Cloud Services Lifecycle Checklist

With the emergence of Cloud Services spanning one or many cloud infrastructures managed by various providers, it is imperative that a checklist be developed that provides cloud services lifecycle guidance/requirements for service providers/developers as they integrate these lifecycle functions.
The goal driven checklist is to be developed with the purpose to facilitate the following six lifecycle functions from a cloud service provider. These lifecycle functions can be aggregated in the three categories of build, capture, and modify to facilitate a simpler description of the goals.

• Assessment and acceptance (i.e., build) of services onto the cloud platform/infrastructure.
• Ongoing audit (i.e., capture) of services on the cloud platform/infrastructure.
• Augmentation, abridging, and annulment (i.e., modify) of services within the cloud platform/infrastructure.

The goal of the checklist is to realize greater efficiencies through formalization and automation of integrations between cloud service providers and their corollary actors during the cloud services lifecycle. While the focus in this document is on the cloud services lifecycle, note that the unique goal oriented approach and related paradigms described herein could also be applied elsewhere.