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5 keys to planning a successful cloud implementation

Oct 20, 2020

The cloud is everywhere today, and it continues to be touted as the silver-bullet solution to everything from backup and disaster recovery to infinitely scalable mobile applications to inexpensive storage and nearly everything in between. While the cloud finally solves certain problems that have vexed corporations for decades, implementing the cloud successfully within a business takes leadership and a sound, carefully considered strategy. 1. Have a vision The first key to any successful cloud implementation is understanding the business need and business case for the cloud within your particular organization. This may seem obvious, but as I warn in my book, “Achieving Process Profitability, Building the IT Profit Center,” too often technology is implemented for the sake of technology. The cloud, as the new shiny object, is a temptation for technologists and individuals who want to follow the crowd. Therefore, bear in mind the single, universal, and undeniable mission of IT within a business is to make that business operate more efficiently, effectively, and profitably. With this mission in mind, there are definitely areas where the cloud can increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability of a business. However, these will vary depending upon the business. Some corporations may wish to reduce capital expenditures on technology. Others might wish to increase the agility or flexibility of the business. Still, others might desire to increase IT’s responsiveness to the business. Additional business needs might include increasing security and compliance, advancing corporate green or mobility initiatives, or future-proofing systems by making them easily scalable. The exact mix of these needs are important and should be agreed upon by the corporate officers. These business needs ultimately form the vision for the use of cloud computing within a corporation. 2. Develop a sound strategy Once the needs are fully understood, document them in a strategic plan. These become the guiding vision and mission of the cloud within the business. The objective is to state in plain language how the cloud can help the business be more efficient, effective, and profitable and achieve the overall goals and vision of the company. Next, perform a SWOT analysis with regard to the cloud. A SWOT analysis is a structured planning method that analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a particular project or business venture. See the example below. Using a SWOT analysis allows you to get specific about your organization’s cloud readiness and what threats exist that could prevent utilization of the cloud to achieve the stated business objectives. Any good strategic plan must include specific, measurable goals, or actions. These goals should be tied back to the SWOT analysis and business objectives identified earlier. Again, be specific with these goals. Instead of a goal such as “acquire new skills,” list the specific skills to be acquired. The final part of the strategic plan is to create one-year, two-year and three-year roadmaps on how to move the organization down the path of cloud adoption while achieving the stated goals and objectives. The roadmap should list specific projects, training, strategic hires, etc. that, as completed, make a measurable impact on your strategic goals. Example SWOT Analysis Strengths Significant virtualization experience IT systems management and governance Strong, trusted offshore partner Strong, collaborative, supportive leadership Weaknesses Cloud expertise is lacking overall, skills retooling required Network connectivity at satellite locations Opportunities Leverage cloud to reduce corporate costs, especially SaaS and PaaS solutions Leverage cloud to increase responsiveness to the business Offload compliance and auditing burden Foster innovation Threats Increasingly competitive industry External regulators are introducing new revisions to their compliance requirements in the next two quarters Recently lost our primary enterprise architect 3. Establish governance now It seems that no new technology can be adopted in an organization without the topic of governance coming up. Cloud is no exception, and governance is, in fact, even more critical to get right with the cloud than with most other technologies. The reason is that the cloud makes buying and deploying technology cheaper and easier than ever before. Business units that control their own budgets can choose a cloud technology, buy it, implement it, and bypass IT completely. The cloud is so inexpensive in some cases that the charges can be applied to a credit card and expensed. In general, allowing business units this much leeway in technology buying decisions is generally a mistake, providing short-term benefits to that particular business unit, but adversely affecting the organization as a whole over time. Start by integrating cloud governance into existing technology steering committees or enterprise architecture groups in order to provide ongoing governance in which workloads make sense for the cloud. But don’t stop there. Proper governance for the cloud needs a holistic approach. Engage the finance department to monitor business expenses and departmental expenditures for rogue cloud activity. In addition, consider modifying existing bonus structures such that a portion of management bonuses are based upon making decisions that benefit the organization as a whole, not just a manager’s particular business unit. 4. Manage organizational change Forbes has tagged the cloud as potentially “the most disruptive technology ever,” and this includes the internet, which essentially made the cloud possible. That kind of disruption does not come without impacts to an organization and these impacts should not be underestimated. New skills need to be learned, new groups must be organized and new ways of thinking need to be adopted. However, change often brings fear – fear of the unknown, of being replaced, of losing control, or not being able to keep up – all of which lie at the root of resistance to adoption. With something as transformative as the cloud, managing the “people” side of the change is imperative to getting your employees on board. Organizational change management (OCM) does just that. OCM defines the steps, processes, and cultural changes necessary for your employees to embrace the technological and cultural changes you are setting forth as you implement the cloud. It doesn’t matter how much time, money, and effort you have invested into the technology; a lack of widespread adoption by the people of your organization can lead any technological project to be deemed a failure. 5. Innovate Of all the benefits the cloud brings to businesses, the ability to facilitate innovation is perhaps the most overlooked. The cloud provides a “fail-fast, succeed-fast” environment that allows businesses to experiment with new technologies and new ways of doing things at a less expensive price point than ever before. Businesses should form a cloud innovation group that experiments with ways of using the cloud to make the business more efficient, effective, and profitable. Small investments in cloud innovation can bring big rewards for companies that are not afraid to adapt to the new reality of cloud. Organizations that do not embrace the cloud, change, and innovation would do well to remember that entire industries were disrupted and largely snuffed out by the internet and mobile revolutions. Consider the failure of newspapers to understand how the internet would destroy profits in an over-100-year-old industry or how mobile computing disrupted the taxi industry. The issue with the cloud, as Forbes points out, is that the cloud impacts every industry on earth, so ignoring is done at one’s own peril. Conclusion As with any complex technology, the cloud requires an investment in crafting a clear vision, strategy, and plan in order to provide the greatest return on investment and avoid the pitfalls of increased overhead, rogue IT, and duplicated systems. Making this investment and avoiding the common pitfalls of cloud adoption will ensure that the cloud helps make your organization more efficient, effective, and profitable. Interested in learning more? Take five minutes to find out how cloud can be a profit center. Another quick read explains which public cloud offering is right for you.

