Developing strategies for Cloud

Introduction

Cloud services have matured significantly in recent years and the adoption strategies of corporates have developed. Formerly, cases for change were frequently framed around replacing traditional hardware and hosting with a more scalable, elastic and consumption-based infrastructure delivery model.

Our experience, however, is that an effective cloud strategy and business case has to be of broader business benefit and deliver value incrementally. The offerings from the major cloud platforms have also improved the potential case for adoption by providing capabilities that cannot be replicated easily by other forms of delivery. Cloud has become a business enabler more than just an IT platform for the majority of our clients. The key benefits of agility, speed to market and access to innovation have become the core drivers for change.

How to develop your adoption strategy for Cloud

Whilst most large organisations now recognise that the foreseeable future is hybrid i.e. mixing on premise and various cloud services based on requirements, many organisations have adopted cloud technologies in a piecemeal fashion. Without a strategy for cloud adoption, organisations may be subject to “cloud sprawl”, which drives up costs and can lead to issues with compliance and security. For these reasons it is critical for organisations to develop a coherent cloud strategy.

Our experience of building cases for cloud adoption has led us to build cloud strategy quickly and efficiently. The strategy is modelled using six building blocks as shown below in Figure 1: Cloud strategy building blocks. These blocks help us design a comprehensive strategy and answer key questions faced by an organisation.

Figure 1: Cloud strategy building blocks

• Create a vision:
  Capture a vision using new technologies such as Cloud and impact to both current and future state business models.
  
• Create a baseline:
  Develop a baseline of technology capabilities, infrastructure services and in-flight projects using current state workload analysis, technical requirement identification, and business and technology process assessment.
  
• Strategic decisions:
  The outcome of the baseline helps an organisation make strategic & tactical decisions including the types of Cloud, platforms and managed services.
  
• Organisational impact:
  Set the tone for realigning the organisation to operate Cloud, decide on execution strategy and consider a Cloud Centre of Excellence to incubate the change. Full process re-engineering leveraging agile, DevOps, infrastructure as code, and IT automation to create a new model for delivering technology to clients.
  
• Financial impact:
  Create an operational viewpoint with cost model, future spending and savings.
  
• Roadmap:
  Create a path to move to Cloud whilst achieving business outcomes efficiently.
   

Using an iterative Cloud Strategy development process

We believe that it is critical for organisations to quickly gain some execution experience upon laying out the initial direction for cloud adoption. This helps in understanding the benefits of Cloud first-hand, and uncover additional set of strategic and operational questions which need to be answered. Hence, we recommend organisations to follow an iterative approach (indicated in Figure 2 below) starting with a directional cloud strategy, followed by execution experience with on-going detailing and evolution of the Cloud Strategy artefact.

Figure 2: Iterative cloud adoption development approach