Tallan’s Cloud Transformation Framework is our proven approach to helping clients evaluate, implement, and adopt cloud technologies to transform their business.  Our framework is centered around helping you create and ultimately implement the necessary business and technology strategies required to successfully utilize cloud technologies for your organization. This is part two of a three part series, serving as a helpful introduction to the Tallan Digital Accelerator. Click here for Part 1. For more information on our cloud adoption or migration services, feel free to connect with Ryan Clark.

Roadmap

Upon completing the Envisioning phase, the following has been mapped out for a client:

• Key Drivers
• Strategy
• Business Outcomes
• Approach

At this point, you are ready to start developing a plan to migrate to the cloud and align your cloud adoption strategy to your desired business outcomes.  This phase is typically broken down into three key areas:

• Work to inventory digital estate & spell out “as is” architecture.
• Develop a “to be” cloud architecture.
• Create a cloud adoption and migration plan to get you from your “as is” state to your “to be” state.

Inventory Current Digital Estate

During this phase it is critical to understand your current digital estate, from infrastructure through dependencies between applications and databases.  The goal with this exercise is to create a list of IT assets that support specific business functions that we can later analyze, rationalize, and align to your strategy. Ultimately this information will also help you define that first workload you would like to test in the cloud while gaining an understanding of both functionality and cost.

From here you will have the following items identified for you current state:

• List of IT assets (servers, databases, VM’s, etc.)
• An understanding of current network mapping and dependencies amongst data, applications, and infrastructure
• Definition of current governance and security controls
• Definition of current DevOps/deployment processes
• First workload to move
• “As is” architecture diagram

The goal with this exercise is to create a list of IT assets that support specific business functions that we can later analyze, rationalize, and align to your strategy.

Develop Cloud State

Once you have developed a holistic understanding of your current state and have identified your first test workload, the next step will be to begin planning for the cloud. During this exercise, you will take your understanding of your current environment (assets, dependencies, governance, security, and deployment process) and start to map out your “To be” cloud state for the identified workload.

After this you will have the following items Identified:

• List of cloud assets needed to support selected workload
• Mapped out “To be” cloud architecture
• Understanding of network mapping and dependencies as it relates to cloud architecture
• Defined cloud governance and security model
• Defined DevOps/cloud deployment process
• Current state vs. Cloud state cost comparison for workload

 Migration & Adoption Plan

Now that you have analyzed your current state, identified a test workload, and defined a cloud state you are ready to create your migration plan & timeline.

A plan is an essential requirement for a successful cloud migration.  Typically, a cloud migration plan is an iterative project outline that helps you transition from traditional IT approaches to modern, agile approaches.  It is important to allow your plan to help manage transitions over time and have your business objectives be clearly translated into technical efforts that compliment your transformation strategy.

Beyond the migration plan, you should also have a strategy for “cloud adoption.” This entails the understanding of your organization’s needs pertaining to skill readiness, training, necessary capabilities for your staff, and ownership of cloud strategy.

Cloud Migration Plan Check List:

• Prerequisites
  • Ensure that all steps (through envisioning and the initial parts of the roadmap phase) are completed in detail before initiating your plan.
• Define & prioritize workloads
  • Beyond your initial test workload, be sure to prioritize your first ten workloads in order to establish an initial adoption backlog.
• Align IT Assets to workloads
  • Identify which assets are required to support your prioritized workloads.
• Review
  • Review your decisions to refine adoption path for workloads: Lift & Shift vs. Modernize.
• Establish iterations and release plans
  • Set time blocks allocated to work around your adoption, and define the work required to trigger a change in production.
• Estimate timelines
  • Establish rough timelines for release planning purposes.

It is important to allow your plan to help manage transitions over time and have your business objectives be clearly translated into technical efforts.

Cloud Adoption Plan checklist:

• Skill readiness analysis
  • Based on your current staff, identify the current skill sets you have in-house and potential gaps as you shift to your cloud model.
• Map people to capabilities
  • Based on what you can gather from your skills readiness analysis, you will want to start mapping necessary capabilities for your cloud adoption such as:
    • Completing technical tasks
    • Delivering technical changes
    • Implementing protective governance capabilities
    • Defining governance controls
    • Are there additional persona’s and capabilities that you might not have, but are needed?
• Establish a “Cloud Center of Excellence”
  • Once you have evaluated current skill sets and started to map your people to defined necessary capabilities, you will want to create a Cloud Center of Excellence.
  • This group will take ownership of implementing, refining, growing, and adapting your cloud strategy from an adoption and governance perspective.
• Training Plan
  • Based on the gaps identified, define a plan for training your current staff. Conversely, you may choose to work with a third party as an extension of your IT organization that can transfer knowledge to your staff as your cloud organization grows.

Upon the completion and review of your migration and adoption plans, you will be ready to establish yourself in the cloud and take the first steps in your migration and adoption efforts.

In the final part to this series, I’ll be concluding with the Establish phase of our Accelerator. To learn more about Tallan’s overall approach to cloud strategy, click here.

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Ryan Clark, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Technologies

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