Which public cloud offering is right for you?

Sep 29, 2020

The first steps have been taken. Your company meticulously evaluated public cloud providers and their offerings, and you’ve decided to soon join the 91% of enterprise businesses (annual RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud report from Flexera) that have adopted the public cloud as part of their strategic plan. Deciding to take the plunge is a wise choice in a digital market where cloud adoption is pervasive, but what is the next step? How do you develop a cloud strategy and choose the right implementation amidst a myriad of options and providers? In this whitepaper, the fundamental offerings of the public cloud are explored and evaluated based on a number of criteria, including: portfolio objective, technical requirements, existing investments, funding approach, and security and regulatory compliance. At the conclusion, your organization will have the knowledge to develop a strategy to choose the cloud implementation that best suits your business needs. Overview of cloud offerings Start by understanding your choices. For the flagship public cloud providers, application services are provided in the following paradigms: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). If you need a rudimentary understanding of these offerings, refer to the whitepaper, Cloud 101: Let’s Remove the Complexity. Regardless which model you choose, the business agility and management cost benefits are the allure of any cloud-computing model. Businesses that do not embrace the cloud will place themselves at a disadvantage as they compete with others who have gained the agility to innovate and respond to market opportunities through the cloud. Learn the facts before you decide Hindsight is 20-20 in every decision. Gain hindsight perspective now by exploring which public cloud implementations are most suitable for which scenarios. Learn and explore the criteria you should be evaluating as you decide between PaaS, SaaS, or IaaS so that you can move forward with a strategy to make a wise choice: Portfolio objective Technical requirements Existing investments Funding approach Security and regulatory compliance Software as a service (SaaS) SaaS products are managed entirely by a third-party cloud provider. These are typically subscription-based services that trade flexibility for reduction in planning and cost. Examples of SaaS products are Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce CRM, Workday, and Google G Suite. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) IaaS may be fairly equated to traditional virtual machine hosting in your company’s on-premises datacenter or remote hosting facility. With IaaS, you move your virtual machines from your data center to the cloud. IaaS virtual machines may be provided at unlimited scale, but still require your IT teams to manage the underlying patching and support of the infrastructure. IaaS is a key element of many companies’ hybrid cloud strategies. Example workloads of IaaS include application hosting, backend processing, and traditional enterprise software. Platform as a service (PaaS) PaaS includes many services and products that allow organizations to build and run applications without the cost and complexity of maintaining the supporting infrastructure. Examples of PaaS products include Amazon Elastic Beanstalk and Microsoft Azure Web App. According to an April 2019 Gartner report, SaaS is the largest public cloud market, but research generally agrees that IaaS is the fastest-growing market segment. The point is not that one model is preferred over the other, but rather to recognize that in a customer-obsessed world with such rapid growth of cloud adoption, it’s critical to pursue some kind of cloud strategy if you want to remain competitive and provide value to your customers. Figure 1. This diagram depicts the tasks your company is responsible for and which are passed on to the cloud provider in different implementations. Source: Microsoft Technet Full of I.T. WebLog Choose the right implementation By breaking down the current-state and goal-state applications portfolio, your company can better understand how to effectively leverage the public cloud. To assist in developing your cloud plan, you can decompose your strategy into four factors: portfolio objectives, technical requirements, security and regulatory compliance, and funding strategy. Portfolio objectives All enterprises possess multiple software applications that fulfill a broad range of business objectives. These applications are typically in variable states of value to your business and have differing degrees of currency with modern patterns and frameworks. Enterprise applications are generally organized into three categories: invest, contain, and replace (see Figure 2). Figure 2. Portfolio objectives are generally organized into these three categories. Each category serves different purposes, and with each, there is a preferred cloud implementation that best fits those purposes. Portfolio investments Enterprises have mission-critical applications that serve the core line of business. These applications are rooted in a company’s value offering and are typically enhanced to accommodate a changing business marketplace, respond to competition, and deliver value to customers. Best choice: PaaS As these applications are differentiators, these are the most likely candidates for a high degree of investment in cash and staff. PaaS is the best choice to fulfill this kind of role because it offers the greatest flexibility to accommodate custom business behavior. Portfolio