Thymos introduces three open source service models (English)

Checklist for choosing an
open source service model

  • Which levels of service does your customer demand?
  • Do you need 24x7 support or do office hours (8x5) suffice? 
  • What internal resources do you have available for service and support?
  • Do your customers demand
    your team to focus on core
    business?
  • Can you meet the demanded times to market for adding production workloads ?
  • Do you feel your team has  enough time available to design the right open
    infrastructure?
  • Do you have budget to hire external engineers for the implementation and support?
  • Is your team trained and up to speed before it’s delivery to service the new platform?
 

Open Source Solutions

Open source solutions are at the heart of open infrastructures, driving IT
innovations. Trying to incorporate innovations, while maintaining high service
levels in production as well as supporting your customers in their digitization
process, can be a challenge.

 To ensure the success of your open source IT infra, it’s important to select the
right service model.

Thymos has been supporting open infrastructures for years, providing
variants of these basic service models

Three service models

  • Software Subscriptions
  • Support Services
  • Managed Services

These service models all come with their own advantages and disadvantages.
The key difference lies in the distribution of responsibilities: with each step,
from subscriptions to managed services, responsibilities are distributed
externally to the supporting company.

An experienced and suitably staffed IT team might retain responsibility for the
maintainance of the open infrastructure. Additionally, subscriptions
provide support by the software provider when facing issues in the code. If
additional support for issues related to the specific usage and configuration of
your infrastructure is needed ‘Support Services’ will fit best. If your team
needs to shift focus from the infrastructure, is understaffed or underqualified
to maintain the open instructure, shifting full responsibility to an external
managed services party, will be right for your organization. Of course, later on
you can choose to shift responsibility back to your team.

Cloud   

Subscriptions 

With subscriptions, you have access to a global network of technical support engineers. This expertise can virtually extend your in-house  expertise and gives you support coverage on the software itself, which includes: Support for related software packages/guests, phone and web ticket support, support documentation and knowledge base, diagnosis support, bug reports and fixes. ‘Software Subscriptions’ in contrast to ‘Support Services’ and ‘Managed Services’ only cover the operation of the software. You can choose to get ‘Subscriptions’ for all or some of the open infra software components such as the operating system of the nodes, the open network OS, the open source distribution, the monitoring and/or orchestration tools. 

 

Stack 

 

Support Services

When ‘Support Services’ on the OpenStack infrastructure are provided, more responsibility is given to the service provider. The most important difference is that the earlier discussed ‘Subscription’ makes sure that the software itself is operating in the right way, while ‘Support Services’ makes sure that the infrastructure with the software on top is operating in the right way. Providing hands-on support until the ticket is resolved and to work closely together with your team to keep the open infrastructure running.

The main benefit of this ‘Support Services’ model is that you will need a limited amount of engineers and internal knowledge to ensure the working of the open infrastructure, and that the implementation of a production ready open infrastructure is done quickly.

 

Managed   

Managed Services

With ‘Managed Services’ the responsibility for the complete open infrastructure is transferred fully to the service proder. To ensure the environment performs and is up-and-running during the agreed service terms, additional tasks are executed by the contractor. Such as monitoring, daily health checks, pro active support and scheduled updates. The main benefit of the ‘Managed Services’ model is that you don’t need resources to setup or maintain the OpenStack infrastructure. Your team can focus on supporting your core business and don’t have to worry about the infrastructure. Just as you wouldn’t worry about the infrastructure of a public cloud. 

 

 

Shift up or shift down 

With Thymos it is possible to shift up or down from your current service model. Let’s assume you acquire a fully managed open infrastucture with ‘Managed Services’. You can train your team during the contract term to maintain the infrastructure themselves. If your team is ready, you can shift down to ‘Support Services’ or ‘Subscriptions’. The other way around is possible as well.

For example when a company maintains an open infrastructure with ‘Subscriptions’ but the company wants to use the infrastructure engineers for another part of their business, Thymos is able to take over the support of the open infrastructure using ‘Support Services’ or ‘Managed Services’. 

  Up and Down