Formulating an enterprise’s cloud strategy involves looking at the problem from a number of dimensions and then asking relevant questions related to each dimension. Doing so requires an extensive understanding of an organization’s current infrastructure, application architecture, business requirements, and an organization’s overall business and IT strategy. This post reviews some of the key dimensions related to formulating an enterprises’s cloud strategy.
Usually an organization that is looking to get a good handle on its cloud strategy already has a number of cloud related initiatives live or in the pipeline. For example, the sales and marketing group may already be using cloud solutions form salesforce.com or certain LOBs (Lines of Businesses) may already be experimenting in a “Shadow IT” setting, and so on. Seeing all the different groups and departments of an organization pursuing their own agendas, the CFO or the CIO usually jump in to define an enterprise wide unified cloud strategy to manage and control spending and to ensure guiding the enterprise through the cloud migration journey.
Crafting a cloud strategy in the light of the dimensions delineated later in this post necessitates that an organization think the type of cloud services that it will be using. This classification usually involves the following four layers of the cloud:
- IaaS – This refers to services from a compute, storage, and network perspectives.
- PaaS – This refers to platform services such as application development and integration, middleware, analytics, etc.
- SaaS – This refers to applications that are hosted and maintained by the cloud services provider. Examples include salesforce.com applications, or Oracle enterprise applications that are hosted on the Oracle cloud.
- DaaS – This refers to the data that enterprises can leverage to advance their business outcomes. A number of DaaS offerings have made this a reality. Examples include data profiles of customers belonging to different industry segments and in different markets, data insights related to certain class of customers, etc.
Below are some of the major dimensions that should guide an enterprise’s cloud strategy.
Choice of Vendors
This dimension requires an analysis of whether an organization has a preferred vendor strategy regarding moving to the cloud. The market has numerous cloud providers with Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforces.com, and Google leading the pack. The answer to this question usually involves analyzing the following facts:
- An understanding of enterprise’s current use of cloud services and the vendors. For example, if your organization has already invested in a specific vendor who in turn is helping you deliver specific business outcomes, then you may have an inclination to continue along the same path.
- Desired and expected use of cloud services. For example, if an enterprise knows that it will need to employ certain cloud services (e.g. big data solutions or IoT solutions) that certain vendors are better in delivering based on your organization’s requirements, then that may drive the choice of relevant vendor choice decisions.
- Some organizations have invested in legacy enterprise applications that are now offering cloud version of those applications. Oracle is an example of this where it is now offering its enterprise applications (e.g. related to HR, HCM) in a cloud environment. In such environments, application and platform layers integrate better and seamlessly driving organizations to opt for those vendors.
Public Cloud vs Private Cloud
Private cloud refers to the network that resides behind an organization’s firewall. This means that an organization is usually responsible for the complete management and maintenance of all aspects of the cloud, hence the term ‘private cloud’. In a public cloud, an organization’s infrastructure, data and / or applications is managed and controlled by the cloud service provider. Although an organization’s data is separate and secure, the hosting still is in a shared environment. The biggest difference, therefore between the two is the extent of control that an organization has on its cloud environment. When formulating a cloud strategy, therefore, an organization must decide on not only which application workloads will be migrated to the cloud but also whether the migration will be on a private or public cloud.
Innovation Initiatives
The many innovation initiatives that an organization has in its pipeline can have a major impact on the organization’s cloud strategy. As mentioned earlier, for example, if an organization is planning to do ventures in the areas of big data and analytics, IoT, and other such innovations, this can accordingly shape an organization’s cloud strategy.
Application Workload Analysis
This requires an analysis of an enterprise’s application architecture and analyzing the various applications and plans related to their migration to the cloud. This therefore necessitates that each application must be analyzed in terms of its migration complexity and feasibility. This analysis will bring to light whether some of the applications may be candidates for a simple rehost or a “lift and shift” approach or whether they need to be completely re-architected before they are migrated to the new cloud environment.
Business Priorities and Roadmaps
A cloud strategy must be able to incorporate various LOBs’ ongoing business plans and priorities for it to get the right buy-in from all the relevant stakeholders. Although an enterprise’s cloud strategy is hatched in IT or the CFO’s office, in the absence of one, businesses start with their own plans. When formulating an enterprise-wide cloud strategy, it’s therefore vital to discuss with LOBs regarding their business requirements, urgency, and roadmaps if any. Normally, as the IT department has its own cloud initiatives in the pipeline, those should be factored in as well.
Shadow IT
As mentioned earlier, in the absence of a cloud strategy, many LOBs and other departments have their own shadow IT initiatives where they test and experiment with their specific product and service initiatives. A cloud strategy must therefore address the requirements of those departments and bring them under a unified enterprise cloud strategy.
Data Center Strategy
Cloud services are forcing user organizations to also rethink their data center strategies. The industry pundits are already predicting the expected dramatic reduction in organizations’ data center footprints over the next few years. This thinking should also be factored in as an organization decides on its cloud strategy.
Designing the new Cloud ecosystem
Whether you know it or not, your application workloads in your current computing environments have an ecosystem of their own. For example, your application workloads have certain levels of security, are being monitored to a certain degree in your data center, interface with other systems and applications, and are surrounded by other related services. Therefore, as you start to devise your cloud strategy, you should be aware (and design) the new ecosystem that will exist in the new cloud environment. Your overall cloud migration strategy, therefore, should be devised based on the new ecosystem of services that your new application workloads will require to run in the new environment.
Bringing it all together
Getting answers relative to each dimension requires interviews and collecting data through other means. Getting these answers requires input from the following:
- Interviews with LOB executives and their users
- Interviews with the CIO and other IT executives
- Interviews with the application architecture group
- Review of the IT and enterprise architecture
- Review of an enterprise’s strategy
Information obtained through these documents and interview sessions thus can provide a first baseline for a relevant cloud strategy. This strategy must then be validated with the key stakeholders before obtaining the final consensus and publishing the strategy for all.
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