Over the past 2 months  or so, I've been blogging on Cisco Domain Ten^SM, Cisco Service's framework to guide you on your path to data center and cloud transformation. We are just over half way through the discussion on Cisco Domain Ten, so I thought it worthwhile, especially for anyone reading about this concept for the first time, to write a quick refresher and summary of the articles I've written so far.  So forgive the brevity and please do dive into the links/URLs for more information if indeed you missed these articles first time. And if you've read every article -thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnLFReBBV7c

I started back in December, with our launch of Cisco Domain Ten, where I set the focus for my series of articles as cloud transformation.  With Domain One: Facilities and Infrastructure, I then made the case that cloud requires standardized, extensible infrastructure as one of the requirements to enable the "on demand" nature of cloud.  With Domain 2: Virtualization and Abstraction, I then noted that a hypervisor was a necessary but not sufficient addition to build a cloud.

Domain 3: Automation and Orchestration, and Domain 4: The User Portal, are areas I am heavily involved in, with Cisco Intelligent automation for cloud (and more recently with our Cloupia acquisition).  With Domain 3: Automation and Orchestration, I implored that you spend at least as much time -more in fact -designing your cloud services as you do selecting your automation tools.  Your cloud is only as good as the IT services you enable!  And with Domain 4: The User Portal, I again implored: please take the time to really understand the needs of your end user.  (Cisco Services is best placed to help you with these journey steps, of course!)

With Domain 5: Service Catalog and Management, I introduced the concept of the service catalog, and some of the challenges in making it real.  With Domain 6: Service Financial Management, we discussed the challenging topics of showback and chargeback -essential for helping you measure and monetize (respectively) your cloud's financial benefit.  And in both cases for Domains 5 and 6, I pointed you to Cisco services white papers to let you explore these topics in more detail.

In a few days, please look out for my discussion of "Domain 7: Platform" -which will discuss the challenges around the operating system and middleware (databases etc) layers of the cloud stack.  Please do let me know if you have any questions so far and if indeed you are finding that our framework, Cisco Domain Ten, provides you with a more holistic view of the cloud and data center transformation process.