Continuous Improvement and Business outcomes with CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence)

There are endless reasons why businesses are migrating to the Cloud. A successful cloud migration not only rely on a right migration strategy and a good strategic planning, but it requires more than that. It needs a centre of excellence framework to align each and every department and employees. 

Every organization with a large presence in the cloud must have a CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence) team which is aimed at developing a cloud operation framework. The CCoE team is responsible for governing the IT infrastructure and developing best practices throughout the business.

A CCoE is a team or a cross-functional executives who support and leads all the other employees in an organization throughout the cloud journey right from cloud adoption to migration and operations. In a cloud-first approach, the CCoE establishes cloud standards and repeatable processes for all the employees to use. 

A well-curated CCoE team starts with three to five members who thoroughly understands the Cloud Adoption Framework and are capable of executing cloud technologies that are aligned with the business’s goals and strategy. The members in CCoE’s team are generally, network engineers, system administrators, developers, IT operations, and database administrators. The CCoE team is responsible for revising existing governance standards and ITIL-based processes for understanding and addressing all the cloud challenges faced by the employees and to provide ongoing support to all the stakeholders. 

Importance of CCoE

The CCOE is a functional team who are well versed of enterprise architecture, the duties of this team include determining cloud policy, provide guidance during cloud provider selection, and supporting with solution architecture and workload placement, enhancing outcomes and managing risks. The CCoE team does not possess responsibilities as day-to-day operations nor do they do a role of project management. A CCoE team must not be outsourced, the following are the few action items that a CCoE does in an organization:

• Aligning cloud offerings as per the larger organizational strategy
• CCoE takes part in developing cloud governance, by designing reusable frameworks
• Handling cloud knowledge and learning
• Driving momentum across the organization
• Managing cloud usage and plans for scale

CCoE is a dynamic entity, it is continuously evolved to cope up with the innovations that are connected with cloud adoption. The organizations leadership team must build the CCoE in an adaptive way such that it evolves as the growing organization needs. 

The Three Core Pillars of CCoE:

Governance:

CCoE team collaborates with all the cross-functional teams of the organization, so as to create cloud policies and to select governance tools that deliver risk management.

Brokerage

CCoE teams are part of each and every aspect of the cloud migration journey. They will assist the decision-makers in finding the right cloud provider which can work hand in hand with their business objectives. They architect cloud solutions and work together with the sourcing team for contract negotiations and vendor management.

Community

CCoE is considered as a knowledge repository they create the best practices for managing the cloud. They conduct training events to instruct all the employees on using cloud-based applications in a way that enhances productivity and minimizes the risk of human errors. 

Types of CCoE:

The CCoE is categorized into 3 types, which will support the organization’s governance model. Relying on the organization’s governance model and business objectives, IT leaders can decide on which type of CCoE best fits them.

Functional CCoE

A functional CCoE acts as a delivery catalyst, which will have a hands-on engagement with the project management and delivery teams to drive cloud initiatives. This type of CCoE is precisely applicable for organizations which takes decisions slowly only after a deep analysis of each and every aspect of the cloud transformation program. 

Advisory CCoE

The advisory CCoE is built with a team of consultants that provides information and guidance about the best practices for the teams who are working on the cloud. This team is responsible for setting up standards and to design new policies which are compatible for larger-scale organizations which have multiple projects running. 

Prescriptive CCoE

A Prescriptive CCoE builds a policy board that offers governance and plans to the teams on how cloud projects must be compiled and executed within the organisation. This team is responsible for determining policies and standards which cover everything from deployment of applications to setting automation standards. It also defines identity and access management which complies the security and audit standards. This type of CCoE is suitable for large scale organizations where cloud governance is a top priority. 

Types of CCoE roles

Organizations once understand which type of CCoE fits there requirements, then they must hire key roles who can help determine the cloud governance framework. In this context, Managerial role is the most important one, this particular executive or leader will have the independence and expertise to lead the change. This leader will pull other departments of the organization into the CCoE to take key roles, including finance, architecture, operations, security and compliance. 

Finance

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will play a key role in reassuring that the cost optimisation strategies and cost control governance are intact so that the costs do not go out of control.

Architecture

This is to make sure that the organization has required cloud expertise and to embrace cloud best practices and to determine a future technology roadmap.

Operations

This role is to ensure that the 24/7 operational support model is intact for organizations new cloud environment and the existing infrastructure. 

Security

The Chief security officer ensures that the security standards are applied in all the aspect of the cloud operations. Also determines the security guidelines that have to be followed by each and every employee in the organization while making use of cloud applications or data. 

Compliance

This is to make sure that the governance policies are in place and audited in compliance with regulatory standards across the cloud.

Organizations can adopt a DIY approach to develop an operational and governance model parallel as they begin their cloud migration journey, or they can engage a third-party vendor which can help them create a CCoE. Locuz Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) addresses the core problems of the enterprises in a way that organizations can gain leverage across the enterprise & drive the wave of change that can truly transform the organization.