Cloud implementation

Many organizations initiate their cloud implementation journeys without a well-defined and documented cloud strategy, which can affect the realization of business benefits. Additionally, an IT-centric view on strategy development can hamper organizational success because stakeholder buy-in across business lines is essential to maximizing value.

Establishing a well-defined cloud strategy and aligning goals with stakeholders across the business can help support a successful implementation and increase business value. One specific step organizations can take is to form a cloud center of excellence (CCOE). The CCOE should be set up in parallel with development and finalization of a cloud strategy. Though many organizations delay formation of such a center (or skip it altogether), the CCOE can be a crucial factor in managing and governing a successful cloud implementation.

Many organizations treat their cloud implementation plan as their cloud strategy. But there are important differences between the two. A cloud strategy defines why organizations are moving to and using the cloud. A cloud implementation plan addresses how, which comes later – after formulation of the cloud strategy.

Without a clear cloud strategy, organizations might experience the following pain points while executing their cloud implementation plan:

• No landing zone. Many organizations migrate to the cloud without a proper plan for building the landing zone, which provides the infrastructure necessary to stabilize organizational workloads. The lack of a landing zone can increase the costs of security and compliance.
• Gaps in assessment. One of the critical phases of a cloud migration effort is the application assessment, which helps to determine the migration approach for each application. Many organizations expedite the application assessment, which results in gaps in the specifications and downstream dependencies – and, ultimately, implementation scope creep.

In many cases, organizations migrate their applications to the cloud with a primary focus on technical analysis rather than an analysis that combines business value and technical feasibility. Only a combined analysis can yield the necessary migration plan that addresses the business value and the supporting technology prioritization required.

In addition, many organizations have not defined where workloads should be placed. These decisions should be based on the principles established within the application assessment to align with the proper application classifications and business values. Some organizations lack both an analysis of business value and a well-executed application assessment.

Accounting for the cost of moving to the cloud often is based solely on the migration and workload execution costs. However, in this case, organizations incur additional costs in order to transform their organizations, retrain existing teams, change organizational structure, update operating procedures, and educate cross-functional teams such as finance, compliance, procurement, legal, and human resources.

In addition, many organizations have gaps in their cloud financial management or lack this discipline entirely. These gaps can lead to significantly increased expenses and misaligned budgets. The lack of strong accounting and finance management for cloud expenses can inhibit a true view of how an organization consumes cloud services across business lines.