In most IT organizations, there is mis-alignment and friction between the application development and infrastructure groups. When application developers or project managers request data center services (host a new application, set up a server, provision storage capacity, etc.), each request is treated as a one-off project - even if that same request is made dozens or hundreds of times.
Without standardization, this process can be very time-consuming and expensive. It starts with a cycle of approvals, requirements gathering, and architecture reviews. Without a centralized way to track and prioritize demand, IT resources may be allocated poorly and status updates can be a "black hole". And although virtual machines are less costly and faster to provision than physical servers, virtualization technology alone doesn't solve the problem.
The result is costly delays that exacerbate the tension between application development and data center teams. And with providers like Amazon EC2 offering cloud computing within minutes for pennies per hour, business and project leaders ask "why does IT take so long and cost so much"?
With the newScale FrontOffice™ Suite, you can deliver more cost-effective, flexible, responsive and cloud-like data center operations:
- Define and publish standardized infrastructure offerings in a Service Catalog;
- Enable self-service with an easy-to-use "e-commerce" ordering experience;
- Govern approvals and orchestrate multi-vendor automated provisioning;
- Ensure operational compliance and track the lifecycle for workloads;
- Manage consumption and costs, with visibility into usage and a bill of services.
Most data center automation solutions are focused on the back-office tasks of provisioning and systems management. But these tools won't help define standard service configurations, offer a true self-service experience, link server requests to the underlying business justification, speed the requirements gathering and approval cycle time for services, track demand and workloads, or manage costs.
newScale's vision is to provide end-to-end software solutions for what industry analysts refer to as the "front office" — to effectively run IT as a business — complementing IT's traditional "back office" operational tools.
newScale FrontOffice™ Suite
| Products | newScale PortfolioCenter™ | newScale RequestCenter® | newScale LifecyleCenter™ | newScale DemandCenter™ |
| Description | Service portfolio management and IT-business relationship management | Self-service request management and automated fulfillment | Lifecycle management for service items and workloads | Demand management and cost management for IT services |
| Foundational Elements | newScale Service Catalog Foundation™ Service design, configuration, and administration |
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| newScale Service Reporting™ In-depth service measurement, analysis, and key performance indicators |
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| newScale Libraries of Service Catalog Templates Pre-built, configurable, and re-usable service content |
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| newScale Service Integration Hub™ Open integration framework and integration adapters |
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The newScale PortfolioCenter™ application will enable your IT infrastructure teams to quickly design and market an online "IT brochure" of standardized service offerings, with tiers of service, pricing, and optional included components.
With newScale RequestCenter®, you can rapidly deploy a self-service portal across your entire data center infrastructure — including physical servers, virtual machines, storage, networking and even cloud services - and enable automated fulfillment of service requests.
Using newScale LifecycleCenter™, your IT staff can more effectively manage the entire lifecycle of any requested service - from ordering and fulfillment of the initial request to the recovery or de-provisioning of unused or unnecessary assets.
And if your organization is ready to embrace demand planning and billing for your data center services or private cloud, newScale DemandCenter™ provides capabilities to track consumption and manage budgets.
Since all newScale products are designed to work seamlessly together on a common foundation, your investment in training, services, and integration with external systems is leveraged across the entire suite. In fact, newScale Service Catalog solutions can be applied across your entire enterprise — from data center to the workplace, for desktop and other end user services, as well as your infrastructure services.
To learn more, you can go to our Literature Request section to download the Data Sheet for the newScale FrontOffice Suite for the Virtual Data Center.
