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In my previous post I was think very much about the physical resources (compute, network and storage) that I have and how I was going to relate them to the Provider vDC concept in vCloud Director.  I recently went through the MyLearn course about the Fundamentals of vCloud Director 1.5. That got me thinking about my fictitious company “Corp.com”, and how I could use it to make my work more realistic.  The key for me was coming up with a “narrative” that could use to explain how corp.com related their organization to the organization of vCloud Director.

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My idea is to make corp.com merely a “holding company” like Corp.com Holdings Inc. within which there are separate businesses that make up the group. Corp.com would have an Organization vDC representing the Corporate HQ where the founders, board and executive team would reside. Their job is to steer the strategic direction of the holding company – whilst the allowing the business that make up the group a level of autonomy in day-to-day operations. This organization would serve as the “master” organization with the ability to publish a company wide service catalog. In this case there would be one “Organization” with one “Organizational vDC”. It would be were the standards would reside with the hope that they for the basis of how the other business would grow from.

Below the main corp.com Organizational vDC, I’ve invented three fictitious companies represented in the generic graphic by OrgA, B and C. I’ve given these companies names to make them realistic. These are:

  • iStock Public Trading Platform (istoxs.com)
  • Quark AlgoTrading (quarkalgotrading.com)
  • Corp Offshore Investments Group (COIG)

The istocks.com business is a trading platform that sells its services on the open market. It’s really designed to service the market for small investors (often referred to as day traders) who like to take their own money – and buy and sell stocks. When users log in they can track their portfolio and how their money is working for them. The company offers this trading platform on conventional web-browsers but it also has series of applications of mobile devices too. This means day-traders can constantly be checking the value of their investments on the go. For this reason there’s substantial test/development facility as they constantly improve and update these mobile applications and need to validate them on a wide range of platforms. This company makes it money by taking a small commission on each of the trades it carries out.

The quarkalgotrading.com company is algorithm based trading platform. It operates out of facility physically located in New York, and it takes advantage of superfast networking links to buy and sell stocks. It got its name from the “Quark Algorithm” that ceaselessly examines the market on a second by second basis – and sells stock at just the right moment in large quantities. But it’s clever in that it does that as whole series of very small trades, that doesn’t show the companies hand. For regulatory reasons these two organizations a never linked together. They do have to report their results to the Corp HQ organization.

Finally, the Corp Offshore Investments Group (COIG) looks for investment opportunities available to the group as way of making the profits generated work harder for the owners and shareholders alike. They have an extremely broad portfolio in their fund, and they employ a highly skilled group of individuals in the City of London to manage their dealings. Over the years this particular arm of the business has grown significantly from the initial seeds sown by the other two businesses in the group. Grown so much that it now contributes as much revenue as the two other business combined.  Corp.com future plans are to eventually float this private fund on the market to allow everyone to benefit from their investment expertise.

So that’s the 3 organizations that make up Corp Holdings Inc, not including the Corp HQ organization. I understand in vCloud Director one “organization” can have access to many Organization vDC’s. So I’m thinking that its very likely that each of the business will have a “Production” Organization vDC as well as “Test/Dev” Organization vDC.