Cloudification is driving business growth

In its traditional role as a service provider, the IT organisation usually operates reactively. However, with a cloud platform as its technological foundation, IT is able to position itself as a technological driver. If IT actively embraces this role, it will continuously drive IT innovation within its own organisation.

The challenge here is that IT must offer, integrate, operate and monitor a mix of different deployment models for IT resources. Resources from on-premises systems as well as public and private clouds must be seamlessly implemented within the context of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures in order to meet business requirements and regulatory obligations.

To achieve cloudification across the entire organisation, a planned approach and a targeted strategy are essential. Firstly, the organisation’s own IT team must be equipped to handle the new technologies. Subsequently, both IT experts and staff in the line departments must be convinced of the benefits and potential applications of the cloud. Furthermore, a ‘cloud mindset’ should be fostered to ensure that working with the cloud becomes second nature. Staff from all departments should understand the cloud as a vital tool for achieving strategic and operational goals. This is underpinned by a holistic change management framework, ensuring that new IT resources or processes can indeed be implemented quickly and efficiently.

On the technological side, a cloud framework must be defined. Within this framework, IT determines, for example, which cloud service model, which services and which providers are to be used, and how the components are to be orchestrated to create a holistic IT service. The technical cloud framework is aligned with existing corporate governance structures and takes into account the relevant legal regulations. Furthermore, access permissions, cost allocation structures and the lifecycle management of services must be defined here. In addition, a detailed security concept must be developed.

In practice

Materna employs a three-phase approach for the systematic cloudification of an organisation. The first phase involves identifying suitable business areas. A Cloud Business Check assesses the current state of the IT infrastructure and provides initial indications of where cloud projects would be worthwhile. This is followed by a detailed Cloud Readiness Assessment, in which the entire organisation is analysed. The resulting report provides the CIO and senior management with recommendations for action as the organisation continues its cloud journey. This analysis enables the derivation of initial concrete measures.

In the second step, the target vision derived previously is implemented. This involves, amongst other things, training sessions and migration workshops to prepare the organisation, before the first steps towards setting up a hybrid or multi-cloud platform are taken. An agile approach helps to ensure work is carried out quickly and in a targeted manner. It is advisable to integrate existing IT service management systems so that users can, for example, order virtual machines at short notice via an internal portal.

The third phase focuses on the cloud platform’s operational model. Here, Materna takes a highly customer-specific approach to addressing the requirements and complexity of existing processes and systems. For example, compliance requirements or sector-specific regulations are implemented during this phase. Monitoring and billing also frequently require bespoke solutions. Of particular importance at this stage are the day-to-day operation and the continuous development of applications, supported by cloud services.

There are many other points to consider in detail. However, the path described here already gives an initial impression of how companies can launch their cloudification project.

You can read more about Journey2Cloud on our website at www.materna.de/J2C.