The OBS-Cycloid story

Managing the unmanageable

With over 120,000 virtual machines under management, 2,400 DevOps experts on the books, and 70 data centers over 5 locations, it’s not surprising that Pierre-Emmanuel Klotz, head of managed services at Orange Cloud for Business and master of understatement, describes the situation as a “delicate, time-consuming” puzzle. How do you unify something that is, by its very nature, hugely varied? More importantly, how do you do that while keeping both internal stakeholders and external clients secure and productive and the looming specter of fast-moving competition at bay? That’s exactly the challenge Orange Cloud for Business faced when they sought to streamline and optimize the system underlying their CMP.

 Highly-complex tools ecosystem

 Large, spread out team with varying definitions of “DevOps”

 All solutions must befit internal and external stakeholders

Out of complexity comes clarity

Orange Cloud for Business put time and effort into researching a solution that would allow them to unify the herculean effort invested in supporting and providing their ecosystem. A key consideration is that they are answerable to many customers, many of whom are unwilling or unable to change their tools or workflow. OBS’s challenge was to optimize the system without jeopardizing the relationship with their valued clients.

Your org, your tools, your way

Everyone knows the DevOps and cloud tool ecosystem is incredibly complex, but even within that caveat, OBS’s situation was especially intricate. Between internal tools and workflows and external requirements, OBS needed a solution that accommodated existing tools - or whatever tools their customers want to use - instead of forcing them and everyone else to adapt to a new set of tools, standards, and solutions.

Space for everyone at the DevOps table

And not just space - to ensure that everyone could positively contribute to the OBS project, the company needed to find a solution that would unite and guide, even when the people they were uniting had widely varying roles and expertise. But OBS didn’t simply want their employees to achieve, they wanted them to excel. To do this, they implemented a CMP skill center, bringing together multiple technologies around provisioning, monitoring, and securing. At the center, these technologies are anchored by Cycloid.

For a CMP, governance is key

Ensuring governance within an organization is one thing, but when you’re also a CMP, there are now two levels of governance required - one for those working inside the organization, and another to ensure compliance and security among your clients. Orange Cloud for Business approached this by ensuring governance could be built into their solution of choice - both in the platform they would use and the services offered via such a platform.

 Users bring the tools they are most comfortable with

 Cycloid is the center point that unites diverse users

 Governance can be built throughout the Cycloid ecosystem

Teams are 4x faster

Orange Cloud for Business estimates that they can move approximately 4 times faster thanks to Cycloid. For a huge, complex organization, this improvement is revolutionary and clear evidence of how their Cycloid-supported internal platform rollout will lead to improved future turnover. As those at the coalface know, fast businesses thrive, while those who lag, fail.

Reduced human error

Playing a huge role in speed gains, the qualitative improvement that Cycloid brings to the Orange Cloud for Business ecosystem allows them to avoid human error, paving the way for infinite reproducibility and solid automation. Once automatic, error-free pipelines have been rolled out, they can be deployed - again automatically - against all your infrastructures, whether that’s two machines or two hundred and twenty thousand.

Increased customer visibility

When you’re responsible for the well-being of your customer infras, there’s an extra reason to look for 360º visibility throughout your solution. Thanks to Cycloid, Orange Cloud for Business has access to their customers’ interfaces and can manipulate them safely to provide support and troubleshooting. With clear visibility into their client’s actions, they can potentially accompany them and, if there’s an incident, immediately see, understand, and resolve what has happened.

 Teams are 4x faster

 Reduce human error

 Visibility & improved customer service