A Cloud-Based Approach Means a New Way of Thinking
Refactoring applications and infrastructure to be cloud-native requires attention to new areas. Network latency and fault tolerance become greater design factors. Securing and monitoring cloud assets involve new tools and processes, and cost monitoring is essential to ensure unused assets do not continue to accrue costs.
Cloud deployments often require organizations to refactor their application stacks to incorporate DevOps principles. Infrastructure as Code tools, such as Terraform, Amazon Web Services CloudFormation and Microsoft Azure Resource Manager, allow organizations to use version control tools to automate deployment and manage changes to infrastructure over time. Container orchestration tools, like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, allow for self-healing infrastructure that can dynamically scale and respond to changing conditions.
Unlocking these capabilities requires certain skills, but it is not cost-effective to hire a cloud architect for every project. Contracting out on a project-by-project basis likely will result in inconsistent deployments, poor integration and difficulty with monitoring security and cost across different projects. It’s better for agencies to establish a core set of competencies in cloud architecture and find a way to apply those to projects as they develop.
This is where a cloud center of excellence can help propel an agency toward cloud adoption.
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CCoEs Require Governance, Brokerage and Community
A CCoE is a focal point for concentrating architectural, security and policy knowledge in a single team so that expertise can be applied consistently across the organization. The CCoE acts as an internal consultant on projects, helping plan, procure, design, deploy and support cloud initiatives successfully.
Gartner identifies the three pillars of a CCoE as follows:
- Governance defines the policies, guardrails, strategy and tooling that an organization must use to be consistent and compliant in its approach to the cloud.
- Brokerage includes the processes and standards the organization will follow to select and contract with service providers.
- Community highlights the CCOE’s role in establishing a community of practice that provides training, knowledge-sharing and change leadership to IT across the organization.