How to Formulate Your Cloud Strategy

How to Formulate Your Cloud Strategy A methodology for migrating IT services to the cloud A WHITE PAPER BY CLOUD CRUISER Executive Summary As cloud computing accelerates, and its value becomes better known and understood, both the hype and the economic need pressure IT to begin migration of some applications or utility services to cloud platforms. Moving the wrong services could result in huge and expensive troubles, but failing to move the right services could mean lost opportunities. So, how do you evaluate and select the right IT services to move? In this paper, we’ve put together a methodology to pick the right services for migration to cloud- based platforms. We’ll consider the major service categories, such as data and applications, as well as how they rank in importance to the business. This paper is business case-focused, meaning the migration to the cloud should have a clear business benefit. We’ll provide concepts to better understand the value proposition for the use of cloud-based platforms, as well as suggest approaches and tools that will help you understand the existing state of your IT assets. You’ll also learn how you can benefit from moving some or most of these services to public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms, and how to monitor that value once your cloud-based systems are in production. Introduction Many in IT find it hard to translate their own enterprise to do a self-evaluation. The existing business needs into a true migration examples in this paper use that tool, and we’ll plan. We’re quickly reaching a point in time walk you through a use case using the same when a migration plan will be a requirement, concepts, process, and model. one that includes financial considerations and strong metrics. Those who have kicked the This model should provide the knowledge and cloud computing can down the road for the methodology you’ll need to get through the last several years now face situations where initial analysis, and put you on the right path cloud computing can provide some unique toward enterprise service migration to the strategic and economic advantages that can cloud. The model is meant to be modified to no longer be ignored. meet your exact needs. As such, it will provide a sound foundation to get you started on the The first trick is to understand how to define right path to move your IT services to cloud the business value. The second trick is to computing, or give you an understanding as to define the business case for the migration, as why certain services should not move to the well as the prioritization of services, and then cloud. develop an ongoing strategy to monitor and optimize the financial value to the business. This approach provides the ability to This means leaving nothing to chance. You understand the technology benefits of need complete visibility into what drives your leveraging cloud computing for certain IT cloud solution, and how that cloud solution is services, as well as how to form business measured in terms of operations, as well as cases that will typically guide you toward the strategic value to the business. the right services selections. It’s a matter of understanding what goes where, and The concepts provided in this paper will guide then following a process to create the right you through the process of selecting the right prioritization of service migration (when it IT services for migration to the cloud. We will goes), and how this all translates into a master also provide a model in the form of an Excel plan (how it goes). spreadsheet that you can leverage for your Selecting IT Services for Cloud There are a few fundamental issues to consider when selecting which IT services should move to the cloud, including the business use case, the demand for the service, and the patterns of usage. During the selection process, we evaluate the services as potential private or public cloud services, and approach this problem from the business to the technology. As an accompaniment to this white paper, we provide you with a basic model in the form of a spreadsheet that you can leverage as-is, or modify to meet the exact requirements of your organization. You now have the guidelines and the basic tool you’ll need to make the right initial calls. >> Open spreadsheet here The process we suggest is basic, but effective, if followed correctly. There are two major steps: First, create a list of IT services that should be considered for relocation to the cloud. These services will be categorized and evaluated for the purposes of understanding their relevance to the business and their dependencies on other key factors, as depicted in Figure 1. Second, consider these services in relationship to different cloud models, and understand the patterns of the IT services in the process, as depicted in Figure 2. Note that the output from one, feeds into the other. Figure 1: The process of selecting IT services for the cloud results in the initial services catalog, which defines the services that should move to new platforms, including cloud-based platforms. The Process Understand the Business The first step in the process is to understand The best way to deal with this situation the core business IT assets. What systems is to decompose the application into are already in place, including applications, functional primitives, typically data, services, data, services, processes, security processes, user interfaces, processes, etc. and governance? We do this to form a However, this is no easy task, taking months fundamental understanding of what exists for larger enterprises. before we move through the process of From there we can understand each creating the services catalog. Lacking this primitive, and then recreate a logical information, we can’t identify the services architecture for the application that best fits that are best to relocate to the cloud. the needs of the cloud service we’re looking The idea here is to gain a good to expose or migrate. Then it’s a matter understanding of the application of mapping the new logical architecture architectures, use of data, governance, into a physical architecture, and then you security, etc., and thus know the best can define the work to create that physical way to turn core application services into architecture. cloud services. This includes having an The output from this process is typically a understanding of the structure and workings list of IT assets, what they do, how much of the database, how the database is they cost, ownership, and other details accessed, the use and execution of business you can gather that will provide a better logic, integration with user interfaces and understanding as we move through the perhaps other core business processes. remainder of the process. The Process Define Service Categories In the first step, we begin to place the candidate services into service categories, including: Data Services that are primarily concerned with producing and consuming data. While these are typically databases, they could be data services that exist on top of existing data as well. Applications Services that provide core solution functionality, such as business processes. They are typically bound to data or data services, as we’ve previously defined. However, it’s helpful to break them out into their own category to better understand services as separate and more primitive concepts. Infrastructure Services that provide core infrastructure services, such as storage and compute, which are not specifically bound to an application or data service. Think of this category as providing all of the foundational services that allow applications and data to exist. Management Services that manage other services. For example, the ability to monitor applications, data, and infrastructure operations. They provide a “single pane of glass” view into the other IT services, which may become cloud services. All services, no matter if they are legacy or cloud-based, require some type of management. DevOps Services that are focused on the development, deployment, testing, and operations of an application. The term refers to development and operations working together, as well as core services that support both development and operations. This also includes newer and emerging concepts, such as continuous integration and continuous delivery, which are directly associated with the use of on-demand cloud-based platforms. The Process Define Candidate Services In this step, we take the IT services we’ve listed, and evaluate them based on dependencies and other core concepts listed below: Data Bindings How the service is linked to the data defined in the previous step. For instance, a customer edit service would obviously work on customer data Application Defines how services are linked to applications Bindings Infrastructure How the services is bound to infrastructure services, such as Bindings storage Owners Refers to who owns the service(s), including people, organizations, cloud providers, etc. Performance How the service will likely perform during operations. Complex services can perform poorly due to dependencies upon external system services, while simple services typically perform well considering that not much is going on. Security The service’s security services, such as encryption. Compliance The compliance issues the service must handle. For example, the need to comply with emerging healthcare regulations. Organization The aspects of organizational policy that are parts of the service. For example, accounting policies around accounts payable leverage the accounting organization. Management How the service should be managed. For example, management Profile interfaces the service may provide. The Process Create Initial Services Catalog The value of services catalogs is to provide gateway for service access for applications a single access point for discovery, as well and end users.

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