Posted on: October 27, 2020 | 3 min read

5 Elements to an Effective Cloud Strategy Framework

5 Elements to an Effective Cloud Strategy Framework

Without a clearly defined roadmap, businesses that want to migrate from on-premise to cloud will have a lot of bumps in the road. Whether you're considering a migration involving a hybrid cloud model, multi-cloud model, private hosted cloud, or public hosted cloud, a roadmap is pivotal for looking at short-term and long-term goals.

A cloud strategy framework considers people, processes, technology, data, and governance. In this blog, we'll walk through the elements within a cloud strategy framework.

People

Your workforce is the individuals who will be leveraging the data from this new infrastructure the most. In this stage of building a strategy, evaluate your team's roles, skills, and existing workloads. Consider the skillset around the chosen cloud technology too. For the migration and management itself, consider partnering with an Azure cloud partner like CCG, who have the knowledge and skills not just to perform the migration and manage your cloud instance but train your staff on usability to get the most from your cloud investment.

Process

Just because you want to move forward with a migration doesn't mean that your business operations should be put on hold. By developing a cloud strategy framework, your business can layout the needed stages before, during, and after a migration. A cloud strategy framework will give fellow executives peace of mind and clear expectations for the migration process. You can also optimize your workloads to prevent your business from going on hold while your team goes through the migration.

Technology

In researching migration from on-premise to cloud, you'll notice that many vendors focus on technology. Indeed, it is one of the most important aspects of migration, but you won't get the return on investment you're expecting without the other strategy elements.

In a migration from on-premise to cloud, layout the desires and expectations for the data within your environment. After the migration, ensure your cloud platform can connect to business intelligence and analytics tools. Solutions like Microsoft Azure do just that.

In fact, according to ActSolution, more than 95% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Azure for their data storage and app management needs.

It's also essential to consider elements like security, network speed, and data access. For those reasons, leveraging with an Azure cloud partner can be an even more valuable resource to ensure you're meeting the requirements your business needs.                                                                                                                                                  

Data

Cloud is more than just storage. Cloud enables your business with the right access and security to the data you need to make intelligent decisions. When building a migration roadmap, ensure that you build a data architecture that allows for effective reporting, analytics, and data visualizations. Especially if you are thinking about making moves in the predictive analytics space, ensure that your company is ready for a data science initiative by evaluating the datasets' quantity and quality in your cloud environment.

Governance

Especially as it pertains to data quality – governance is a huge factor in your cloud environment's livelihood.

A Rightscale survey shows a stronger cloud governance role in advising on which applications move to the cloud (69 percent in 2018 vs. 63 percent in 2017).

Governance looks at areas including metadata management, program management, security and privacy, and data quality. Evaluating your governance can improve areas like network security, data access, and system efficiency. Drive efficiency, business growth, and innovation by enabling your organization with data governance.

Next Steps in Your Strategy

Enterprises looking to move to the cloud should go beyond technology and evaluate people, processes, data, and governance. Explore how CCG helped a Fortune 500 manufacturer scale their data environment to the cloud or review more resources to discover how to embark on the cloud journey.

Topic(s): Cloud
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