Introduction – Please Read First
These questions are here to assist with ensuring that you’re gathering necessary information from a customer/prospect in order to put together an appropriate solution to meet their requirements in addition to capturing specific metrics from tools like Collector or RVTools.
This list is not exhaustive, but should be used as a guide to make sure you’ve done proper and thorough discovery. Also, it is imperative that you don’t just ask a question without understanding the reason why it is being asked. We’ve structured these questions with not only the question that should be asked, but why we are asking the customer to provide an answer to that question and why it matters to provide an optimal solution.
Questions marked with an asterisk (*) will likely require reaching out to a specialist/Solution Architect resource at Nutanix to go deeper with the customer on that topic/question. Make sure you use the answers to these questions in the Scenario Objectives in Sizer when you create a new Scenario. These questions should help guide you as to what the customer requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks are for your opportunity.
This is a live document, and questions will be expand and update over time.
Calm
Discovery Questions
1. How are you currently automating IT Service Delivery today, do you have any:
a. IAAS – Infrastructure as a service
b. PaaS – Platform as a service
c. SaaS – Software as a service
Why ask? It helps us understand the customer’s maturity level when it comes to application deployment and could uncover some of the competitive infrastructure. See some of the possible competitive or other products we may be able to work with or integrate with.
2. Are standardizing and compliance important to you in your IT Automation Delivery Strategy?
a. Do you currently use a business intake or self-service request process via a solution such as ServiceNow, Cherwell, Remedy, etc. to automate IT service delivery?
Why ask? Gives us the opportunity to discuss our SNOW plugin. Also helps understand which front end they will use for the Calm implementation.
3. Do you have any contracts with the cloud providers (AWS, Azure or GCP)?
a. What are the specific use cases or workload profiles consumed from the cloud providers?
Why ask? Helps us understand which providers they may consume with Calm. Helps us understand which services are still on-prem and available as a target for AOS. May help position Beam. Also helps us understand if they have a Microsoft EA which may force their spend to go to Azure.
4. Can you describe the process, do you have any documentation for VM, OS or Database Deployment and Management?
Why ask? It helps uncover their current pain points and possibly competitive landscape. (This would typically be asked when talking to the Infrastructure Team) If the process is already well documented/defined, the hardest part of the implementation is already done.
5. What tools do you leverage to automate your Windows or Linux Server builds beyond the imaging / template / cloning process?
a. vRA
b. Terraform
c. Puppet
d. Chef
e. Ansible
f. Salt
g. SCCM
Why ask? Helps understand the competitive landscape as well as integration points that will need to be solved
6. How many VMs are under management today?
Why ask? It helps us estimate the size of the deal for licensing
7. What does your infrastructure footprint for managing/running containers look like?
a. What tools are you using?
b. How many containers?
c. If Kubernetes, how many pods and containers?
d. Which version of Kubernetes? (AKS/EKS/Anthos/Openshift/Tanzu/etc)
Why ask? Helps understand their current place on the journey to cloud native apps. If they are still investigating, we have an option to position Karbon. If they are using another product already, we may be able to provide the infrastructure for that environment.
8. Do you have any contracts with the cloud providers (AWS, Azure or GCP)?
a. What are the specific use cases or workload profiles consumed from the cloud providers?
Why ask? Helps us understand which providers they may consume with Calm. Helps us understand which services are still on-prem and available as a target for AOS. May help position Beam. Also helps us understand if they have a Microsoft EA which may force their spend to go to Azure.
9. Are standardizing and compliance important to you in your IT Automation Delivery Strategy?
a. Do you currently use a business intake or self-service request process via a solution such as ServiceNow, Cherwell, Remedy, etc. to automate IT service delivery?
Why ask? Gives us the opportunity to discuss our SNOW plugin. Also helps understand which front end they will use for the Calm implementation.
10. In your application development organization, is Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) an operating principle?
a. What tools do you leverage in your current/targeted pipeline?
i. Jenkins
ii. Atlassian Bamboo
iii. CircleCI
iv. GitLab CI/CD
v. Azure DevOps
Why ask? Helps us understand the integrations needed for a successful implementation.
Resources:
Glossary of Terms: https://github.com/nutanixworkshops/calmbootcamp/blob/master/appendix/glossary.rst
xPert Automation team page: http://ntnx.tips/xPertAutomation (Internal Only)
LinkedIn Learning – DevOps Foundations Learning Plan: https://www.nutanixuniversity.com//lms/index.php?r=coursepath/deeplink&id_path=79&hash=2ce3cb1f946cc3770bd466853e68ee36ddbcf5e1&generated_by=19794
Udacity+Nutanix: Hybrid Cloud Engineer Nanodegree
Calls to action/next steps:
1. Create a SFDC opportunity, quote a Calm+Services bundle, add a DevOps resource request
2. Test Drive: Automation
3. Calm bootcamps (+Karbon, +CI/CD, etc.) (Internal Only)