Moving to the Cloud? Put First Things First.
The economics of cloud infrastructure and services are increasingly become self-evident. The litany of success stories grows daily.
Netflix's transition marks a major milestone for cloud computing as it has become the largest company to shift its entire operations into the cloud. - Yahoo! Feb 2016
Arguments that the cloud will never work or isn’t secure are being displaced with success stories. The cloud is the next iteration of information technology. Reality has set in and moving at least some elements of technology services is inevitable.
Where to begin? Start by putting first things first.
Get the security arrangements right. Experience has shown that security directory needs to be well thought out and implemented before integrating it with cloud services. Without a well-designed security framework including technical and administrative controls, any potential operational savings from cloud services may be difficult elusive.
Develop internal operational experience. Experience comes from doing. One starting point may be using cloud services to augment or replace existing backup and recovery services. Another opportunity may be implementing a new development and test environment. Implicit in gaining experience is the certainty of making mistakes. Teams need space to learn.
Learn to manage the expense. While the cloud offers lots of tools to manage budgets and reduce cost, these services must be implemented and monitored. Capacity management is not enough with cloud services. Learn to manage and report operational expense to a level of detail that was not necessary with internal services.
Make a good first impression. The first production workloads in the cloud should be meaningful and sustainable. Keep these first steps with cloud services simple. Define effective metrics that quantify outcomes in meaningful organizational terms.
Finally, be sensitive to the cultural impact of the change. Moving to the cloud is a technology change and a cultural shift. Technology staff need time learn new technical skills and shift their mental paradigms to operations and services.
Cloud computing is really a no-brainer for any start-up because it allows you to test your business plan very quickly for little money. Every start-up, or even a division within a company that has an idea for something new, should be figuring out how to use cloud computing in its plan. -Brad Jefferson, CEO and Co-Founder of Animoto
Whether its AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM or a player to be named later, cloud services are here to stay. Organizations that make the shift to the cloud will find increase flexibility to respond to market directions and opportunities to design new operational paradigms. Historically, technology teams have made similar transitions and given the opportunity will do so again.
