Assessing service deployment readiness using enterprise crowdsourcing

Service delivery centers are shared hosting environments where a variety of types of IT systems and applications for multiple customers are managed. Multiple aspects affect the deployment in shared environments, including applications supported, network topology, security requirements, etc., knowledge of which is distributed across multiple delivery experts. An accurate snapshot of the delivery environment is a key factor for successful deployment of new service offerings. Enterprise crowdsourcing is a process where a group of network-connected experts solve problems. We employ enterprise crowdsourcing to engage 250 service delivery experts to facilitate early discovery of key information about 1300 customers' environments, as part of the deployment of a novel identity access management service. We propose a model for deployment complexities, and use the discovered knowledge to expose the service deployment complexities. We discuss how our approach efficiently deals with requirements and infrastructure detection and how it quantifies readiness of service deployment. © 2013 IFIP.