Providing cloud strategy execution aligned with strategic business drivers, general IT strategy and sourcing strategy
Involving the business in cloud transition, supporting them in adopting new cloud solutions to increase business value
Facilitating an organisational structure that enables successful cloud use and building up necessary cloud knowledge and capabilities
Designing, building and continuously improving the cloud platform (including landing zones, IAM, connectivity and integration) for the sole purpose of serving the business
Fostering a culture where innovativeness leads, people learn and adapt quickly, responsibility and autonomy are embraced, and business & IT work seamlessly
Maintaining a desired speed of cloud adoption and digital transformation according to the cloud strategy and KPIs
Realising the optimal mix of cloud services, products and suppliers according to cloud strategy
Creating cooperation amongst DevOps and value teams, IT, and the various cloud stakeholders to automate processes, and spread knowledge and competences so that the CCoE becomes obsolete
Supporting the deployment, change management and policy compliance of applications, infrastructure and services using automation pipelines by autonomously operating business teams
Acquiring full control of the cloud services provided by the CCoE and those supplied by external services and suppliers
Enhancing and embedding organisation wide cloud expertise, proactively and continuously, so that a CCoE is not needed anymore for that purpose
Reorganising teams, mandates and responsibilities, the way of working within and amongst those teams, so that competences and talents are optimally used
Providing for an effective and efficient cloud platform that is designed according to the guidelines and principles which is flexible with a high level of self service opportunities
Enabling the business to increase innovation in a controlled way by providing a platform so the operational processes are automated as much as possible
Providing fully automated tooling, reporting and recovery in the area of security and compliance of the cloud platform and the solutions it serves
Developing leadership styles that are based on a validated mission and vision allowing for continuous innovation
Creating common ground for digital transformation and cloud transition
Achieving and monitoring the objectives of the cloud strategy, during and post transformation
Identifying and maintaining active relations with those stakeholders who are likely to contribute to successful transformation
Maintaining an enterprise architecture that fully supports and contributes to the realisation of the objectives of the cloud strategy
Selecting and contracting cloud partners and suppliers that bring strategic value and positively impact the creation of value for the organisation and business
Facilitating and managing full alignment of the services provided by the different cloud partners and suppliers for the purpose of (cost) efficiency and integration
Providing financial transparency so costs can be accounted for, insights can be generated and informed business decisions can be made
Determining the added value of cloud by matching demand and supply of cloud services
Supporting teams in migrating workloads to the cloud
Evaluating and adapting standards and control measures to support the balance between control and innovation
Supporting development and maintaining applications, services and infrastructure in cloud
Controlling and optimising cloud economics
Arranging support from the various cloud vendors to the organisation
Facilitating pipelines that allow automated construction and maintenance of applications and infrastructure
Optimising services and performance provided by cloud vendors
Providing reports on delivered cloud services on the basis of which analyses can be made for possible optimisations
Managing the cloud service portfolio provided to the organisation by the CCoE
Selecting and contracting suppliers
Building, maintaining and sharing sufficient cloud knowledge in the organisation
Ensuring sufficient cloud expertise through accessible and efficient cloud training and certifications
Initially setting up and continuously optimising the responsibilities, tasks, roles and positioning of the CCoE in the organisation and in relation to other organisational components
Adopting a way of working through which the CCoE enables the organisation to adapt to business needs and organisational changes
Shaping and facilitating cloud talent acquisition and development
Initial design and implementation of a cloud platform (foundation) and landing zones that perform checks, offers guidelines and services to be used by (DevOps) teams
Creating, managing and deploying re-usable reference architectures to be used to build solutions
Ensuring that the platform and solution architectures used are consistent with the principles and guidelines laid down in the enterprise architecture
Preventing and resolving malfunctions in the platform
Implementing updates, new functionalities and other changes to the platform
Testing the availability and restorability of services and applications in the event of a calamity
Provisioning and managing access to the platform and other cloud services
Configuring security tools and processing information security events
Creating and evangelising core values that are in line with vision, mission and change process
Creating support for change in the formal and informal network of the organisation
Creating new rituals and stories that strengthen and develop new behaviour towards cloud
Creating an environment feeding a continuous drive for optimisation and innovation
“Controlling and optimising cloud economics”
“Cost control is fundamental to successful cloud adoption”
To make cost control possible, financial transparency is essential. In an organisation that has fully embraced cloud, it should be possible that those using cloud resources, services and solutions can be held and feel responsible for controlling the costs and continuously optimising the spend: “the user pays”.
For instance, business domains are responsible for the cost of the SaaS solutions they use, management is responsible for making sure that cloud costs are included in product pricing, and DevOps teams must be responsible for controlling costs related to their solutions and features. Cloud costs, to a large extent, vary with the use of resources and can increase significantly over a very short period. Hence the need to implement cost controls and increase cost awareness.
DevOps teams can allocate budget to a solution and monitor spend, using alerts. By optimising the solution in terms of using the most cost-efficient services, DevOps teams can increase customer’s satisfaction. Cloud costs can be managed in many ways, and there are several opportunities to drive down costs in cloud. Cloud services are available in different forms and variations, and it pays to evaluate purpose and fit periodically. For instance, there are several different database management systems which can be used. They can be evaluated based on functional fit, but also on costs. Updated resource models could also mean reduced costs. For example, if the cloud service provider updates IaaS instance models it could be that a newer, smaller model provides just enough resources to handle your workload: all in all, little effort to save cost.
As cloud services are updated and added frequently, their life cycle is much shorter than we are used to. A regular evaluation of services used, makes sense. DevOps teams should also think of an automation strategy with the goal to optimise costs. Shutting down VMs when they are not needed is an obvious one. Also, DevOps teams must comply with the organisation’s tagging strategy in order to warrant correct costs reports.
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