impact starting point. According to leading independent industry analyst firm Forrester Research, “Many enterprise infrastructure and operations professionals are taking this [cloud computing] concept in-house and building their own internal clouds… Cloud computing is compelling, but bypassing IT Ops can be dangerous.” (“Deliver Cloud Benefits Inside Your Walls,” Forrester Research, Inc., April 2009).

Enabling private clouds creates the very real risk that IT expenses will simply shift from hardware to operations, rather than achieving the desired across-the-board spending reductions. Additional issues such as consistently following standard processes, achieving scalability and maintaining compliance often present challenges for customers who have frequently just achieved this kind of operational maturity in their physical IT operations. BSM brings the rigor of service management to cloud computing, effectively neutralizing these risks and ensuring customers can safely and economically proceed with strategic cloud initiatives.

“There is a clear path to value for cloud computing, and effective IT management is the key to success,” said Kia Behnia, BMC’s chief technology officer. “BMC’s BSM platform drives management uniformity, automation, process control and compliance for managing services across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures, mitigating risk as organizations adopt cloud computing principles.”

Cloud computing is deeply rooted in virtualization. Large organizations considering moving applications and infrastructure to a private cloud environment must first implement and address the management challenges of virtualized IT infrastructures. The BSM platform delivers a proven and service-centric approach to the deployment and ongoing management of virtualization. Built upon Information Technology Information Library® (ITIL®) best practices, BSM enables IT administrators to plan, deliver, operate and govern virtualized infrastructures, private clouds and the services lifecycle as a natural extension of existing management processes and policies. The lifecycle extends from resource identification through provisioning, configuration and compliance, as well as monitoring and asset reallocation.

While enterprises build out their private cloud solutions, service providers continue to extend the capabilities and flexibility of public clouds. “Over time, we expect to see more hybrid solutions that mix cloud resources,” Behnia continued. “This will require management solutions that can integrate and oversee all resources. To benefit from the availability, flexibility and agility of public clouds as well as the control and security provided by on-premise datacenters, customers need unified, platform-based management solutions.”

For more information on how BMC is leveraging Amazon Web Services, read the press release titled, BMC Software Leverages Amazon Web Services to Simplify Deployment and Management of Cloud Environments.

For more information about BMC’s cloud computing offerings, visit: http://www.bmc.com/cloud.