The Three Pillars of Successful Clouds
After bringing hundreds of cloud platforms into being, back online or to optimal function, we've observed three primary areas that contribute to a cloud platform's stability and efficiency.
Strategy
Everything you do in the cloud needs to be aligned to your business goals. A cloud resource that is not providing value, it is likely doing the very opposite. Even if you already have a cloud system in place, it is worth taking time to ensure that your business strategy, legacy and cloud architecture, operational and development processes are aligned.The ease with which cloud services can be turned on makes it simple (and dangerous from a business value perspective) to end up with systems that are messy, not providing business value, and working against your bottom line.
Implementation
If you have planned well, the next step is to execute effectively. This fundamentally comes down to effective automation. Version-controlled, infrastructure-through-development automation provides your system with access to all the benefits that cloud computing provides. This does not need to happen all at once, but having moving from manual processes to automation is an exponentially accelerating process. Automation frees up time for employees to accelerate the automation process and to focus on activities that add business value
Education
Two common ways to slow time to business value is hampering your employee’s ability to get work done. Treating learning as an afterthought leads to gaps in knowledge that need to be relearned. Architectural decision records to ensure business alignment. Complete feature documentation avoids delays. Employee education accelerates time to value.
Over the next week, we are offering our cloud optimization consultation service, a $1,000 value, to qualified company executives for free.