Most companies typically go through a set of phases the in their Microsoft cloud journey. They start with experimenting with the cloud for rapid application development. A single subscription is manually created in the Azure portal, and a set of services is quickly deployed from the portal to serve business and the developer’s needs. It is even not uncommon in this phase, for the business or for developers to use their own credit card for creating this single subscription. The main goal in this phase is mostly serving business needs quickly, creating small proof of concepts, or avoiding the lengthy and time-consuming deployment strategies of bigger organizations.

In the next phase, the IT department, is starting to take the first steps into the cloud and will create additional subscriptions. Mostly targeted to the different departments in the organization. They will be introducing centralized deployments and will start thinking about security and compliancy in the cloud.

In the third phase, the organization is embracing the cloud on a larger scale. Senior management has decided to transform IT, shift to a cloud first approach, applications and datacenters need to be migrated, hybrid environments need to be created, and all new applications need to be cloud native. This is the moment that most organizations realize that they need a proper governance model and strategy in place.

As cloud environments are managed on a large scale, there is a need for a solid architecture around structuring subscriptions, networking, databases, applications, security and compliance regulations and so on. It requires ownership in the organization to successfully manage a cloud platform on a large scale. It also requires a centralized entity in the organization to maintain best-practices, onboard the cloud customers and to make sure that all services that are used, are secure and compliant by default.

And by implementing these technical aspects on a large scale and embedding this into the organization, people start to realize that this also involves a significant organizational and cultural change to make it a success.

This is where a Cloud Center of Excellence comes in …

What does a Cloud Center of Excellence do?

A Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) is used to bring a diverse and knowledgeable group of experts from across the organization together to develop cloud best practices for the rest of the organization to follow. The CCoE has a support function to increase productivity throughout the organization and at the same time maintain a consistent and secure cloud platforming. It is based on Microsoft agile practices and a delivery model that provides a programmatic approach to implement, manage and operate the Microsoft Azure platform for onboarding projects and Azure workloads effectively.

A CCoE model, requires collaboration between each of the following:

  • Cloud adoption

  • Cloud strategy

  • Cloud governance

  • Cloud platform

  • Cloud automation

When all these aspects are addressed, all the participants can accelerate on innovation and migration, while reducing the overall costs of change and increasing business agility. When successful implemented, a CCoE will create a significant cultural shift in IT as well. Without the CCoE model, IT tends to focus on providing control and central responsibility. A successful CCoE model provides focus on freedom and delegated responsibility. This works best in a technology strategy with a self-service model that allows business units to make their own decisions. The CCoE provides a set of guidelines and established and repeatable controls, used by the business.

Key responsibilities of a Cloud Center of Excellence

The primary goal of the CCoE team is to accelerate cloud adoption through cloud native and hybrid solutions. The CCoE has the following objectives:

  • Build the modern IT organization by capturing and implementing business requirements using agile approaches.

  • Build reusable deployment packages that fully align with the security, compliance, and service management policies.

  • Maintain a functional Azure platform in alignment with operational procedures.

  • Review and approve the use of cloud-native tools

  • Over time, standardize and automate commonly needed platform components and solutions.

The Cloud Center of Excellence team

The CCoE team ideally consists of 3-5 people with a variety of IT backgrounds. This will bring a broad perspective and balanced set of knowledge. It should ideally include people who already have cloud experience and with day-to-day roles, such as:

  • IT / Operations / IT financial manager

  • Solution / Infrastructure Architect

  • Application developer

  • Network engineer

  • Database administrator

  • Systems administrator

Excellent way to start your cloud journey

This blog will help organizations who are going through the different phases in their cloud journey and are starting to transform the whole IT department to be ready for innovation, speed and control. The Cloud Center of Excellence is an ideal model to accelerate your cloud adoption program.