Defining the right cloud strategy and plan for your organisation. The what, why, where and when OM INTELLIGENCE D ATA CINTELLIGENCE

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1 DATACOM D ATA CINTELLIGENCE OM INTELLIGENCE WHITE W H IPAPER T E PA P E R Issued: October 20th ## ISSUED January 2016 Defining the right cloud strategy and plan for your organisation The what, why, where and when Datacom Group Limited All content Datacom 2013 Available for release on request

2 Introduction Finding the right approach to cloud is crucial to maximising the benefits of its adoption. This paper provides advice on how to define the best cloud strategy and plan for your organisation, wherever it is on its cloud journey. It outlines a five-step process based on Datacom s technology-independent approach to cloud planning, which has been honed over the course of many different projects involving public, private, community and hybrid clouds for a diverse range of organisations. This framework is relevant whether you are contemplating a full-scale digital transformation; leaving legacy IT where it is for now and taking a cloud-first approach to new applications; running a Proof of Concept in public cloud before committing further; or doing something in between. If you already have a comprehensive cloud strategy, then the stages presented in this paper can work as a checklist. If you are just building a playbook for cloud adoption at this stage, then by all means lift elements of the below and incorporate them into your guiding principles. Or, if you don t know where to start to craft a strategic approach to cloud, then look no further. Datacom uses the framework in this flexible manner according to our customer s needs. Some customers require comprehensive cloud consultancy, with endto-end assessment and planning, while others just need advice on a tactical solution to a pressing business problem, or justification to take a calculated risk with cloud. Our framework has practical value in all these situations, MATTHEW PAYTON, NATIONAL MANAGER HYBRID CLOUD, DATACOM AUSTRALIA

3 Why a cloud strategy and plan are important Every organisation across the commercial, public and not-for-profit sectors is unique and has a similarly distinctive cloud profile. Most use a mix of different cloud environments with legacy or non-cloud IT, and many leverage various layers of the service stack: IaaS, PaaS and/or SaaS. Some stand out by using a single type of environment, such as public cloud, for all, or almost all, their workloads. The reasons for, and the potential benefits from, using cloud are many and varied, too. They include greater business agility, reducing total cost of IT ownership (TCO), improving time-tomarket, enhancing scalability and unlocking the power of corporate data. All of these moving parts and deliverables can make for a highly complex situation to manage, let alone constantly adapt, innovate and evolve to fit changing business needs and ambitions and to take advantage of advances in technology. The situation is made even more challenging by the fact that implementing cloud especially public cloud and making the most of it is an organisational change issue as much as a technological one; where having the right people, with the right skills, and the right processes in place are key, ROB PURDY, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR CLOUD, NETWORKS AND SECURITY, DATACOM AUCKLAND. The importance of having at least some kind of strategy and plan to guide cloud adoption should therefore come as no surprise. For major endeavours in particular such as a digital transformation project, in which cloud is a foundation technology the right approach can make the difference between success and failure. Indeed, the more you use cloud, and the more you shape your organisation and its people, processes and technology to exploit it, the more important a considered cloud strategy and plan becomes. Yet, Datacom has found that when our future cloud customers first come to us many are missing just that. Customers are often looking for a coherent way to bring their workloads and clouds together, according to a central strategy that aligns with and supports their organisational goals and vision and that will get senior advocacy across the business, if they haven t already got it, MARK HARDIE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR SALES, DATACOM AUCKLAND. Others may have an agreed tactical approach, such as designing and architecting new solutions for public cloud first, that they want to ensure is right for their organisation at a strategic level as their use of cloud evolves. Still others may have a fully mapped out strategy, but want hard evidence as to which cloud or clouds are best for the services they want to deliver back to the business and its customers. At a higher level, enterprises may want to automate and innovate like a startup without pulling on the risk handbrake. Smaller organisations may be all in with public cloud, but want the rigour and processes added to enable sustainable scaling. Some people simply like the sound of public cloud and want us to help them make it work for their business, ADAM KIRKPATRICK, NATIONAL AS-A-SERVICE MANAGER, DATACOM AUSTRALIA. So we take our customers through the questions and processes described below from start to finish or by cherry-picking relevant parts, depending on their situation and requirements

