Some organizations are very large and their IT department have to manage hundreds, or thousands of applications running on several thousand virtual machines (VMs). Many are overwhelmed by the thought of workload migration.  For some, it’s difficult to know where to start.  They need to determine:

• the complexity and business value of migrating workloads
• which workloads to move first
• how to prioritize the workloads
• which cloud computing model to use (IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS)
• the regulatory and compliance implications of moving workloads to the cloud
• the impact on data security and the current enterprise processes
• which roles, training, additional skills are required to operate the workloads in a Cloud environment
• the approach to adoption and change management – ensuring that investments in the Cloud will provide value to the organization
• how moving to the cloud allows the organization to meet its goals

An organization doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to migrate workloads to the cloud. There must be a compelling reason to use cloud: what business value will be derived by using public cloud services? This vision and goal then drives what applications should be in the cloud and which should not. This vision and goal should also drive the prioritization of migrating workloads to the cloud.

Aligning benefits to your Cloud Strategy

The benefits of cloud are changing. No longer is cost savings the biggest driver in moving to the cloud.  Greater scalability, faster access to infrastructure, and faster time to market are leading drivers today.

When moving to the cloud, it is important to align benefits to your cloud strategy. Public cloud services offer benefits that enable CIOs to make significant advances in all of the following areas:

• Service Performance
• Innovation
• Elasticity
• Security

From the benefits listed above, there are some questions organizations should  be asking themselves:

• What do these potential benefits mean to your department?
• How will you capitalize on these to deliver benefits to the business?
  • What workloads will you move to the cloud and in which order?
  • Which applications will you move and in what order?
  • IaaS, PaaS, SaaS –  in which order?
• How ready is your department to move to the cloud?
  • Do you need to train staff in new skills?
  • Do you need to address the fear of job loss?
  • Do you need to adjust ITIL operational support processes?

Having a clearly defined cloud strategy drives the identification, planning and prioritization of migrating workloads to the cloud. Without one, your organization will struggle with your cloud adoption goals. Microsoft Services can help you with defining your cloud strategy and workload identification, planning and migration. Our next blog will describe Microsoft’s workload migration approach. Please reach out to myself on LinkedIn if your government ministry or department is looking to develop a cloud strategy and/or requires help in identifying workloads to migrate.

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Canadians have come to expect ‘familiar’ online services from government agencies, providing the same user-experience they get from commercial service offerings. This fundamental shift in the delivery of IT services has forced many government agencies to revisit their approach.

Successfully executing your cloud strategy requires a systematic approach as well as a defined program of change. This systematic approach and program of change is structured around three workstreams: workloads, foundation and operations. 

Consider which workloads to move and why

Addressing the foundational and operational components without having a workload or set of workloads that will exist on the platform is of little value. Identification, prioritization and migration of a workload is essential to the business case for change and ensures the department prioritizes the foundations and operations workstreams.

Address the right foundational components

The greatest degree of commonality across customers is in the foundational components that provide the core services for cloud consumption. The following components are included in this effort and others may be identified: identity, authentication, network, subscriptions and security.

Operational management and support

This workstream often proves to be the most challenging as each customer’s culture and work environment is unique. While Microsoft has numerous proven practices around operations and governance how it is incorporated into the existing customer environment is challenging. This workstream focuses on change management, release management, service management and governance.

Your starting point: Create a Cloud Center of Expertise (CoE)

You may not be intimately knowledgeable in cloud but you possess the desire, drive and entrepreneurial spirit to learn and grow. This multi-disciplinary team will work with cloud project teams and provide:

• Cloud analysis
• Cloud guidance and architecture
• Cloud engagement and reporting

This team will collect winning design patterns and practices to leverage in other cloud projects. Start small and expand into more complex workloads as the organizations maturity in designing and operating cloud solutions (including hybrid) increases. The Cloud CoE will work across all three workstreams (Workload, Foundational, and Operational) to drive consistent & continual delivery, share knowledge with service consumers, enable prioritized cloud deployments, and advance consumption of cloud services.

The Cloud CoE is key to successfully executing your cloud strategy and delivering a systematic approach across all cloud projects that will evolve as your organization matures. Our next blogs will delve deeper into the framework components for this approach which consists of three workstreams: workloads, foundation and operations. 

Find out how Microsoft Digital Advisory Services can get you started on your digital journey by helping you engage your customers, empower your employees, optimize your operations and transform your products.

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