Building a Scalable and Sustainable Strategy for Cloud Adoption — Part One — People

Cloud adoption strategies are as varied as the reasons behind them. You might be under pressure to vacate your current data center, leading to a ‘lift and shift’ approach where your existing servers are moved to the cloud. Or perhaps you’re aiming to modernize an outdated application with the latest cloud technologies. You may even want to leverage the wide array of cloud marketplace offerings to inject innovation into your data and AI/ML solutions.

No matter your specific reason for migrating to the cloud, a strong foundation based on alignment with your overall business goals is essential. Every Cloud Service Provider has its own Adoption Framework, packed with numerous concepts and guidance. However, without an initial framework in place, Adoption Frameworks from CSPs can seem daunting. This leads to organizations not spending enough time in Stratigizing and Planning, and to overly focus on technical specifics like the platform, capabilities, and KPIs for adoption and migration. Such a tactical approach can create challenges later when scaling up cloud operations. Prioritizing a robust foundation from the beginning is key to successful, efficient scaling.

Consider this writing as a stepping stone in creating an adoption strategy, to be used alongside the Adoption Framework of your chosen Cloud Service Provider. To organize our approach, we’ll use the Digital Transformation Triad of “People”, “Process”, and “Technology”. This triad serves as a guide in formulating an effective Cloud Adoption playbook.

The success of cloud adoption and digital transformation relies heavily on shifting mindsets. Often, we leap into the ‘technology’ aspect of the triad too quickly, neglecting the necessary focus on ‘people’ and ‘process’. This imbalance can lead to roadblocks further along the transformation journey. In this section, we’ll concentrate first on the People.

The People

The journey to the cloud should not begin with a deep focus in technology, but rather with an evolution in culture and mindset. It is indeed essential to align the people first before any technological changes are made. Let’s delve into what cloud journey means for your team.

Decentralization and Autonomy

The cloud enables teams to transition into true “product” ownership, promoting customer-centricity, faster innovation, and continuous improvement. By eliminating dependencies on external teams, everything becomes consumable through APIs. There is no longer a need to wait for a network engineer or a server admin; developers can provision required resources themselves. This autonomy can help turn your teams into high-performing units with shorter lead times for change and increased deployment frequency.

Some guiding questions you should be able to answer on this section:

1. How often does your team require assistance from external teams to implement changes to your application’s on the current platform?
2. How ready is your team to leverage the autonomy and decentralization enabled by Cloud? Do you have the external team responsibilities mapped to your team to support the autonomy?
3. To what extent is your team capable of troubleshooting and resolving cloud-related issues independently?

Shift in Skill Sets

Cloud migration demands a wider understanding of technology. Developers need to understand that they are no longer developing for a traditional hardware setup; instead, they are working with distributed resources in the cloud. Embracing cloud-native services and new development and monitoring tools is essential. Continuing to use on-premises techniques and technologies can hinder your cloud journey, making it slow and less efficient. There’s no replacement for an experienced Cloud Developer in your team. You need to have SMEs specialized in the cloud services you will be using in your application.

Some guiding questions you should be able to answer on this section:

1. How well has your team adapted to the wider technology stack needed for cloud?
2. How confident is your team in adopting new development and monitoring tools specific to cloud environments? You don’t deploy to cloud, you need to develop for it.
3. To what extent can your team manage and optimize distributed resources in the cloud as opposed to traditional hardware setup?

DevOps and CI/CD

A strong DevOps culture is vital in the cloud environment. Leveraging Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines not only streamline resource provisioning and code deployment, but also ensure consistent deployments and the ability to rollback, if needed. Manual provisioning may seem faster initially, but as your application scales, automation will save you from unnecessary headaches. Your code should be properly versioned, and deployed through a CICD pipeline that’s capable of scanning for any anti-patterns or security exposures.

Some guiding questions you should be able to answer on this section:

1. How integrated are DevOps and CI/CD practices within your team’s development and deployment process?
2. Is your team ready to use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to manage and provision your cloud resources?
3. Do you have mechanisms in place to ensure deployment consistency across different environments (e.g., staging, production)?

Security Mindset

Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility. Teams must maintain a culture of security consciousness. Cloud is secure by default, and it allows several ways to secure your workload. However, lot depends on the implementation and maintenance of the platform to stay secured in cloud. It is complex to figure out the interconnection of resource policies, and access policies. An example of the importance of this understanding is the handling of AWS S3 buckets. If teams do not understand how resource policies and IAM policies work together, this can easily lead to a security incident. The use and understanding of proactive monitoring, and a well-planned approach to stay secure in cloud is vital.

Some guiding questions you should be able to answer on this section:

1. How well does your team prioritize application-level security in serverless?
2. To what extent does your team understand and implement security best practices in the cloud environment?
3. Do you have a plan to regularly review and update your cloud resource policies?
4. Does your team understand how to handle sensitive data (like database credentials or API keys) in your applications?

Adaptability

The rapidly evolving cloud technology demands continuous learning and adaptability. An outdated stack in the cloud can become a significant technical debt. For instance, if you deployed your SageMaker Inference in 2022 and never updated it, you might be paying more than necessary now that AWS has released SageMaker Inference Serverless. Ensuring your stack and resources stay current is critical to get the best value from your cloud investment.

Some guiding questions you should be able to answer on this section:

1. Do you have a plan to regularly review your application with the latest services and new features to evaluate fit for use?
2. What’s your plan to support continuous deployment to stay current with the latest IaC modules and service updates from Cloud Service Providers?
3. How does your team planing to keep up with evolving best practices in cloud development and operations?
4. Are your developers comfortable learning new cloud-native services and changing their development practices accordingly?

Each of these areas is critical for your team to successfully adapt to the cloud and make the most of its offerings. Your investment in culture should foster a collaborative work environment, nurturing a dynamic and supportive ecosystem that continuously evolves as your organization accelerates its adoption of cloud technologies. Your goal should be to create a culture where people, technology, and processes are all oriented towards leveraging the cloud’s unique advantages. In the next part, we will delve into the “process” part of the equation.