Achieving Optimal Cloud Migration through Transforming Operations

By Cloud Computing Outlook | Monday, September 07, 2020

Organizations need to leave behind the traditional IT tower-based mentality and embrace changes to transform operations by implementing new procedures and workforce structures that are compatible with a cloud-native model. This enables the holistic management of the IT environment with cloud technology instead of the outdated IT units.

FREMONT, CA: Businesses across all sectors are moving operations to the cloud. This has emerged as a rapidly growing trend over the last decade, thanks to the scalability, speed, and flexibility that it brings along with it. However, shifting to the cloud is not an overnight process. The shift from legacy infrastructure to cloud-based platforms involves various steps. This includes maintaining a common ground around applications and compliance. Organizations need to leave behind the traditional IT tower-based mentality and embrace changes to transform operations by implementing new procedures and workforce structures that are compatible with a cloud-native model. This enables the holistic management of the IT environment with cloud technology instead of the outdated IT units.

During this process, it is only natural to face various obstacles related to the management of the ever-changing IT infrastructure sector. Eventually, the cloud infrastructure will accelerate the pace of doing business in the form of rapid provisioning time for servers and storages. This is where being proactively ready for challenges comes in handy. For a successful cloud implementation, organizations must be able to rapidly update their IT tower centric processes to efficiently handle cloud requests and establish a shared responsibility model between the security and IT teams, embedded with cloud-native tools.

At the same time, it is essential to have efficient governance and policy standardization that leverages cloud processes. There needs to be a high awareness of processes and task lists, especially for inter-team dependencies. Although these elements may be customizable in an already established cloud environment, it is simpler to supplement ongoing operations while offering universal access to other organizational user groups once the standardized architecture configurations are in place.

Cloud adoption brings along many benefits like enhanced skillsets, a timely provisioning process and improved end-user satisfaction levels. However, these can be achieved only when the foundation is strong. The key lies in being cloud management ready and establishing cloud-centric processes and connections that drive operational success.

Forming a Cloud Team with Designated Roles

The process of cloud adoption starts with building a dedicated cloud team to handle all the new cloud-related requests. One of the most common deficiencies among organizations transitioning to the cloud is the lack of cloud skills and experience. Majority of the latest roles for an optimal and scalable cloud operation can be sourced from existing roles and skillsets. Organizations need to be prepared to invest in training existing employees.

Standardizing Cloud Policies

Organizations need to standardize processes and templates for cloud requests across all areas of the company and business units. By creating automated provisioning for cloud services and collectively developing and optimizing strategies that are in line with the company's usage, security, and budget needs, organizations can establish standardized cloud procedures. This includes building repeatable automation capabilities and services that are isolated for independent availability, elastic scalability, and built-in tooling for security controls.