A cloud strategy is the plan an organization follows to host its IT infrastructure in a cloud environment. By outlining the cloud’s architecture, development plans and governance model, cloud strategies help ensure effective performance of the infrastructure, workloads and applications hosted in the cloud.
A cloud strategy also supports cloud management of the cloud by defining:
- Cost
- Functionality
- Service levels
How do you decide if the cloud is right for your requirement?
It’s important to understand what you want out of your computing environment before you answer the question of whether or not transitioning to cloud will provide a benefit to your organization. To determine what your computing environment should provide, you must understand what the business needs.
Many are attracted to the perceived lower costs and quick deployment times touted by public cloud providers. While cost and time to deployment are attributes of cloud computing, understanding your business requirements in these areas will allow you to make better decisions regarding the selection of your cloud computing environment.
For example:
- Does the amount of business data grow or shrink rapidly, or is it fairly predictable?
- Do your business units or business services require fast turnaround?
- Are your infrastructure growth requirements linear, or do they expand and contract throughout the year?
- How predictable is your growth capacity?
- Do you build for peak capacity resulting in excess capacity sitting idle for extended periods of time?
- Do you need to conduct proof-of-concepts or test environments for short periods of time?
- Do you have regular events, like trade shows, that require a frequent build and dismantle?
Once you identify your business requirements, you can begin to analyze whether cloud is the right environment to meet those requirements. Knowing your business requirements and services will also help size the cloud environment.
By fully understanding your business processes and how IT supports them, you will be able to better determine if you should move to the cloud. Choosing a cloud deployment model – public, private, or hybrid – is the next step. More on this topic in my next blog.
Private cloud infrastructure considerations
Determining an appropriate cloud strategy at an organization can be a complex undertaking. Here is a list of some of the challenges an organization might encounter when considering private cloud infrastructure, for example:
- Internal Resistance – While your business users are eager for the self-service and faster provisioning that a private cloud would offer, your internal team might not care for this paradigm shift. If your most senior leaders haven't bought in, they could undermine the case for change.
- Technology Focus vs. Service Focus – Decades of IT evolution have been based on IT providing technology to the business, but private cloud dictates that services, not technology, are what you need to provide. Your strongest players in the old model could be the most challenged by this shift.
- Operational Maturity – The most challenging part of private cloud isn't the virtualization or the orchestration, it’s the packaging, dispensing, measuring and billing for IT as a service. You’ll need a service catalog of offers and associated service levels, successfully deployed monitoring tools to measure and report on SLA attainment, and in-depth capacity planning to ensure that you have enough resources to meet demand.
- Capacity –A private cloud initiative can require concentrated, coordinated planning efforts from your best people. Even with the best of intentions, finding the cycles for teams to meet, plan, design and execute can be challenging.
- Skills – Private clouds use some of your existing skill sets, but require many that you may not have in house, such as orchestration tools and process, service catalog/offer development and management, lease management, etc.
- Leadership – It’s easy to underestimate the significance of the change that private cloud represents. More than just a new technology platform, it’s a new role for IT in the business, and a way to compete with public cloud providers who would prefer to sell directly to your customers and cut you out.
Cloud enablement strategies
Cloud enablement strategies can help navigate these common roadblocks. When determining the right cloud strategy for your organization, the following tactics can ensure the outcomes align with your goals:
- Cloud Enablement Strategy – Partner with an experienced team to guide your journey — from understanding your infrastructure’s readiness to developing new processes to building services and chargeback mechanisms.
- Cloud Architecture – Design your cloud based on your vision, legacy footprint and constraints by choosing the right mix of technologies to meet your unique goals.
- Cloud Visioning – Clearly understand how your private cloud will work before you make major platform investments.
- Ongoing Support – Find a partner that will stand behind your team with 24/7/365 with the right expertise as your private cloud matures, ensuring that you’ll have the skills you need when you need them.