4 The what, why, where and when What What is your organisational strategy and vision? What services does it deliver, or do you want it to deliver, to internal and external stakeholders to meet these objectives? What does IT do to deliver these services? What workloads are involved? What clouds and other technology do you currently use, and for what workloads and services specifically? What is the relative importance of underlying factors such as security, price and compliance? Overall, what is the difference between where you are and where you want to get to across all these areas? Why Why does cloud stack up for your organisation? Why continue to use legacy applications and infrastructure? Why not use public cloud for a certain workload over private, community or hybrid cloud? Where Where is the best place for each workload? Where should certain data reside? Where will new applications be designed and architected for maximum benefit? Where will non-cloud IT be situated? When When should certain workloads move to a cloud, if at all? When can desired services be delivered? When do specific employees need to upskill or take over operations to ensure continuous production after a migration project is completed? The steps outlined below are aimed at helping you to answer these and other questions relevant to cloud planning, and have been proven effective in a wide range of cloud projects for our customers

5 Key steps to the right cloud strategy and plan 1. Identify Set a benchmark To find solid ground on which to base a strategy and plan, the first step is taking stock of your organisation s maturity with respect to business service delivery via IT and cloud in particular. Datacom does this by conducting a Cloud Readiness Assessment (CRA), which involves asking a series of questions that interrogate an organisation s maturity across technology, people and processes. Among other things, the CRA delves into how infrastructure and specific functions, such as application development, are mapped and delivered, and how well an organisation can articulate the current costs of its IT estate. We also review the services enabled by technology that the organisation is delivering to internal and external stakeholders, including employees and customers. For example, an organisation may provide employees with a collaboration service based on and Exchange. This collaboration service becomes part of the Service Catalogue that Datacom helps that business to map out as part of the planning process. Depending on your organisation s needs or appetite for cloud, this review can cover all services or a subset even just one. Organisations that are experienced in outsourcing parts of their operations, or ITIL practices and related ISO standards, will already be familiar with such a service orientation. Thinking and operating in this way can make an organisation more readily able to implement cloud successfully. For others, there may be more work to do to get them to where they want to be with cloud, or stakeholder expectations regarding what s achievable in the short term, for instance, may need to be adjusted. None of this is unsurmountable, of course; it just needs to be factored into planning. Focus on future goals Central to the Identify stage is researching and confirming the overall Business Strategy and Vision, and what the services under discussion are aimed at achieving, both now and in the future. That is, to fulfil certain business objectives, entirely new services may be required, which should be taken into account at this stage of planning. This helps to ensure that cloud strategy is aligned with organisational strategy and goals. Consulting with key senior internal stakeholders, such as the CEO, CTO and CFO, is helpful at this stage. Engaging the senior team early on in the process also helps with gaining buy-in from the top, and setting realistic expectations, the lack of which has led to many a cloud project failing, stalling or going off course. By now you have an understanding of what your organisation wants to achieve, the services it is delivering currently, and the services that are required to meet its business objectives. The next stage analyses and confirms the underlying IT that enables current services, and is required for the future

6 2. Analyse and Confirm Build an IT service catalogue The next step is mapping out, in an IT Service Catalogue, the elements of your organisation s IT that combine to enable each business service. This is based on a comprehensive analysis of, among other things, applications and infrastructure, and related licensing and vendor agreements. Nowadays, of course, it would almost certainly include cloud in some form. Once you have established the current situation, then map what would be required to realise the looked-for services identified in the previous stage: what is missing, what is superfluous to future requirements, what needs to change, and so on. An added benefit of this exercise is that it provides traceability for all workloads to be moved or built, and makes evident the reasons for doing so. Confirm key requirements This stage also involves researching and analysing Business Requirements relevant to IT which are usually confirmed by senior internal stakeholders and determining their relative importance. This set of requirements, which may relate to security, compliance, data location, disaster recovery or other key business risks, or important goals such as cost reductions or faster time-to-market, can be as specific or loose as needed. For example, an organisation may dictate that certain workloads are to run on private cloud only. Another may decide that security trumps price when weighing up different cloud options. Taking these requirements into account helps ensure your eventual strategy and plan is not out of step with issues that matter to senior leadership and other important stakeholders. By defining a cloud readiness benchmark, confirming an organisation s strategy, vision and key requirements, and mapping its service and IT catalogues, a Cloud Strategy to cross the divide between the status quo and the future ideal can now be developed. The next stages are aimed at answering the Why, Where and When questions, and bringing it all together in a Transition Plan

