transform your operating model for the cloud · agile model that enables businesses to be...

Transform Your Operating Model For the Cloud

Accelerate transformation, operational readiness and time-to-value of cloud

Contributors:

Daisy Recto, James Dunn, John Clarke & Dan Tovey

2 | Cloudreach.com

Table of Contents

3 Introduction

4 Why Do You Need A Cloud Operating Model?

7 How Do You Adopt A Cloud Operating Model?

9 Strategy

10 People

12 Process

13 Technology

14 Cloud Operational Readiness

16 What Next?

3 | Cloudreach.comTransform Your Operating Model For the Cloud

Let’s be clear: We are talking about a Cloud Operating Model, not a Cloud Operations Model. An Operations model is important too, but that’s for another time.

A Cloud Operations Model focuses on the core operations or run capabilities of an organization. This would include the proactive management and break-fix of cloud infrastructure and services. This differs from the Operating Model which is more abstract and holistic, covering a wider range of capabilities and processes including operations, as well as application development, infrastructure provisioning, and financial and security management.

A Cloud Operating Model represents how an IT organization operates to execute its cloud strategy and deliver value to customers. It provides the building blocks across

People, Process and Technology, enabling IT organizations to change their culture and continuously assess and evolve their critical cloud capabilities as they mature.

Introduction

The Cloud Operating Model makes it easier for IT organizations to develop a roadmap for accelerating cloud transformation, operational readiness and the time-to-value of cloud.


Why Do You Need A Cloud Operating Model?

1


Many IT organizations have developed a classic IT operating model centered around traditional Data Center services, and supported by processes and technologies that were developed primarily for stability in a well-known and more static environment.

Organizational structures tend to be more siloed, with structural hierarchy to manage change in a more predictable world; however, the world is growing in complexity, with an increasing rate of change. The more traditional ways of working cannot keep up.

Cloud can provide the unique capabilities on the right, but it is necessary to transform the classic IT-centric operating model to a new, agile model that enables businesses to be successful in a more complex and rapidly changing world.

Cloud is a disruptor that provides an immense opportunity for organizations to:

The IT landscape has changed

Accelerate innovation and scalable growth

Improve operational efficiency

Reduce the cost of technology

Improve business agility

Derive new value from technology and data

Retire technical debt

Cloud transformation is not just about technology. It requires an evolution of skills, processes, culture and working practices. To find success in the cloud your business needs to adapt.


Moving to the cloud involves a large amount of change. These changes will influence strategy, people, processes and technology and can unearth a number of challenges.

Some of the challenges organizations need to be aware of include:

Change is difficult

Culture - Organizations need to manage the cultural shift in legacy thinking towards a more agile approach of working with the cloud.

Skill Gaps - New skills are required to perform new functions, such as cloud migration, machine learning and AI, cloud operations and cloud security. Some new roles may require upskilling, while others may need to be recruited.

Impact Outside IT - Cloud transformation has a ‘ripple effect’ and impacts other functions outside of IT, such as Finance, HR and Procurement etc.

Security and Governance - The cloud introduces new security and governance requirements and capabilities, which need to be addressed to establish controls and minimize risks.

Strategic Approach - The cloud is always evolving with new technologies and services. Organizations need to understand what success in the cloud looks like for them, and evolve their strategy to take advantage of their benefits.

Procurement - Finance and business models need to be adjusted to access the benefits of a consumption-based model.

The ripple effects of change can be disruptive - pulling attention away from core business objectives. This is where a Cloud Operating Model comes in. By adopting a Cloud Operating Model, organizations can minimize the impact of disruptive change and accelerate their cloud transformation.


How Do You Adopt A Cloud Operating Model?

2


As we go through People, Process and Technology we will continually refer back to the importance of culture. It is crucial that you are mindful of the impact of change on your existing culture and have a clear vision of the new culture you are trying to create. If you are trying to embrace a collaborative, customer-centric agile culture, then all of your decisions around People, Process & Technology must reinforce that.

To be successful, cultural change must be inclusive and transparent with a clear direction and execution plan. An organization’s people is its greatest asset. It is important to recognize this through empowering everyone to create value quickly, collaboratively and effectively.

The foundation of your Cloud Operating Model will be your Cloud Strategy. Once your strategy is in place, it is best to segment your approach across People, Process, and Technology.

Organizational Structure

Cloud Tooling

DevOps Adoption Cloud Security

Process OptimizationSkills & Capabilities Cloud Architecture

Governance

Culture is key.