containment From accounting to timekeeping, recruitment to accounts payable, most enterprises have a variety of applications that serve a narrow business need. These needs are frequently unchanging, and these applications have served the company well and do not require major project teams to support them. Best choice: IaaS The business is not served by major investments in these contain applications. The goal state is to “keep the lights on” without major time and cash outlays. IaaS provides a simplified migration story and allows you to continue to support these applications without overhauling the core implementation and architecture. Portfolio replacements Every organization has applications that no longer serve the original business need. Whether the root is antiquated technology (with high support costs), obsolescence due to a changing business and regulatory environment, the need to service a new requirement, or simply that the business has outgrown the app, businesses often have a portfolio of applications in need of replacement. Best choice: SaaS For those situations, there are a variety of subscription-based SaaS offerings that will meet the needs of your business. These applications are fully supported by full-time engineering staff, and your business can benefit from the continuous update path provided by third-party SaaS vendors. Technical requirements For applications under your company’s control, there is a varying degree of technical functionality that may lend favor to one cloud offering versus another. Assuming a company would favor a PaaS offering versus an IaaS offering, there are a number of technical requirements that would require consideration when you contemplate a migration. Technical requirements that may require reengineering for a PaaS migration include: Server installed software (ActiveX, Win32, VAS, etc.) Local/SAN file access (local processing, file drops, etc.) – Many of the PaaS offerings abstract away all local resources to better accommodate the public cloud environment Web applications that favor server-based session state versus database-/cookie-based state Non-traditional application and environment solutions (e.g., SQLite, nginx, etc.) High I/O loads Vertical scale architectures/server state management — One large virtual machine is typically more expensive than many less expensive ones If these items are not a factor, then a PaaS migration may be the right choice. However, the more of these items that become applicable, the higher the re-platforming cost and lower the overall value. In that case, it would be smarter to use a traditional IaaS offering. Leveraging existing investments While your organization may desire a true cloud hosting approach, sometimes your existing data center investments will better serve your application needs. For example, applications that have high restructuring costs are perhaps better suited to remain contained in your existing data center. Security and regulatory compliance Security is paramount to all modern applications, and few industries are exempt from regulatory compliance. While each organization is different, the approaches to cloud deployment have consistent themes. PaaS Platform as a service offerings ostensibly offer the easiest value for custom and convertible cloud solutions, but these may sometime break specific regulatory requirements. For example, there may be issues with holdoffs (physical server identification), multi-tenancy, and own-IP proprietary requirements. While many highly regulated companies go the PaaS route, personally identifiable data and other customer and employee data may reside in IaaS hold-offs or in local data centers operating in a hybrid model. IaaS As much of the current regulatory components are targeted towards on-premises hosting models, IaaS provides the most linear comparison to meet these needs. SaaS SaaS offerings, as public cloud entities themselves, will provide regulatory disclosures to customers. These typically offer very little change flexibility per customer but are available to review on demand. The two largest cloud providers also provide trust information for all service offerings across the cloud (Amazon and Microsoft). Funding strategy Cloud investments represent a substantial investment, but each offering lends itself to variable approaches to funding. Ensure that this funding strategy falls within the realm of capability for your organization. SaaS SaaS applications are traditionally offered exclusively as a subscription-based services, favoring operational expenses versus capital budgets. IaaS IaaS virtual machines are offered as an operational expense. However, by supporting a datacenter analogue, product licensing costs may be front-loaded from a capital perspective, favoring those organizations that are cash-heavy. PaaS PaaS offerings are also offered in a pay-as-you-go fashion, but for organizations seeking to reduce ongoing revenue expenses, PaaS offerings the easiest path for efficient server usages. Summary The public cloud offers a variety of different offerings for PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS solutions. As you examine the four main factors above and prioritize how they fit into your organizational goals, you should have a clearer picture of which cloud implementation is best suited for your needs. While most companies elect to take an incremental approach to cloud migrations, drawing a cloud strategy, and evaluating your implementation choices allows companies to get the greatest value out of their cloud investments. Have questions or want to discuss your organization? Let us know.

