Introduction:

The competence among several consumer product companies which look for cost reduction, had triggered the adoption of cloud on demand computing services. However, recent studies show that adopting computing services do not ensure a cost reduction, and even more, an increase of costs in IT areas is being observed. This investigation has the hypothesis that to attain the cost reduction objectives when computing services are migrated to the cloud, is needed to develop IT Management Capabilities, where these capabilities are not identified with the specific purpose of cost reduction in the current models or frameworks and these capabilities do not exist or are partially implemented in the consumer product companies. Therefore, the objective of this study is “identify those management capabilities of the computing services that support cost reduction and are described in a holistic model designed to this end” and implement it in the consumer product Industry applying a “Use case” study.

Method:

The first step was to design a diagnostic tool of IT Service Management Capabilities, where the main inputs came from standards, guidelines and best practices of IT Service Management Framework, identified in the readings. Second step was to confirm the selected capabilities by the application of surveys to subject matter experts of cloud technology. Then, the method Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to validate the relation between “capabilities and cost reduction”. Finally, the Capability Maturity Model Institute (CMMI) model was used to define the maturity level required by each capability.

Results:

The main result was the identification of twelve key capabilities of computing service management in the cloud, which need a “Managed” maturity level according to CMMI to attain cost reduction. With this result a Holistic Management Model was developed, including a diagnosis tool for identifying actual and future capabilities level. A cost reduction in operating costs was obtained of 6.2% in 6 months. Also, a cost reduction in personnel was obtained, who were moved to another productive activities.

Discussion or Conclusion:

This model can help the consumer products companies to identify its readiness and the capabilities they possess to manage computing services in the cloud. This model allows to provide recommendations for closing the gaps identified, that impacts positively the cost reduction.

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