People Process Technology

Strategy

Segment your approach


StrategyA cloud strategy forms the foundation of your cloud adoption journey and helps define your Cloud Operating Model. It ensures that the business is aligned towards a common purpose and helps determine the vision and principles by which cloud should be adopted. This will involve addressing the business objectives and the problems that your technology will need to support and help solve.

An organization’s business objective could be to enable innovation to gain competitive advantage and capture more market opportunities.

Their business objective should tie into their business, technology and cloud strategy. This means that to enable innovation, they may need to shorten delivery lead times. To shorten delivery lead times, the culture, people and processes must adapt to support a more agile way of working. Creating an agile culture of discovery can encourage more innovation within an organization.

This stage in the process is an opportunity to clarify your business objectives, understand the value you are delivering and establish what success looks like.

What do you want to achieve in the future by moving to the cloud?

Key Questions

What are your main priorities?

What is your success criteria for Cloud Adoption?

Do you understand the costs and benefits of the cloud?

Is the entire business supportive of the cloud adoption initiative?


PeopleWith your strategy set, you can start thinking about the roles needed to support it. This includes the skills that will be required to fulfill them, as well as the underlying culture of your business.

As the people in your IT team upskill and work in a more agile and innovative way, you can start taking advantage of the benefits of your cloud transformation. However, the impact of cloud transformation can have a profound and unexpected effect on people outside of your IT organization. It is advisable to

work closely with your HR team to map out how teams and individuals will interact with your technology as change ripples towards security, compliance and finance teams. This will help you mitigate the impact of change and help you redefine and invigorate your culture.

A company is a constellation of successful people. It is important that the changes you make maintain conditions that allow your people to remain successful.

Cloud Transformation can have a profound and unexpected effect on people outside your IT organization.


Have you thought about organizational restructuring as part of your move to the cloud?

Have you carried out an assessment of current cloud skills and knowledge in line with your cloud strategy? (e.g. migration, operations)

Have you considered the training requirements of non-IT roles? Executives, product teams, finance teams?

Are you planning to recruit the necessary skills or upskill existing staff?

Is there a training program in place? Or a plan for one?

Key Questions

• Provide operational guidance and strategic support on cloud initiatives

• Drive innovation and governance• Promote collaboration beyond traditional IT boundaries.• Rationalize and standardize operations to improve

cost efficiency.

Establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (or Cloud Competency Center ) is a proven method of approaching the ‘People’ challenges many organizations face when establishing their Cloud Operating Model. Many organizations see a clear benefit in having a central unit of ‘pioneers’ or ‘evangelists’, responsible for ushering change across the business. This unit will:

Cloud Center of Excellence

In fact, inclusion in this initiative should not necessarily be determined by cloud capability, but more to do with enthusiasm for change and an energy to learn and educate others.


ProcessFor your people to be effective, you need to optimize your processes to accommodate new ways of working and support their new governance approach in the cloud.

Start defining your processes by performing a risk and capability assessment to understand the gaps in your existing model.

Most pre-cloud organizations run an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) model. Many of these processes are still relevant in the cloud, however, the implementation of this process can differ. For example, the process for procurement changes dramatically - switching from a CapEx model to a

consumption-based OpEx model. In other cases, new process must be developed, especially with regards to areas such as auditing and compliance, monitoring and reliability, data governance and security.

The cloud enables the optimization and automation of governance within an organization, which help accelerate the response to risk and market changes. However, the right processes must be in place to establish this governance in the cloud. An organization with a proper cloud governance framework can adopt the cloud in a more secure and scalable manner.

Have you assessed which current processes need to change?

Have you determined which new processes need to be established and how to introduce this to your teams?

Have you created a cloud governance framework?

How do you plan to involve stakeholders and business units to ensure the platform is used to its best capability and purpose?

How will you control and govern cloud usage and spend?

Key Questions


TechnologyWhile new tooling and technology can be seen as the exciting and tangible part of your new cloud operating model, it should not lead the agenda. Understand the capabilities of your people, processes and the culture you are trying to create. Then, determine which technology to use to enable you to realize and improve these capabilities.

A key decision during any cloud adoption is which Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to adopt. You could choose a single CSP or opt for a multi-cloud strategy. This decision will be based on a number of factors including cost, customer base, and geographic location as well as technology feature requirements.

For example, is there a need for data and analytics services at scale?Whether you adopt a multi-cloud strategy will influence your tooling selection and, with the rapid rate of change in cloud technology, careful consideration must be given over whether to use cloud native tooling or third-party tools that may provide a single view across multiple platforms.

