When starting with cloud services all companies seem to go through the same phases. You get an account with a credit card, enable some services, do some experiments or even build something used for production. You then proceed to the next thing and kind of either forget about it or even worse, the “cloud person” leaves the company and no one knows what’s there or how to change it. There is nothing really wrong with that and it may even be necessary to get an understanding of the “do’s and don’ts”.

With that said; it could be done better with a few things in mind.

Corporate support

A person, usually a c-level executive, that can support the effort, both financially and strategically. This makes it easier to mandate change. You of course also need change from bottom up, usually when it’s more on the tech side but the executive can help with the financials and clarity.

Governance

Get a clear understanding of how to govern the cloud. Create a governance team that can implement security policies, guardrails, resource monitoring and cost management. In an ideal world this should be done before allowing teams to enter the platform as implementing governance after the fact is difficult and gets more difficult the more accounts and teams you have

Cloud strategy

Having a cloud strategy from the beginning will help the rest of the company understand what the purpose is with cloud in the company, what applications should be built there, how security is managed and what the expectations are on the users. The cloud strategy could contain for example:

• Cloud computing baseline. Are we cloud first? Multi-cloud? Hybrid? What workloads belong in cloud? What are the reasons for that? Detailed explanations of each type and a clearly defined and documented decision.
• Business baseline. Define from the business perspective why cloud is needed and when. Does it improve your reliability? Time to market?
• Financial models. How should you manage the cloud financials? Pay as you go? Prepaid? Who is responsible for cost? The individual teams? Do we pay it centrally? How shall cost management be implemented to avoid unnecessary cost?
• Principles. Define the principles around cloud. Could for example be “We are a cloud first company”. “We have an innovative mindset and are prepare to take calculated risks to offer our customers the best services possible”
• Security. Define how security shall be handled in cloud. Carefully investigate how sensitive your data is. Agree on common security principles and possibly agree to comply with a set security standard such as CIS
• Inventory. How do we keep track of ownership of resources?
• Exit strategy Document how you are going to get out of the cloud if the need arises. For example; Cloud providers create and deprecate services every now and then. If you are using a service the cloud provider will no longer support, what do you do? How much will it cost to move? What is a viable replacement? How much time will it take?
• Steering committee Define a steering committee comprised by members of different parts of the organisation. This could be for example a c-level executive, finance, operations, development, security and it-strategy. This will make sure the strategy is supported and agreed upon by representatives from affected parts of the company which will enable compliance

Information (or the evangelist phaze)

If you are a company that previously haven’t worked with cloud a lot of information is necessary. Have presentations, invite vendors and inform the rest of the company about how cloud is utilised by, for example, your competitors. Do comparisons how things are done now and show how you can improve by utilising cloud. This will create interest and purpose.

Inform

Train

Proof of concept

Iterate

Training

You will quickly realise that hiring staff that knows cloud is a challenge. You remedy this by upskilling your existing staff and create a common language so to speak, when talking about it-solutions. A lot of knowledge in more traditional it-solutions is directly transferable to cloud with some minor modifications. Create a training culture and encourage innovation. I can’t stress this enough. Without training your staff you are doomed to fail.