Design Your Cloud Operations
It’s “day two” in the cloud. Now what?
- Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.
- Different stakeholders across previously separate teams rely on one another more than ever, but rules of engagement do not yet exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds.
Impact and Result
- Assess your key workflows’ maturity for life in the cloud and evaluate your readiness and need for new ways of working
- Identify the work that must be done to deliver value in cloud services
- Design your cloud operations framework and communicate it clearly and succinctly to secure buy-in
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.3/10
Overall Impact
$53,650
Average $ Saved
35
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
University of Ottawa
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services
Workshop
8/10
N/A
N/A
We provided Jeremy with a less-than-ideal situation and he continued to provide the best value he could. I greatly appreciated his work and apologi... Read More
Ledcor Industries Inc.
Workshop
9/10
$27,500
18
Enjoyed the collaboration and reconnecting the dots with the different business areas
The Alberta Teachers Association
Workshop
9/10
$50,000
20
Nabeel was excellent and struck a great balance in getting to know our small team in the time we had and being very productive while we attended th... Read More
State of Michigan
Workshop
10/10
$137K
110
Franklly the last two questions in this survey. It's very difficult to come up with the "Time Saved" estimate due internal obsticles that must be ... Read More
Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada
Workshop
10/10
N/A
20
Very good workshop. Jeremy provided a lot of valuable information and got us working well together.
Workshop: Design Your Cloud Operations
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Establish context
The Purpose
Establish context
Key Benefits Achieved
Alignment on target state
Activities
Outputs
Assess current cloud maturity and areas in need of improvement.
Identify the drivers for organizational redesign.
Review cloud objectives and obstacles.
Develop organization design principles.
- Cloud Maturity Assessment
- Cloud Challenges and Objectives
Module 2: Establish context (continued)
The Purpose
Establish context
Key Benefits Achieved
Understanding of cloud workstreams
Activities
Outputs
Evaluate new ways of working.
Develop a workstream target statement.
Identify cloud work.
- Workstream target statement
- Cloud operations workflow diagrams.
Module 3: Design the organization and communicate change
The Purpose
Design the organization
Key Benefits Achieved
Visualization of the cloud operations future state
Activities
Outputs
Design a future-state cloud operations diagram.
Create a current-state cloud operations diagram.
Define success indicators.
- Future and current state cloud operations diagrams
Module 4: Design the organization and communicate change (continued)
The Purpose
Communicate the changes
Key Benefits Achieved
Alignment and buy-in from stakeholders
Activities
Outputs
Create a roadmap
- Roadmap
Create a communication plan
- Communication plan
Design Your Cloud Operations
It’s “day two” in the cloud. Now what?
EXECUTIVE BRIEF
Analysts’ Perspective
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Andrew Sharp Research Director Infrastructure & Operations Practice |
It’s “day two” in the cloud. Now what? Just because you’re in the cloud doesn’t mean everyone is on the same page about how cloud operations work – or should work. You have an opportunity to implement new ways of working. But if people can’t see the bigger picture – the organizing framework of your cloud operations – it will be harder to get buy-in to realize value from your cloud services. Use Info-Tech’s methodology to build out and visualize a cloud operations organizing framework that defines cloud work and aligns it to the right areas. |
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Nabeel Sherif Principal Research Director Infrastructure & Operations Practice |
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Emily Sugerman Research Analyst Infrastructure & Operations Practice |
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Scott Young Principal Research Director Infrastructure & Operations Practice |
Executive Summary
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Your Challenge |
Common Obstacles |
Info-Tech’s Approach |
|---|---|---|
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Widespread cloud adoption has created new opportunities and challenges:
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Clearly communicate the need for operations changes:
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Info-Tech Insight
Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds.
Your Challenge
Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.
- As key applications leave for the cloud, I&O teams are still expected to manage access, spend, and security but may have little or no visibility or control over the applications themselves.
- The automation and self-service capabilities of cloud aren’t delivering the speed the business expected because teams don’t work together effectively.
- Business leaders purchase their own cloud solutions because, from their point of view, IT’s processes are cumbersome and ineffective.
- Accounting practices and governance mechanisms haven’t adjusted to enable new development practices and technologies.
- Security and cost management requirements may not be accounted for by teams acquiring or developing solutions.
- All of this contributes to frustration, missed work, wasteful spending, and unacceptable risk.
Obstacles, by the numbers:
85% of respondents reported security in the cloud was a serious concern.
73% reported balancing responsibilities between a central cloud team and business units was a top concern.
The average organization spent 13% more than they’d budgeted on cloud – even when budgets were expected to increase by 29% in the next year.
32% of all cloud spend was estimated to be wasted spend.
56% of operations professionals said their primary focus is cloud services.
81% of security professionals thought it was difficult to get developers to prioritize bug fixes.
42% of security professionals felt bugs were being caught too late in the development process.
1. Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report. 2. GitLab DevSecOps 2021 Survey
Cloud operations are different, but IT departments struggle to change
- There’s no sense of urgency in the organization that change is needed, particularly from teams that aren’t directly involved in operations. It can be challenging to make the case that change is needed.
