Enterprise Cloud implementation on Public Cloud IaaS - 5 steps you must follow

On the journey towards Enterprise cloud implementation, the most critical part for the IT team comes just after the Cost-benefit analysis has been approved by the senior management and the budget approval has also arrived. The CIO/CTO & the IT team needs to meticulously architect the cloud solution at this juncture to meet the performance as well as the cost targets to reap maximum benefits from this exciting journey.

It’s an understatement now-a-days to say that Cloud is here to stay. In fact it has permeated in our daily life already. You have already started experiencing it in all likelihood - in your daily chores, for various utilities, games & apps. 

• For example, if you use Dropbox for maintaining your digital assets across multiple devices, you are using the service of one of the Gartner leader quadrant cloud Infrastructure service provider. 
• On the other hand, if you are using Apple iTunes, you are using the service of the other leader quadrant cloud service provider. And these are not exceptions. Apart from these consumer apps and platforms, you would find enough instances of organizations, that too from your domain, who has moved their applications to cloud infrastructure. 

With all these data and case studies in your armor, selling the idea of cloud to your senior management has become lot easier, if not cakewalk. Also there is a proven method of doing the cost-benefit analysis for choosing the cloud vs. on-premise options. That should guide you to choose the right option and present the benefits to the senior management.

However the CIO/CTO and the IT team faces a bigger challenge as soon as they get the go-ahead. It’s time to architect and deliver the cloud solution! Since this is a new technology, the IT team tends to learn the tricks of the implementation the hard way, and faces various hurdles overcoming each of them as it comes. 

Based on the experience of implementing Cloud Infrastructure in a Financial organization in India, we would share few tips to you in this article. This might help you in the process and hope would make the journey much easier for your organization. 

The basic assumptions are: 

a. You have already got the buy-in from your management towards cloud journey. 

b. You have done your maths on arriving at a CBA towards Cloud.

And here goes the 5 Steps:

Step 1) The first step in the cloud implementation journey is to decide whether you are going to have non-production environments or production environments on cloud infrastructure. This is a key decision factor in defining the cloud strategy for your organization. This is also going to define your security strategy, redundancy, and overall cloud architecture. Put most of your time into this aspect, before you move into the next step.

Step 2) The next important choice to make is between pushing new applications vs. the existing legacy applications. If you are moving your new applications to cloud, you should talk to your application vendor to factor that in their architecture. The horizontal scalability is a must for this. If you are planning to move your existing applications, the complexity comes out to be of different order.

Step 3) Choosing Cloud instances is often tricky. You need to choose them wisely. If your cloud infrastructure service provider shares instances with pre-configured specs only, you won’t be able to create an instance of any combination of Core and RAM specification. In such situations, generally you are tempted to choose the safest option by going for the peak size requirement. But here you need to be a bit more innovative, and take the best of cloud. Choosing the right instance is critical for meeting the performance norms as well as keeping the cost in control.

Step 4) Once you have chosen the right instances, it’s time to consult your IT Security team. You need to be very sure about the security policies to be deployed in your cloud infrastructure. Please ensure that you are getting your cloud instances reviewed via CISO to avoid any untoward experience.

Step 5) Last but not the least, immediately train your system administrators on the chosen cloud platform. The criticality of the system administrators continue even after you have moved to Cloud, as they need to manage and monitor the instances and also need to jump into action whenever there is any emergency.

With a little more time in planning the Cloud implementation than you had initially thought of, the journey to Cloud can made a successful one in your first attempt. Go and achieve it!

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About me: I have been working in the areas of IT strategy & usage of Digital technology to deliver business growth. My areas of interest include Enterprise Mobility, Cloud Solution Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Social Media and Big Data. I am an alumni of Indian Statistical Institute (MTech Computer Science) and also attended Harvard Business School Executive Education on Innovation and Driving Growth.