Other key considerations are the increased levels of automation that organizations should be looking to achieve and that a “one size fits all” approach to tooling may not provide the value expected. With a wide range of products and tools in the marketplace and skill sets available, empowering teams to select the appropriate tooling for their needs can be a more pragmatic approach.

What tools must integrate with your legacy environments?

Will you be operating in a multi-cloud environment?

Have you assessed whether all of your data can move to the Cloud?

Have you assessed requirements around data sovereignty?

How will you map your security requirements into the cloud?

Key Questions


Cloud Operational Readiness3


Operating in the cloud is different to operating in the data center. Software-driven everything, instant scale, metered cost, daily feature releases and a vast ecosystem of new technology to support presents traditional IT Operations teams with new challenges.

For these reasons, it is important to make sure you have defined an

actionable roadmap for your cloud transformation that is focused on operational readiness. Segment your people, process and technology into different operational domains, such as the ones described below. This helps you understand how you can optimize your Cloud Operations capability and support the consumers of your services.

You now have a game plan to transition your operating model to be cloud-ready, but how do you make sure your IT organization is ready to operate in the cloud?

CoreOps: Proactive Management & Break / FixYour Operations teams need to be ready to manage, optimize, and support cloud based infrastructure.

FinOps: Financial Operations & GovernanceWith the cloud being based on consumption and not upfront procurement, ensure that you maximize your ROI and understand your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the cloud.

SecOps: Security Management & ComplianceSecurity is of course important; no one wants to get caught out. Be secure and well-governed from day one.

DevOps: Provisioning & OrchestrationEnable development and infrastructure teams to create and deploy solutions using “infrastructure as code.”

CoreOpsProactive Management & Break/Fix

Financial Operations & Governance

Provisioning & Orchestration

Security Management & Compliance

FinOps

DevOps

SecOps


What Next? 4


Now you know what a Cloud Operating Model is, why it is important and how to adopt it. As you mature, you can use it to accelerate your journey towards being an agile, innovative and efficient organization. Your Cloud Operating Model will become the foundation for supporting further cloud initiatives such as mass migrations, modernization programs and new and evolving capabilities, such as Data & Analytics.

Create organizational alignment by building the business case and strategy for cloud adoption. Determine your path for cloud-readiness through proof of concepts and assessment of your operating model across people, process and technology.

Change is easy if you build solid foundations. You need the right skills, governance framework and technical design to operate securely and efficiently.

Effectively scale cloud adoption across your business by adopting an agile culture and finding the right champions for change, whilst migrating applications at a rapid pace.

Continuously improve by automating business decisions, going cloud-native, and using AI/ML to explore new business opportunities. Use data-driven insights to achieve previously unreachable goals.

Optimize your cloud implementations with cost optimization, automation, and improved processes for governance and rapid application deployment.

Goal: Organizational AlignmentGoal: Understand and obtain new capabilities and begin experimenting

Goal: Business innovation through technology

Goal: Optimize cloud capabilities with Agile DevOps & DataOps

Goal: Decommission legacy technology and start to deliver agile applications

1. Align

2. Build

3. Scale

4. Optimize

5. Innovate

Now is the time to introduce a Cloud Operating Model.

The Cloud Operating Model defines your new ways of working with the cloud across people, process and technology.

Moving to the cloud can cause disruptive business change. You need a new operating model fit for the cloud, which can minimize this disruption and accelerate your cloud transformation, operational readiness and the time-to-value for your business.

• Don’t let technology lead you. Start with defining a cloud strategy, and understanding the gaps in your people and processes. Then, figure out which tooling can help enable your capabilities in the cloud.

• Involve all key stakeholders in IT and outside of IT. This includes HR, Procurement, Finance, Software Development and Business Development.

• Don’t forget about cloud operations. Consider how you are going to operate in the cloud across FinOps, SecOps, DevOps and CoreOps.

• Support it with an actionable roadmap. The Cloud Operating Model is an evolving target state. To get there, you need an actionable roadmap to help guide you through your journey.

Over to you

How do you successfully adopt a Cloud Operating Model?

There you have it. To summarize:

As the leading cloud solutions provider, we’ve always done things differently.

Across our best-in-class transformation and reliability services, it’s our software, our application focus and our cloud culture that makes the difference.

We elevate technology and people so you can

reach new heights.

Contact details:[email protected]

If you are interested in learning about how Cloudreach can help you adopt a Cloud Operating Model,Let us know.

mailto:contact.us%40cloudreach.com?subject=Contact%20Us

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