Steps to Move towards Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the latest trend in Enterprise IT. Like any other technology it has its own benefits and pitfalls. For any enterprise to ride over cloud, readiness must be assessed.

The following steps will help any enterprise to adopt cloud:

1. Build/Break the Business Case: While money is always a big factor but does Cloud fits well with business requirements (current and future – geographical expansion, merger/de-merger & acquisition/hive-off, alliances, legal & compliance, new product introduction etc), current technical & business architecture (current & future). If you are able to make a business case then proceeds.

2.Take stock of the application portfolio: What are current applications in service and at what stage of life cycle. Those are at end of their life, what to be done with them - should be upgraded with newer versions if available or some thing new (Off the shelf, custom application or extension of existing application/s) or discarded? Which applications will not be required in immediate future and not so immediate future due to business architectural changes (current and envisioned)? What are the acquisition plans for newer applications – off the shelf, custom and extensions?

3.Take stock of Cloud offerings and Rank them: There are numerous cloud offerings in market from variety of players. Assess them based on their offerings and evaluate them on the basis of your requirements:
a. Business Architecture: Security, SLAs, compliances, proprietary & generic processes, out sourcing, usability, scalability, etc
b. Technical Architecture: layer of cloud architecture, data control, data movement, DR mechanism, backup mechanism, upgrading plan, audibility, etc
c. Financial Details: Licensing challenges of applications on the cloud, price structure of cloud offering, training and skill upgrading cost, process modification cost, data movement cost, etc
While taking stock of cloud offerings consider options of Public, Private and Hybrid clouds.

4.Do Proof of concepts (PoCs): Zero in at couple of Cloud offerings (preferably three to five) and develop PoCs. These PoCs must be simple but complex enough to cover meaningful business case. Evaluate these PoCs and do scrutiny from Business, Technical and Financial perspectives to get clouds (cloud itself and cloud offerings) implication on the enterprise. Now choose one or two cloud offerings.

5. Pick the low hanging fruits: Once PoCs are successful and crosses Business, Technical and Financial barriers zero in on chosen offerings. Pick some low hanging fruits and move them to Cloud. Perform detailed scrutiny of each project to fine tune the whole strategy.

6.Do resource planning: Migrating from server management to cloud management requires drastic change in planning matrix. Enterprise requires different kind of skill set to manage cloud. Enterprise requires different kind of tools and techniques to manage clouds.

7.Pick up some high visibility but less critical projects: Once every thing is in place, it is time to pick up some high visibility but less critical projects. This will make cloud visible to various stake holders with minimal risk.

8. March to Cloud