7 3. Weigh and Assess Craft a solution matrix Assessing different cloud and non-cloud options and taking into account the myriad factors that affect each option s suitability for a specific workload can be a painstaking process to undertake on your own. So, even if you don t engage a qualified technology partner at other stages in the framework, Datacom recommends you do for this stage. With the right partner you will have access to indepth and up-to-date knowledge and experience of major cloud and non-cloud environments and related technologies, and the required people and processes to get the most out of them all of which is key to determining the best place for each workload. Technology partners can also help simplify the process of considering each service and the IT needed to deliver it, for example by producing a Solution Matrix that compares and contrasts how different cloud environments stack up. To build a Solution Matrix that is as accurate and objective as possible, Datacom pays constant, close attention to the various cloud solutions and services offered by major providers in our key markets. We also weight various attributes of each environment in the matrix according to our customer s business requirements mentioned above. For example, if security is the top priority, then a multiplier reflecting its primacy would be factored into all options considered in the Solution Matrix. The better the security profile of an environment, the more suitable it would be to meet this criterion. (There would normally be a host of business requirements, of course, alongside the many and varied attributes of different environments.) Use cloud tools Datacom uses a number of tools to help simplify and automate the assessment process. Among them is Cloud Advisor, which provides quantitative appraisals of the relative pros and cons of various environments at a technology level. We also partner with DataSpark Analytics to gauge the relative costs of different scenarios. Our experience in cloud and related software development activities has shown that new services especially are often best enabled by redesigning or rebuilding, rather than lifting and shifting, certain workloads particularly if the compelling advantages of the hyper scale public cloud are sought. If an entirely new workload, application or platform is the best option to deliver a wanted business service, then these can also be evaluated theoretically, that is using Cloud Advisor. Importantly, as these tools focus on the technology layer, they do not take into account other factors, such as licensing or vendor agreements in place, or the implementation or remediation effort required to move, run or build anew the workloads for different environments. To ensure the business, people and process layers are included in assessments, and to help get an as accurate as possible picture of the TCO of various scenarios, practical experience and hands on consultancy from a technology partner is usually required. Consider the T in TCO Obviously, estimating TCO and potential cost savings can be an important element of building a business case for a cloud project. It s easy, however, not to take the T in TCO fully into account as there are costs in any cloud platform which may not be apparent, relating to power, admin and labour, for example. Also, as shown in the Datacom research report, Before You Go Public, Read This (October 2015), some organisations don t know the true costs of their IT estate or related service delivery in the first place, so comparing current platforms to cloud can be very difficult. The right technology partner will be aware of such issues and work with you to address them when estimating the TCOs of various environments and scenarios. They should also help you to avoid taking TCO out of context and placing undue emphasis on it as a potential benefit of cloud. The fact is that TCO may increase with cloud adoption, but in the context of other benefits gained from such a move, the overall business value added by cloud, this increase may be justified. Recognise that cloud is not the only option Datacom deliberately takes a consultative, technology-independent approach towards finding the right cloud for the right workload. We aim to present all relevant options and recommend the best solution(s) to capture the many technological, operational and commercial benefits of cloud. Our evidence-based assessments, however, may lead us to recommend that a customer does not, for the time being at least, need a certain cloud solution. In other words, sometimes, for some organisations, it s better, on balance and after careful consideration, to keep ownership and full control of certain parts of your IT

8 4. Recommend Building the plan The Transition Plan refers to, and is the culmination of, all previous stages, and should set out in as much detail as is feasible how to execute the organisation s newly forged cloud strategy over time answering the What, Why, Where and When questions. Ideal key elements include: the current and planned service and IT catalogues; the recommended new locations for workloads; what s to be lifted and shifted, redesigned, rebuilt, developed from scratch or accessed via SaaS; and what s required when to make the move successfully, including requisite people and processes. Making cloud work for your organisation The primary goal of the planning process outlined above is to establish the best way to use cloud to get desired business outcomes. As this paper has shown, defining the right cloud strategy and plan for your organisation, which will ideally give you a business mandate based on quantifiable evidence, requires an examination of the big picture, and taking people, processes and technology into account. Of course, you may simply be looking for recommendations about where to build and run a specific workload, or just want to give public cloud a go before diving into it. In these instances, the framework can serve as a focal point, a reminder about the need to consider the business context in which the workload runs, and the services it delivers or helps enable back to the organisation. Even if all you take from this paper is the determination to focus on business outcomes first, rather than technology first, when considering cloud, then it will have served its purpose. There s of course much more to making cloud work optimally for your organisation. But the logic of this business focus alone will help guide your thinking, planning, developing and operating towards cloud solutions and related ways of working that best fit your organisational needs now and in the foreseeable future. That said, in our experience, it s almost always better to have a strategy and plan of some kind to work from than none at all. And your plan will need to change as your business needs evolve that comes with the territory nowadays. Datacom works closely with our customers to help them manage this change their businesses for the better with cloud. Our services span design, build, consulting, implementation and management of all kinds of cloud solutions. Where you want to store documents, use a software product in the cloud, or shift your IT infrastructure into a cloud environment, we can help to scale, secure and transform your business. If you d like to discuss any of the key points of this paper in more detail, or just want more information, then please get in touch at cloud@datacom.co.nz

9 Datacom Group Limited All content Datacom 2013 Available for release on request