Buddy of mine worked at a company who was tied to IBM closely. IBM was rolling out its first 'cloud' options and he was so excited to get some on demand type resources.
IBM guys walked him through the process. Then he got an email that it would be a few weeks while IBM installed some more servers in their data center.... he looked closer and realized all his actions on the website was just generating emails to someone else who went and did the thing and emailed them back if they were done or not or had to wait.
Later the process resembled an actual cloud solution, albeit a year or two behind everyone else in terms of features and workflow.
The initial integration is literally just firing off ServiceNow tickets or emails to the appropriate work teams until further automation is created.
The object being to train the end-users to go to the portal instead of contacting people directly or to go directly to the cloud vendor MCMP may be front ending.
We interact with IBM from time to time at my work and in general they don't seem like the most competent people in the world. But also it varies quite a bit depending on which sub-group within IBM you are interacting with.
The nice thing about IBM is that they have an army of lawyers and industry connections that a small company like mine can piggy-back off of now and again.
IBM guys walked him through the process. Then he got an email that it would be a few weeks while IBM installed some more servers in their data center.... he looked closer and realized all his actions on the website was just generating emails to someone else who went and did the thing and emailed them back if they were done or not or had to wait.
Later the process resembled an actual cloud solution, albeit a year or two behind everyone else in terms of features and workflow.