Cloud strategies on the other hand (where they do exist) are incomplete – particularly for legacy organizations. They lack focus on changes in responsibility for staff, governance, and financial controls. Not all cloud options are created equal, and picking the wrong one can erode any benefit.
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Increases in productivity for end users by taking advantage of the latest vendor offerings
Creating and employing a comprehensive framework for evaluating workloads’ suitability for the cloud using Disruptive Innovations’ methodology enables organizations to select optimal cloud service models (or colocation, on-premises, or managed solutions) and provide high-quality service that end users expect from IT.
Codify risks tied to workloads’ cloud suitability, and tie them to mitigations that can be employed to improve the likelihood of a successful cloud project.
Codify risks tied to workloads’ cloud suitability.
Design a cloud strategy to ensure that any cloud migration initiatives are successful in terms of governance, monitoring and reporting, financial controls, success factors, focus, people, and processes.
Develop a roadmap populated with detailed initiatives related to the outcome of the workload evaluation activity, the risk and mitigation exercise, and the components of the cloud strateqgy document.
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Increases in productivity for end users by taking advantage of the latest vendor offerings
A workload-first approach will allow you to take full advantage of the cloud’s strengths
Under all but the most exceptional circumstances good cloud strategies will incorporate different service models. Very few organizations are “IaaS shops” or “SaaS shops,” even if they lean heavily in a one direction
These different service models (including non-cloud options like colocation and on-premises infrastructure) each have different strengths. Part of your cloud strategy should involve determining which of the services makes the most sense for you.
Own the cloud by understanding which cloud (or non-cloud!) offering makes the most sense for you, given your unique context.
SaaS
Useful when the organization is consuming an off-the-shelf service that does not differentiate it.
PaaS
Ideal for developers who want to focus on building out an orginization's key product.
IaaS
Have to host some virtual machines in the cloud tomorrow? IaaS is your friend. It offers control.
Colocation
If your mission is to transition IT from "here," a colocation site might be just the ticket.
On-premises
OI' reliable: if you've got everything you need, really sensitive data, or operate at a massive scale, that is.
Delivery models, too, have different strengths – pick the one that’s right for you
Public Cloud
- Potentially infinite scalability
- Vendor management of facilities
- Scale begets good value
Private Cloud
- Control over existing infrastructure while still being scalable
- Resource pooling for efficiency
- Ability to take advantage of on-premises infrastructure
Hybrid Cloud
- Dynamic bursting across clouds
- Most fully capitalize on the cloud's elasticity
- Allows leveraging of existing infrastructure
Community Cloud
- Similar organizations can capitalize on their similar needs
- Secure, certified environments
- Still able to capture economies of scale
Developing a plan to optimize your cloud experience is an essential part of the cloud
An effective cloud strategy typically has (7) main components:
- Focus: the extent of cloud alignment with business needs
- Success factors: extent to which standards of interoperability are established.
- People: skills and roles necessary to ensure cloud success.
- Processes: extent to which cloud is integrated into business processes.
- Monitoring/reporting: effectiveness of metric creation/tracking.
- Governance: the degree of codification of ownership of cloud across business units.
- Financial control: effectiveness of the rules surrounding budgeting for the cloud.
Disruptive Innovations’ Cloud Strategy Module is meant to help organizations in develop a proper Cloud Strategy, create a Roadmap, identify (and mitigate) risk and begin to employ a proper change management strategy.