- Beware “analysis paralysis”! With so many options, philosophies, approaches, and methodologies, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by choice and fail to make needed changes.
- The solution to the problem requires organizational changes beyond the operations team, but you don’t have the authority to make those changes directly. Operations can influence the solution, but they likely can’t direct it.
- Behavior, culture, and organizations take time and work to change. Progress is usually evolutionary – but this can also mean it feels like it’s happening too slowly.
- It’s not just cloud, and it probably never will be. You’ll need to account for operating both on-premises and cloud technologies for the foreseeable future.
Follow Info-Tech’s Methodology
1. Ensure alignment with the risks and drivers of the business and understand your organization’s strengths and gaps for a cloud operations world.
2. Understand the balance of different types of deliveries you’re responsible for in the cloud.
3. Reduce risk by reinforcing the key operational pillars of cloud operations to your workstreams.
4. Identify “work areas,” decide which area is responsible for what tasks and how work areas should interact in order to best facilitate desired business outcomes.
Info-Tech Insight
Start by designing operations around the main workflow you have for cloud services; i.e. If you mostly build or host in cloud, build the diagram to maximize value for that workflow.
Operating Framework Elements
Proper design of roles and responsibilities for each cloud workflow category will help reduce risk by reinforcing the key operational pillars of cloud operations.
We base this on a composite of the well-architected frameworks established by the top global cloud providers today.
Workflow Categories
- Build
- Host
- Consume
Key Pillars
- Performance
- Reliability
- Cost Effectiveness
- Security
- Operational Excellence
Risks to Mitigate
- Changes to Support Model
- Changes to Security & Governance
- Changes to Skills & Roles
- Replicating Old Habits
- Misaligned Stakeholders
Cloud Operations Design
Info-Tech’s Methodology
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Assess Maturity and Ways of Working |
Define Cloud Work |
Design Cloud Operations |
Communicate and Secure Buy-in |
|---|---|---|---|
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Assess your key workflows’ maturity for “life in the cloud,” related to Key Operational Pillars. Evaluate your readiness and need for new ways of working. |
Identify the work that must be done to deliver value in cloud services. |
Define key cloud work areas, the work they do, and how they should share information and interact. |
Outline the change you recommend to a range of stakeholders. Gain buy-in for the plan. |
Blueprint deliverables
Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.
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Assess the intensity and cloud maturity of your IT operations for each of the key cloud workstreams: Consume, Host, and Build |
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Identify stakeholders, what’s in it for them, what the impact will be, and how you will communicate over the course of the change. |
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Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook Capture the diagram as you build it. |
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Build a roadmap to put the design into action. |
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Key deliverable:
Cloud Operations Organizing Framework
The Cloud Operations Organizing Framework is a communication tool that introduces the cloud operations diagram and establishes its context and justification.
Project Outline
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Phase 1: Establish Context 1.1: Identify challenges, opportunities, and cloud maturity 1.2: Evaluate new ways of working 1.3: Define cloud work |
Phase 2: Design the organization and communicate changes 2.1: Design a draft cloud operations diagram 2.2: Communicate changes |
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Outputs |
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Cloud Services Objectives and Obstacles Cloud Operations Workflow Diagrams Cloud Maturity Assessment |
Draft Cloud Operations Diagram Communication Plan Roadmap Tool Cloud Operations Organizing Framework |
Project benefits
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Benefits for IT |
Benefits for the business |
|---|---|
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Calculate the value of Info-Tech’s Methodology
The value of the project is the delivery of organizational change that improves the way you manage cloud services
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Example Goal |
How this blueprint can help |
How you might measure success/value |
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Streamline Responsibilities The operations team is spending too much time fighting applications fires, which is distracting it from needed platform improvements. |
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Improve Cost Visibility The teams responsible for cost management today don’t have the authority, visibility, or time to effectively find wasted spend. The teams responsible for cost management today don’t have the authority, visibility, or time to effectively find wasted spend. |
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1. Average wasted cloud spend across all organizations, from the 2022 Flexera State of the Cloud Report
Understand your cloud vision and strategy before you redesign operations
Guide your operations redesign with an overarching cloud vision and strategy that aligns to and enables the business’s goals.
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Cloud Vision |
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Cloud Strategy |
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It is difficult to get or maintain buy-in for changes to operations without everyone on the same page about the basic value proposition cloud offers your organization. Do the workload and risk analysis to create a defensible cloud vision statement that boils down into a single statement: “This is how we want to use the cloud.” |
Once you have your basic cloud vision, take the next step by documenting a cloud strategy. Establish your steering committee with stakeholders from IT, business, and leadership to work through the essential decisions around vision and alignment, people, governance, and technology. Your cloud operations design should align to a cloud strategy document that provides guidelines on establishing a cloud council, preparing staff for changing skills, mitigating risks through proper governance, and setting a direction for migration, provisioning, and monitoring decisions. |
Key Insights
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Focus on the future, not the present |
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Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds. |
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Responsibilities change in the cloud |
Understand what you mean by cloud work |
Focus where it matters |
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Cloud is a different way of consuming IT resources and applications and it requires a different operational approach than traditional IT. In most cases, cloud operations involves less direct execution and more service validation and monitoring |
Work that is invisible to the customer can still be essential to delivering customer value. A lot of operations work is invisible to your organization’s customers but is required to deliver stability, security, efficiency, and more. Cloud work is not just applications that have been approved by IT. Consider how unsanctioned software purchased by the business will be integrated and managed. |
Start by designing operations around the main workflow you have for cloud services. If you mostly build or host in the cloud, build the diagram to maximize value for that workflow. Design principles will often change over time as the organization’s strategy evolves. Identify skills requirements and gaps as early as possible to avoid skills gaps later. Whether you plan to acquire skills via training or cross-training, hiring, contracting, or outsourcing, effectively building skills takes time. |
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
DIY Toolkit |
Guided Implementation |
Workshop |
Consulting |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.” | “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.” | “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.” | “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.” |
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options
Guided Implementation
What does a typical GI on this topic look like?
