Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Facts, FAQs and Implementation Steps

Enterprise Cloud Strategy – Facts, FAQs and
Implementation Steps
Without the cloud, enterprises are likely to spend about 80% of their budget on managing the
legacy infrastructure (hardware + software). This is because enterprises maintain their private
data centers that become costly to upscale in conjunction with their ever-increasing business
needs.
Today, implementing a cloud strategy is a mainstay of every enterprise that aims to achieve —
decrease in expenditure, less maintenance of data center, and increased focus on innovation.
The economy of scale offered by the cloud is worth its weight in gold for enterprises.

And now that COVID-19 is affecting businesses across the globe, cloud computing is gaining
even more traction as it promises business continuity and all-time remote access. But, it is
easier said than done. Migrating to the cloud is a complex process that requires a fool-proof
strategy to abide by.
To leverage the power of cloud computing on a holistic level, you would have to take a step
forward and understand the cloud journey before getting on with it.

So, let’s get started.
Why Worry About Your Enterprise’s Cloud Strategy?
An enterprise cloud strategy lays down cloud adoption recommendations for your business and
a fool-proof plan for implementation. Why do you need a cloud strategy? Having an enterprise
cloud strategy ensures fewer hindrances along with the cloud migration and adoption journey
while maximizing business benefits.
Devising a cloud strategy starts with analyzing your organization’s current status, deciding for a
cloud migration strategy that will suit your business and functional requirements, and how this
cloud digital transformation wave will change the enterprise dynamics.
Types of Enterprise Cloud Strategy
There are various cloud strategies available that you could choose from, but your finalized
strategy should align with your business needs and scaling capability.
According to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, as much as 93% of respondents
vouch for a multi-cloud strategy that includes hybrid cloud too. Whereas, only a few rely on
single public or single private in the current times.

Let’s see what each of these cloud strategies imply:
1. Single Public
This is a type of strategy where computing, cloud storage, and software are made available by
the cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis, i.e., you only pay for what you use. In the public
cloud, providers manage millions of data centers worldwide to maintain all-time availability and
throughput.

The public cloud strategy is beneficial for enterprises looking to save on maintaining
legacy infrastructure while an opportunity to focus on core business functionalities.
2. Single Private
This is a type of strategy where the cloud you host your data and applications, belongs explicitly
to you. The technology stack that matches the business needs is hosted by the cloud provider in
an on-premise data center.
The private cloud strategy is beneficial for enterprises that cannot risk moving critical
data off-premises, and are highly concerned about data security.
3. Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a mix of private and public clouds. Enterprises prefer hybrid cloud strategy as it
the best deal, and they can maintain some applications on-premises while moving others to the
public cloud.
All enterprises are in the hybrid state at one point when migrating to the cloud. This is
when you have already moved some applications to the cloud, and some still run
on-premises.

4. Multiple-Public
This is a type of strategy where an enterprise relies on more than one cloud service model
(IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) of the same type (private or public) from more than one cloud provider.
Some have an understanding that a multi-cloud strategy is the same as a hybrid cloud, but it is
not.
This is the best and the most popular strategy that enterprises rely upon as it offers an
orchestrated cloud experience.
Commonly Asked Questions When Developing an
Enterprise Cloud Strategy
Here are some commonly asked questions that align with enterprise cloud strategy.
1. What is a Cloud-First Strategy?
An enterprise that prioritizes cloud as the primary mode of running their legacy infrastructure is
referred to as cloud-first. That is, whenever an organization needs new infrastructure or
applications, they will give priority to the cloud over on-premise deployment. Cloud-First is a
prominent strategy that is helping remote-first organizations evolve.

2. How are Cost and Time Related when Implementing an
Enterprise Cloud Strategy?
The time you take to devise a cloud strategy framework, followed by its implementation, decides
the corresponding expenditure. There are three phases of migration that can be classified as —
aggressive, moderate, and slow. Here’s what each of them implies:
● Aggressive: When you decide to move 50% of your legacy infrastructure to the cloud in
one year. An aggressive plan will prove beneficial in the long run but involves higher risk
and cost of migration.
● Moderate: When you decide to move about 30% of your legacy infrastructure to the cloud
in one year.
● Slow: When you decide to move about 10% of your legacy infrastructure to the cloud in
one year. The cost of migration will be less, but it will affect the organization’s overall
growth due to its slow transformation.
If you ask what is the best cloud strategy that reduces costs and increases efficiencies, the
answer would be a moderate strategy where you move to the cloud while maintaining a
balance.
3. Is Multi-Cloud Strategy Mainstream?
A multi-cloud strategy allows benefiting from the best services that the popular cloud service
providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Platform provide. Yes, it is the new normal, and even

