CASE STUDY
Dell Cloud Manager Software
Dell Cloud Manager is a SaaS application that enables organizations to securely and efficiently deploy and manage enterprise-class cloud applications across private, public and hybrid clouds, by providing a unified interface for IT administrators, developers, and other related roles .
I was on the User Experience team, and led Product Design for the group. In this role, I was responsible for executing hands-on design of new features, user research, and the establishment of a design system.
Business Problem
Leveraging cloud is a strategic business advantage for many reasons, including security, reliability, flexibility, transparency, cost savings, and faster time to market. Businesses need an efficient and scalable way to maintain control over these systems and ensure overarching governance.
User Goals
User personas include cloud application developers and IT Operations personnel. Each have various levels of technical expertise and different goals in the context of cloud infrastructure. IT Operations might be responsible for managing budgets, selecting and paying cloud provider vendors, meeting service-level agreements (SLAs), and maintaining security policies. Developers need to be able to deploy custom applications, provision cloud resources, and set automation policies.
Solution
The software solution was to create one central management tool for all the organizations could accounts, regardless of provider. Its aim was to balance ease-of-use for less technical users with the power needed by the more technical developers.
One example, is that we created a service catalog of pre-approved public clouds and cloud applications for click-of-a button deployment, while technical users could customize fields and opt to add automation such as autoscaling.
To help support the business goals we created purchasing flows and features that enabled integrations with common customer tools, such as Service Now. Standard features such as user/group permissions, dashboards, and reporting were also core parts of the application.