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Phase 1 |
Phase 2 |
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Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges Calls #2&3: Assess cloud maturity and drivers for org. redesign Call #4: Review cloud objectives and obstacles Call #5: Evaluate new ways of working and identify cloud work |
Calls #6&7: Create your Cloud Operations diagram Call #8: Create your communication plan and build roadmap |
A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.
Phase 1:
Establish context
Phase 1 | Phase 2 |
|---|---|
1.1 Establish operating model design principals by identifying goals & challenges, workstreams, and cloud maturity 1.2 Evaluate new ways of working 1.3 Identify cloud work | 2.1 Draft an operating model 2.2 Communicate proposed changes |
Phase Outcomes:
Define current maturity and which workstreams are important to your organization.
Understand new operating approaches and which apply to your workstream balance.
Identify a new target state for IT operations.
Before you get started
Set yourself up for success with these three steps:
- This methodology and the related slides are intended to be executed via intensive, collaborative working sessions using the rest of this slide deck.
- Ensure the working sessions are successful by working through these steps before you start work on defining your cloud operations.
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1. Identify an operations design working group |
2. Review cloud vision and strategy |
3. Create a working folder |
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This should be a group with insight into current cloud challenges, and with the authority to drive change. This group is the main audience for the activities in this blueprint. |
Review your established planning work and documentation. |
Create a repository to house your notes and any work in progress. |
Create a working folder
15 minutes
Create a central repository to support transparency and collaboration. It’s an obvious step, but one that’s often forgotten.
- Download all the documents associated with this blueprint to a shared repository accessible to all participants. Keep separate folders for templates and work-in-progress.
- Share the link to the repository with all attendees. Include links to the repository in any meeting invites you set up as working sessions for the project.
- Use the repository for all the work you do in the activities listed in this blueprint.
Step 1.1: Identify goals and challenges, workstreams, and cloud maturity
Participants
- Operations Design Working Group, which may include:
- Cloud owners
- Platform/Applications Team leads
- Infra & Ops managers
Outcomes
- Identify your current cloud maturity and areas in need of improvement.
- Define the advantages you expect to realize from cloud services and any obstacles you have to overcome to meet those objectives.
- Identify the reasons why redesigning cloud operations is necessary.
- Develop organization design principles.
“Start small: Begin with a couple services. Then, based on the feedback you receive from Operations and the business, modify your approach and keep increasing your footprint.” – Nenad Begovic
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
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Guided Implementation 1: Establish Context
- Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges
- Call 2: Assess cloud maturity and drivers for org. redesign
- Call 3: Review cloud objectives and obstacles
- Call 4: Evaluate new ways of working and identify cloud work
Guided Implementation 2: Design the Organization and Communicate Changes
- Call 1: Create your cloud operations diagram
- Call 2: Create your communication plan and build roadmap
Contributors
- Nenad Begovic, Executive Director, Head of IT Operations, MUFG Investor Services
- Desmond Durham, Manager, ICT Planning & Infrastructure, Trinidad & Tobago Unit Trust Corporation
- Virginia Roberts, Director, Enterprise IT, Denver Water
- Denis Sharp, IT/LEAN Consultant
- 3 anonymous contributors
Create a Service Management and IT Operations Strategy
Optimize the IT Operations Center
Improve Incident and Problem Management
Optimize IT Change Management
Harness Configuration Management Superpowers
Develop an IT Infrastructure Services Playbook
Develop Infrastructure & Operations Policies and Procedures
Stabilize Release and Deployment Management
Deploy AIOps to Improve IT Operations
Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind
Improve IT-Business Alignment Through an Internal SLA
Implement Infrastructure Shared Services
Next-Generation InfraOps
M&A Runbook for Infrastructure and Operations
Reduce Manual Repetitive Work With IT Automation
Take Control of Cloud Costs on AWS
Take Control of Cloud Costs on Microsoft Azure
Govern Shared Services
Responsibly Resume IT Operations in the Office
Take Control of Infrastructure and Operations Metrics
Engineer Your Event Management Process
Design Your Cloud Operations
Build a Continual Improvement Program
Align Projects With the IT Change Lifecycle
Prepare for Microsoft 365 Copilot