Cloud 101: Let’s remove the complexity

Aug 17, 2020

Whether you’re on the journey of exploring whether cloud is right for your organization or just trying figure out what the all the buzz is about, this article will break down the basics of cloud for you. What is cloud? The cloud is a method where you are provided IT resources as a service. This means servers, networks, platforms, and software. A provider takes ownership of all related resources and processes, and you pay them a monthly fee. What are the benefits of cloud? If the cloud is nothing more than servers being hosted for you, then why should people move to the cloud? After all, you’ve already made a heavy investment in your existing infrastructure. There shouldn’t be a need to switch over to having a cloud provider host your machines when you’ve already paid for them, right? The difference lies within the service that is being provided to you. Cloud providers bestow an easy-to-use, configurable way to spin up servers, networks, and storage on demand, quickly. They can be in charge of your hardware, your data, and all of the processes related to it (disaster recovery, maintenance, capacity management, etc.) so you have time to focus on your business. The important benefits that you gain when switching to have your servers and services hosted on the cloud are: Agility Scalability Reliability & Security Cost Agility Think about how much time it takes to provision a full application to your environment. You would first have to discover each tier of the application (web, application, data, etc.) and determine each hardware need. Assuming you don’t have the capacity to develop a large application, you would have to go through the request and procurement process to obtain the hardware. This requires you to very closely right-size the capital expenditure so you don’t overpay for the hardware. When it’s done, you’ll have to install the servers in the data center, deploy the virtualization software to the machine, and start to build the machines as stated in the specification. Now, even if your company is one of the few that diligently buys and over allocates hardware to compensate for future capacity trends, we’re still looking at an inability to rapidly provision servers when a business unit needs it. One of the characteristics that makes cloud so appealing is the ability to quickly provision on demand. No up-front investment, no additional labor cost. Simply select a server size, an operating system, and other configurations you’re looking for, and the cloud can create that server for you in minutes. Agility means time. And the less time you have to spend on workload tasks, the more time you can work on the more important things that deliver value to the business. Scalability Determining capacity remains an elusive task for many companies. The resources you need are predicted through trends of what has been used. The problem with predictions is that they are not always right. Even more important, it’s very hard to acquire additional hardware and resources using predictions. As a matter of fact, many infrastructures choose to downgrade servers rather than buy more hardware. The cloud cuts through this with (seemingly) unlimited resources that you can pool and use. Need 5,000 more web servers across the world for a few weeks to handle your Black Friday sales? No problem with cloud. The ability to never have to worry about maximum capacity and to focus on right-sizing existing resources becomes the de-facto standard with cloud. Keep in mind that when you scale you pay for more, but when you’re not using those resources, you don’t. Reliability and security If you don’t own your servers, and your data is no longer in house, how do you work through strategies like business continuity and disaster recovery? How do you control risk and cybersecurity? This boils down to trust. Cloud providers have spent a lot of time working to pass security and regulatory agencies, like PCI, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley. They also have a large amount of resources dedicated to keeping and securing data. After all, why would a provider go through all of the money they’ve spent on preparing the cloud for the biggest of businesses, only to get hacked and have countless lawsuits on their hands? With cloud providers, you own your data, it is secure and their disaster recovery service-level agreements (SLAs) are unmatched. Cost There are many benefits on the cost-side of cloud. We went ahead and wrote an additional article to dive deeper. Check out our article, The Cloud: From Cost to Profit Center. Types of cloud Wait, there’s more than one type of cloud? Yes, and each of them are enhancements to the last. We’ll describe them below: Software as a Service (SaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) On-premises (private cloud) Software as a service (SaaS) SaaS offerings are turnkey solutions in which a cloud provider gives you access to targeted application services. Your company is not required to install, configure, or deploy any infrastructure. The provider does all of it. For many organizations, SaaS represents the first foray into the cloud. With flagship SaaS products, such as Office 365 and Salesforce CRM, enterprise products that