As the cloud computing adaption and maturity accelerates, a number of case studies of early cloud migration are emerging. Ironically most of such case studies often talk about success of such migration and dynamic business and technology benefits it delivers but they do not discuss the less-desired side-effects of such adaption. Or we do not often find enough lessons learnt or actual process of steady adaption of cloud which takes the migration risk away or reduces it. Business agility and enhanced responsiveness which cloud brings is indeed exciting development however the actual journey to cloud need not be sensational. While i am a passionate CTO who supports the momentum towards move to cloud, what i would like to advocate is CIOs, CTOs should not ignore IT and project management best practices while delivering the cloud promise.
Processes, tools and frameworks like ITIL, TOGAF and COBIT are a guiding framework for our community for years now and they are present to help us design, deliver, govern and measure our IT deliverables to enable business success. Just because our lead cycles and delivery is accelerated with new cloud tools should not mean that we should ignore or give little importance to these proven enterprise architecture frameworks. I would advise against the “sensationalisation” of cloud implementation and replace the excitement with application of pragmatic and apt application of frameworks to make cloud migration less risky. I have covered the above three leading framework in various previous posts which can be searched on this blog.
Most leading providers of cloud solutions also have their own best practices which can help IT and businesses adapt to cloud. Google for business for instance is one of the major cloud business application providers and they advocate three deployment best practices while planning and executing a move to their cloud applications. They are primarily in the area of change management, project management and actual technical configuration. Google also advises three key focus areas for cloud deployment; planning, devices and infrastructure. They put planning ahead of everything, closely followed by readiness for consumption and backed up by solid infrastructure readiness.
The google change management model for cloud adoption revolves around three steps, Organisation readiness, organisation communications and training the users proactively. They advise on three roll out phases for successful cloud implementation. They recommend often starting with core IT groups users as test group. Then identifying and rolling out for Early business adopters and then finally going out for wider go-live. There are a number of case studies available on Google website for this so i wont repeat them here. But they do stand out for me because, they emphasise on application of processes, Methods and best practices for a gradual, low-risk cloud adaption. The sensationalisation of cloud may make us feel good but for a sustainable cloud move there are probably no substitutes for applying proven enterprise frameworks and industry best practices.