Flexera’s state of cloud report for 2020 says that 93% of respondents (n=554) use the
multi-cloud strategy, i.e., a combination of multi public and hybrid cloud.
Five Steps for Planning a Cloud Strategy for Your
Enterprise
Creating an enterprise strategy is essential before migrating to the cloud. The strategy may vary
from enterprise to enterprise. However, here are some steps that every enterprise cloud
strategy should follow.
1. Creating an Enterprise Cloud Strategy Team
For ensuring that your cloud adoption journey stays on track, creating a cloud strategy
team becomes essential. This team is generally headed by the CTO of your enterprise and
comprises IT and networking teams.
The team holds the responsibility to build a cloud strategy roadmap and checklist, ensure its
successful implementation, and communicate with the stakeholders from time to time. The cloud
strategy team also is the key decision-maker when choosing a cloud deployment model, cloud
migration strategy, and cloud providers.
The core responsibilities of the team can be summarised as follows:
● Making faster and informed decisions when choosing from among various cloud strategies
● Maintaining communication with the stakeholders

● Choosing between applications that need to be moved to the cloud vs the applications that
will be maintained on-premises
● Framing and implementing a cloud strategy implementation plan to address hindrances
towards successful cloud adoption
● Analyzing, planning, and managing cloud as new realities evolve
2. Analyze Applications Thoroughly
Before framing your enterprise cloud strategy, analyzing applications, and their relevance to the
cloud becomes imperative. Decide between applications that need to stay on-premises vs the
applications that need to move to the cloud.
For instance, mission-critical applications ought to stay on-premises. The same applies to
applications that are out-dated and need to be jettisoned. Moving such applications to the cloud
will only add to the costs with minimum to no benefits in return.
In short, if the risk to move a particular application to the cloud is higher, maintain it
on-premises.

3. Building A Hybrid Cloud Strategy Roadmap
Not all applications and services can be moved to the public cloud. Where some are maintained
on-premises on a private cloud, some need to be abandoned as they are no more valuable.
Here’s a hybrid cloud strategy that you need to understand for getting one step ahead in the
cloud adoption journey.

a. Rightsize
Goal: Modernization with the Microservices Architecture
Enterprises confuse cloud migration with simply rehosting their applications from on-premises to
the cloud, i.e., lift and shift. However, this strategy is not an ideal solution as optimizations are
essential in order to adjust to the new environment.
The applications need to be reconfigured so that they can be cloud-ready, i.e., they need to be
resized. This is possible by breaking down the monolithic application structure and adopting the
microservices architecture.
Microservices architecture focuses on developing an application with smaller modules that are
loosely coupled. This reduces the cost and effort involved in cloud adoption while adding
flexibility to iterate whenever necessary.
A cloud strategy example — Netflix took almost seven years to transform its applications and
adopt the microservices architecture to move to Amazon Web Services. The reconfigured
application structure maximized service availability and reduced IT costs as opposed to
on-premise management of resources.
b. Retire
Goal: Looking for a Corresponding SaaS Solution

It is better to look for alternative SaaS solutions for applications that require to be updated or
should be retired, as identified in the step above. This is a preferable step if you wish to trim
down the time to successful cloud adoption. It is not only cost-savvy but also saves you from the
effort of developing an application all over again.
There are third-party SaaS product development companies available that help develops
applications that suit different business needs. The cloud strategy team needs to identify these
providers, weigh in their pros and cons, market share, and even pricing before finalizing the best
fit.
For example, your relation management software that is getting obsolete with time can be
replaced with available third-party CRM software online.
4. Reskilling and Upskilling
Once you implement your cloud strategy, the routine IT operations will witness a significant shift.
This will further lead to a change in the roles and responsibilities of the IT department, for which
your enterprise should prepare in advance.
The new model is, ‘You own it, you build it,” giving single teams
ownership of every stage of development and requiring that IT and the
business operate in lockstep with one another.— Charlie Li, Capgemini’s chief
cloud officer

Reskilling and upskilling is a safe strategy to implement where everybody across the enterprise
can learn and adapt to the new working environment. It will reduce burnout and productivity, the
greater agenda of any workplace.
As the traditional roles will continue to prevail in the background, the newer cloud-driven roles
will evolve and hold precedence. Here is a chart that serves as an example of how enterprise
roles will change after implementing the cloud strategy.
Traditional Roles vs Evolving Roles
Traditional Role Cloud-Driven Role
UI, UX Designer
Process Engineer(ensures orchestrated and
hindrance free loud experience)
Developer
Cloud Architect (leverage cloud for ensuring
business benefits)
Engineering and DevOps (ensures
continuous deployment)

