Increasingly, companies are looking to move their infrastructure to the cloud or are building new capabilities there. The cloud—specifically, the public cloud—consists of many major players, including Amazon (AWS), Google (GCE), Microsoft (Azure), and IBM (IBM Cloud) as well as lesser-known companies. There are many things to consider when you begin your cloud migration, for example:
- What is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?
- How should you lay out your networking?
- What services are available?
To answer these questions and smooth out the bumps in the road to your cloud migration, you need internal champions. That’s why establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) should be one of the first steps on your journey.
Defining a CCoE
Exactly what is a CCoE? Think of it as an evolution of DevOps for cloud adoption within an organization. Where DevOps bridges the gap between Developers and Operations to streamline the development and delivery process, a CCoE brings together expertise from different disciplines to help drive and evangelize a secure and compliant cloud adoption. This includes members from finance, security, operations, development, onboarding, data, and more. A CCoE is an internal representation of how the organization as a whole should work with regard to the cloud. It’s just as important to define what a CCoE is as it is to clarify what it is not. For starters, a CCoE is not a central function of ownership or of expertise.
Building your CCoE’s founding team
The goal of a CCoE is to create repeatable frameworks and best practices for every function in an organization. Former Head of DevOps for Dow Jones, Milin Patel, explains: “A few important traits to look for in members of the founding team include members who are:
- Experimentation-driven: able to learn from failures and iterate quickly
- Bold: not afraid to challenge the status quo
- Result-oriented: can take an idea from its ideation phase to successful implementation
- Customer-focused: appreciate the impact of developer productivity and operational excellence
- Able to influence: can scale their skills through others
The founding members of your CCoE need to be empowered to collaborate with each other, establish measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and always look back on what has been successful and what has not.
Establishing measurable goals
How do you get there? First, define who within your organization should be involved, and keep it simple. Then let the group determine value-based goals and KPIs. Without measurable goals your teams will just be running in circles, unable to drive the cloud adoption your organization needs. Finally, schedule a regular cadence of retrospectives (monthly or bi-weekly) to answer the following questions:
- Did we meet our goals? If not, why?
- What is working really well?
- What isn’t working that we shouldn’t perform anymore?
Establishing a CCoE is your best bet for achieving a successful cloud adoption. Whether you’re moving or creating your business in the cloud, you need the right structure and the right team with the right skills in place.
Ready to help your company scale, stay competitive, innovate and save money? Whether you’re migrating your existing infrastructure or starting out in the Cloud, let 27Global’s proven track record of delivering Cloud-Native software and data solutions, combined with our Cloud and DevOps expertise, guide and execute your transformation. 27Global is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and a Microsoft Solutions Partner in Digital & App Innovation, and we can assist in the process of identifying what should be measurable, how to be compliant and secure in the cloud, and guide you through the process of establishing a CCoE. Contact us today to learn more.
