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
"Achieving and monitoring the objectives of the Cloud Strategy, during transformation as well as afterwards"
“Different workloads need different clouds”
(Large scale) cloud migrations are not a walk in the park. They require preparation in terms of developing a cloud strategy that provides a comprehensive overview of the application landscape, including clarity on the optimal cloud landing zone for each workload, when and how to migrate to that landing zone, taking into account the strategic impact and estimated migration effort.
“Cloud is a means to an end, not an end in itself”
Value tracking during cloud strategy execution is needed to prevent (major) deviations from strategic objectives, business drivers and migration goals. Each cloud migration serves a certain purpose and contributes to transforming into a Digital Enterprise.
When creating a cloud strategy, initial assumptions are made regarding the expected added value and feasibility of each migration. These assumptions must be tracked and validated during cloud strategy execution. If a cloud migration does not deliver the expected results, one or both of the following might be at hand: expectations were too high, or turned out to be unfeasible, or the team responsible for the migration lost control or made choices that (severely) deviated from the initial migration strategy and plan. Therefore, insight and overview is needed of the actual contribution of migrations to the overall cloud strategy objectives, and the challenges that arise so that adjustments can be made if desired and necessary.
To perform value tracking, a set of KPIs and/or CSFs is specified. Think of the number of commodity solutions that are sourced as ‘SaaS’ or a KPI tracking business case realisation. Guarding migration progress and value this way, as a C-level responsibility (usually the CIO and CFO).
With strategic value tracking, the Cloud Leadership Team, transition managers and similar stakeholders have a (near) real-time control mechanism consisting of dashboards and reports on a set of KPIs to safeguard cloud strategy value realisation.
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