can offer true cloud solutions represent the majority of growth in the competitive cloud marketplace. For any enterprise looking to procure new enterprise applications, SaaS is generally the first stop on the journey. While potentially sacrificing some flexibility, organizations receive an operationalized subscription service that is available the moment you are ready. Platform as a service (PaaS) For organizations that leverage and build applications, PaaS cloud offerings give you the best of the cloud and the best of customized solutions. With PaaS, your development teams focus on one thing: developing the application solutions that add value to your business, and nothing that does not. Your team members can focus on code, data, and integration, and the infrastructure is left to the cloud provider. The advantage of PaaS is that your teams can get the flexibility of custom solutions with the infrastructure and management capabilities of the public cloud. PaaS applications are also uniquely valuable because they offer the following functionality: Unlimited, push-button scaling without deploying new code Transparent and independent infrastructure patching and updates Simplified distribution among many application servers Deployment capabilities that allow your company to deploy as many environments as you desire, pay for the temporary usage, and then scale back when the resources are not used Unified management portal and application performance management (APM) PaaS applications represent the greatest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and fastest time to market for custom solutions and are valuable for both the startup and enterprise. PaaS makes the development, testing, and deployment of applications simple and cost-effective. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) In an IaaS environment, you’re simply moving your virtual machines from your data center to the cloud. The impact of doing so is that you will not have to worry about capacity or the cost of factors like cooling or equipment. You are not required to move all your machines to the cloud. In fact, most organizations select a combination of servers hosted in cloud and some in their own datacenter for moving to the cloud – and that’s what’s called hybrid cloud. Selecting which servers move is essentially a business decision based on considerations like cost, hardware lease renewals, or software licensing requirements. For example, if App A is running on old hardware that needs replaced, why not move it to the cloud instead of purchasing new hardware? Your server will still be the same as it was before, with the same configurations and settings. Nothing has changed except for where the server exists. On-Premises (private cloud) How is a private cloud (one where you own all the resources) different from a typical data center? A datacenter doesn’t provide those resources like a service, whereas a private cloud does, with key elements being automation and self-service capabilities. You can leverage your existing hardware investment to give your business the same experience as using a cloud provider. This still provides some of the business value and benefits as a true public cloud, but without a huge expenditure. That’s one main reason why a business would want to make their data center a private cloud. They’ve already spent money to have that expensive data center on-premises. They may want the benefits of the cloud, but they can’t throw those dollars out the window. The private cloud is the answer to gaining cloud benefits now, but not getting rid of your existing data center investment. As the equipment and licenses expire, the transition to a hybrid or public cloud makes more sense. You can transform your data center into a private cloud by meeting two goals: Make your datacenter capable of providing self-service so that staff can request servers, infrastructure, or any other IT request through a centralized solution, such as a portal Automate your datacenter so that servers, infrastructure, and other IT resources are provisioned, managed, and deprovisioned without IT intervention Automation and self-service create tremendous efficiencies for IT personnel, freeing up their time to innovate in order to drive business decisions rather than spending time on repetitive processes and firefighting. Conclusion Now you know a little more about cloud, in very real terms. That’s the first step to make a decision on what you can actually use the cloud for and when. Companies move to the cloud for agility in an ever-changing world. While some organizations are still swamped managing their infrastructure and IT, others have moved to the cloud and are able to focus on driving business. This provides an unmatched competitive edge, and with the cloud market continuing to grow in leaps and bounds, businesses that don’t stay current in this technology revolution will be hard-pressed to remain competitive. Cloud is a huge proposition, but Fusion has the expertise to help you get there. We’ll help you understand the best strategies that will work specifically for your business and lead the way to that big cloud in the sky with our team of architects and business professionals.

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