From Silos to Synergy: Aligning CCOE and Cloud Operations for Better Outcomes

Introduction to CCOE and Cloud Adoption

The Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) is an organizational structure focused on driving cloud adoption within an enterprise. It typically consists of key members from the CTO office, enterprise architecture, cloud architects, business units, cybersecurity, and finance.

Successful cloud adoption reflects the effective execution of the CCOE’s vision. The CCOE aims to establish technology standards, implement security best practices, deploy monitoring and management tools, and ensure the right skill sets are in place. By engaging with various business units, the CCOE influences cloud operations through identification, delegation, and incentivization, ultimately empowering the organization’s cloud transformation

The Relationship Between CCOE and Cloud Operations

The CCOE plays a pivotal role in defining, developing, and maturing an enterprise’s cloud operations. In the early stages, the CCOE conducts assessments, develops tools, outlines skill and technology roadmaps, selects vendors, and shapes operational processes. Depending on the complexity and ownership needs, the CCOE may manage operations directly or delegate them to another team. Regardless, the CCOE continuously advises on improving operational maturity.

On the other hand, Cloud Operations impact cloud adoption through their ability to meet SLAs, ensure service availability, demonstrate technical proficiency, and provide self-service capabilities. As Cloud Operations evolve, they improve maturity by cross-training technical resources, introducing enhanced tools, refining SOPs, and optimizing processes.

How Cloud Operations Maturity Evolves Over Time

Over time, the influence of the CCOE on Cloud Operations maturity may diminish. While the CCOE maintains broad accountability and strategic priorities, the Operations team becomes increasingly focused on ensuring stability and addressing daily challenges of business application.

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The accompanying graphic illustrates the roadmap for both the CCOE and Cloud Operations. Key focus areas and priority issues captured along each timeline highlight how priorities shift over time. The graphed alignment differentiation between the two teams reflects how these changes can lead to slower cloud adoption within the business.

As Cloud Operations challenges take precedence due to their immediate impact, other initiatives may be sidelined.

Explanation

To illustrate this dynamic, consider the focus area of "Organizational Changes in Accountability for Technology Support" during Phase 3 of Cloud Operations. In the early stages, the Cloud Operations team may manage Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings and other managed services, such as Amazon QuickSight and AWS Lambda. However, as organizational changes occur, these services may transition to being managed by the Cloud Engineering team. This shift has a ripple effect on team structure, standard operating procedures (SOPs), tools, and support dimensions.

Summarizing the impact of priority misalignment.

?? Lower Cloud Adoption and new application/service roll out.

?? Improper realignment will cause distribution to the operations and service availability.

?? Higher resource attrition due to the increased & misaligned expectation.

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Realigning Priorities for Improved Alignment

As noted in the previous sections, misalignment can severely impact an organization's cloud adoption efforts. It is the responsibility of the enterprise and the CCOE to realign priorities and foster a unified direction, ensuring that both teams work together effectively to achieve optimal results.

?a.????? Roadmap Realignment

While the roadmaps of the CCOE and the organization are not frequently reviewed or adjusted, it is essential to recognize that priorities within an enterprise can change over time. Therefore, realigning the CCOE roadmap is crucial for owning and being accountable for significant changes, such as proof of concepts (POCs) for tools. This is typically managed by Cloud Operations, by having the CCOE take ownership of this aspect, the organization can gain enterprise-level visibility into its needs, explore a broader range of vendor tools, and seek advice from hyperscalers. This approach enables better alignment in tool selection, ensuring that the needs of operations remain central to the decision-making process.

b.???? Formation of smaller functional group

The CCOE core team should avoid delving too deeply into operational issues or the roadmap. Instead, creating a dedicated functional group composed of members from enterprise architecture, solution architecture, operational leads, and business owners can provide a focused approach to achieving their goals and managing the roadmap effectively.

The above structure of the CCOE outlines specific roles and responsibilities essential for effective cloud adoption. For example, the enterprise architecture team is tasked with owning the reference architecture, establishing standards, and providing design guidance. Additionally, creating a small, dedicated team focused on Cloud Operations and the roadmap can significantly enhance cloud adoption within the organization.

?Reference credit:- https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/06/11/create-cloud-computing-center-excellence/

c.????Balancing Cloud Operations Stabilization and Modernization

Both Cloud Operations stabilization and modernization are critical objectives for any business; however, they often conflict with each other. For instance, embarking on a modernization journey can introduce numerous changes to operations, leading to potential downtimes and disruptions, while stability requires minimal changes to maintain performance.

To successfully execute a modernization initiative, substantial planning and alignment with the operations team are essential. Prior to starting a modernization journey, organizations should focus on advanced preparations, such as identifying proven partners, training technical resources, enhancing tools and SOPs, and implementing recognition programs for technical leads. These steps will foster better alignment between stabilization and modernization efforts, ultimately helping to achieve business goals.

4. SRE Lead Operations

Traditional Cloud Operations often resemble an extended version of conventional IT support, encompassing SLAs, KPIs, downtime management, incident and problem resolution, all managed by trained cloud resources. However, as organizations adopt PaaS and serverless architectures, these operating models face significant challenges in scalability.

Transitioning to a Cloud Way of Working, such as Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevSecOps, is critical for addressing these challenges. This shift fundamentally changes the operational foundation, tools, and culture of the organization, marking an essential step toward progress.

SRE operations emphasize automation, continuous improvement, proactive monitoring, and the integration of security within the development lifecycle

Summary of two Cloud Operating models.

Conclusion

The previous statements highlight how the priorities of the CCOE and Cloud Operations evolve over time and their subsequent impact on cloud adoption. Adopting a four-themed approach serves as a solution to bridge the gap between these teams, fostering alignment and facilitating quicker cloud adoption.

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