Tester
Data Analyst
Data Scientist (Provides insightful data that
offers value)
Applications Monitoring and Support
Network Engineer
Edge and Wireless Networking (ensures
secure remote-access)
Solution Manager
Relationship Manager (cloud advisor)
Business Architect (ensures the best use of
cloud assets)

Another significant change in the organization is the amalgamation of — development and
operations department, thus paving the way for the DevOps culture.
Introduction to DevOps
DevOps = Development Team + Operations Team
DevOps is the new reality that has led to a cross-functional setup in the teams that have
managed to bridge the communication gap across the organizational culture.
With the cloud, deploying new applications or new features to the existing applications on the
cloud becomes normal. This means you would have to appoint the development team to create
applications using agile development practices.
Now, as the development teams step in, so would the testers. Thus, breaking the silos that exist
between developers, tests, and operations departments.
The takeaway is that you need to prepare, reskill, and upskill your staff to know their changing
roles and responsibilities and to train them to what lies ahead. This is an essential step to
ensure that cloud strategy best practices are followed.
5. Implementation

When implementing the cloud strategy, the first thing that needs to be decided is as to what part
of the legacy infrastructure will be moved first. It is not a one-time effort, but a long-term
initiative.
For instance, you are moving a large pile of books from one room to another. Carrying them all
at once will be challenging, and the burden might be too much to handle. Moreover, you might
fall too.
On the other hand, if you carry only limited books at a time, you can easily carry the weight
while ensuring the pile stays intact. The same is the case with cloud migration. You need to lift
and shift in partitions. But, here the operations team also needs to prioritize what needs to be
moved first based on your business requirements.
Here’s a migration strategy prioritization example by Microsoft:

According to the diagram above, choosing low complexity, low business risk workloads should
hold priority. If you start small, you can learn and implement better when it comes to complex
and high-risk workloads.
Ideally, this should be the order of movement in the cloud:
● First Phase: Development and Testing (DevTest) environments, Web apps, new products
and solutions, redesigned solutions and products

● Second Phase: Regulatory solutions, High Input/Output online transactional processing
systems (OLTP)
● Third Phase: Secure high-value assets (HVA) systems, public key infrastructure (PKI)
systems, and legacy source control systems
Next, follow this cloud migration plan when migrating each of the workloads over to the cloud.
Six Steps for Implementing the Cloud Migration Plan
Process Inference
1. Analysis
Identify the gaps, i.e., what applications you
have vs how you want them to be
Plan for the change in the application
architecture accordingly
Coordinate with information security and risk
management teams to ensure security and
privacy controls are in place

2. Application Migration
Create a basic version of the application
loaded with minimum data on the cloud
If the application is running on a virtual
machine, you can proceed to move the
application on the cloud without changes
Optimize the application to offer
performance, scalability, and security
3. Networking
Set up a virtual private network (VPN)
4. Data Migration
Move the data in primitive form (with the help
of automated tools) either to the relational or
non-relational location on the cloud
You can also rebuild the data model to
achieve performance, security, and
resilience benefits
Create a data recovery plan or resilience
planning ensuring business continuity

5. Optimization and Testing
After moving your applications and data,
perform performance testing on the cloud
Measure, identify and fix performance gaps if
any
6. Operation and Management
Deploy application tracing and monitoring
tools offered by cloud providers such as
AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Use the incoming stats from these tools to
monitor performance, identify bugs,
troubleshoot, and even analyze traffic
Get access to a single and holistic view of
applications at one place
Conclusion
Devising and implementing an enterprise cloud strategy ensures a fool-proof execution of the
cloud migration and adoption process. The cloud adoption changes how businesses and IT
operate. It is not just another change management initiative, but an entire digital transformation
project that requires priority and expertise.

In this write-up, we have covered the enterprise cloud strategy steps that ensure successful
migration and deployment of the cloud. It starts with creating an enterprise cloud strategy team,
analyzing applications, and deciding what should move to the cloud vs what should be
maintained on-premises. Next, building a hybrid cloud strategy roadmap, considering reskilling
and upskilling, and finally moving ahead with migration in phases.
The more strategically and patiently you move, the better the implementation and
success of your enterprise cloud strategy.
Source: https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/enterprise-cloud-strategy/

Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Facts, FAQs and Implementation Steps

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