Cloud Readiness Assessment (CRA) & Sample Report

Transcription

1 This document provides insight to the decision- making process for introduction of cloud computing and a sample Cloud Readiness Assessment report e- mail g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Cloud Readiness Assessment (CRA) & Sample Report Bridging the gap between thought and action Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 1

2 Table of Contents 1 Supporting the decision for cloud computing 1.1 From Thought to Action 1.2 The Challenge of Change Summary 2 Abbreviated report for illustration of content of a Cloud Readiness Assessment 2.1 Cloud The Business Perspective 2.2 Cloud: YES, NO, MAYBE or DON T KNOW? 2.3 Executive Summary Assessment Scope Assessment summary - Readiness scores Assessment Findings 2.4 Sample Questions 2.5 Summary 2.6 Appendix 3 Pricing 4 About DrPete Inc. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 2

3 1 Supporting the decision for cloud computing Where an organisation has an agenda for the transformation of IT to include cloud computing there is a need to consider the opportunities and with that the challenges, risks and issues. At the outset these are not associated with technology but with making ready and supporting the organisation to reach a consensus on change. This is a consultative process that can be time- consuming and one that the CRA addresses very effectively. There is a learning curve to build knowledge about cloud ahead of delivering on a transformation of IT. Many stakeholders can be involved in the consultation and decision- making process and at the outset it is not known if they are qualified to understand the issues as they relate to cloud computing. This can dog decision- making and inhibit progress. So, starting out there are more questions than answers and that obstructs progress until resolved and then there is the question: Where do you start? A recent Gartner press release stressed the need for Formal Decision Frameworks to Facilitate Cloud Investment Optimization. In plain English: it is time to get organised with the analysis and decision- making process surrounding your cloud strategy. How do you do that? The industry approach to this question is to activate a CRA. This should be vendor- independent and puts strategy ahead of technology (that comes later). It should reveal what the organisation needs to know among its key stakeholders about the organisation s readiness to introduce cloud computing. It is the place where you start to understand what it means to have IT resources in an operational model where some you own and control and some you do not. 1.1 From Thought to Action From Cabinet Office source documents regarding cloud and its application, some identified risks/issues stand out that the CRA will address, including: Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 3

4 Risk / Issue Capability. The strategy has an impact on retained IT function and the types of knowledge, skills and experience. If the roles and capabilities are not defined to ensure the delivery of the transformation of services then the strategic intent and Value For Money objective may be harmed. Risk / Issue The culture required to embrace a shift to cloud will require a change in the way people in the IT function perform their work. It will also affect end- users as services may be retired and replaced by new services. Risk / Issue Delivering the right operating model for IT is essential to support the strategic aims of the business. Having stakeholders aligned in understanding what needs to be addressed to achieve a consensus view is both helpful and essential. The cloud for many transforms the operating model for IT and no one person will have a grasp of all the perspectives that will be subject to debate and resolution. Mitigation The CRA addresses at an organisational level the roles and capabilities of those roles to collaborate effectively in developing strategy and the decision- making processes for selection of cloud services. The purpose is to reach a consensus view early on in the process. The CRA does not deliver a consensus, but assists with the process to reach a consensus. Mitigation It cannot be assumed that all stakeholders involved in a decision to use cloud will understand the implications of that choice. The CRA engages a broad community of stakeholders to reveal areas that need attention to ensure a common understanding to marry the needs of the business with the IT choices available to include cloud. Mitigation The CRA delivers a report with outcomes that will support the senior stakeholders to know what actions are needed, e.g. revealing training and education needs, highlighting concerns that may result either from a lack of knowledge or genuinely reveal the business and technical perspectives that are contentious. The CRA engages a broad group of stakeholders to achieve this outcome. 1.2 The Challenge of Change With a transformation program having change at its core a range of questions (not all may be applicable) arise that are typically representative of consultation leading to the formulation of policy and later decision- making. It is on our mind to... Gather all relevant information. Carry out a detailed analysis of all the financial costs, opportunity costs, and benefits of each option and likely outcome. Make the decision on the basis of detailed analysis and objective criteria. Discuss the decision focused mostly on the accuracy and quality of the information and analysis on which it was based. The CRA will... The CRA delivers the up- front due diligence to scope this activity. The CRA starts the process to develop a strategy against which this analysis will be made. The CRA is objective and unbiased in that does not promote a vendor, technology or preferred outcome. It will help scope the processes that follow. The CRA collects the information as told in the assessment. The accuracy and quality cannot be judged at this stage, it is the product required to produce an analysis with high and low impact focus Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 4

5 Acknowledge personal opinions and experience when making the decision. Accept that the decision- making process would to some extent rely on hunches or intuition. Perform discussion and analysis on the information that is most easily available. Accept that emotion is a factor in the decision process. Reconcile the final decision as a good fit with how we normally do things in our organisation. Be seen to do the right thing. Be sure that influential individuals or groups were happy with the outcome. areas. The CRA reveals this. It does not identify individual replies nor is it a test of any kind. The CRA takes input from a number of people so no individual hunches or intuition unjustifiably skew the output. The CRA highlights knowledge and compares knowledge among participants. This helps to avoid assumptions that lead to misunderstanding. Not applicable to the CRA as it does NOT gauge emotion. The CRA looks to challenge the normal way, it has to, as its purpose is to support the evaluation of IT choices to include cloud deployment/services models. Conducting a CRA demonstrates a commitment by an organisation to start the consultation among stakeholders. It is democratic through its scope for wide participation of stakeholder groups. Unlike many cloud readiness assessments it is unbiased, as it does not heed technology or vendor influences. These are decided later. The CRA can include many participants (sponsor decides) to deliver a collective responsibility for the outcome. Summary Here are a few examples of statements from customers. You gain a clear view of the organisational consensus for cloud. Industry surveys may not be representative of your own organisation and so can mislead you. The IT team knowing all about hybrid cloud computing is all good but if the exec team doesn t know what it means and what the benefits are then all IT is really doing is asking for money for the next product they need to buy. It helps you to know what to do next that makes the most sense in establishing a strategy...not a tactical application purchase but a best bangs for your bucks activity list. The cloud champion can focus the right activities to the right groups. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 5

6 2 Abbreviated report for illustration of content of a Cloud Readiness Assessment Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 6

7 2.1 Cloud The Business Perspective The cloud is disruptive and with change there is opportunity. There are many things spoken about the cloud and it needs to be put in perspective of the things that really matter to business: 1. INVESTMENT. The economy has put the squeeze on capital spending and the economics of the cloud allow businesses to continue to invest in IT but without the same demands on cash flow. 2. COMPETITION. Every business should consider how they use the Cloud to support their business mission. It can be your opportunity or threat since it lowers the barriers to market entry for businesses that might be setting their sights on your customers or you on theirs. 3. INNOVATION. For the most part IT is a resource with a heavy maintenance load that can stifle innovation. Since most businesses have exhausted cost- reduction programs the focus is now on innovation and IT innovation has gravitated to the cloud. The cloud is potentially a wide- ranging discussion and one that business is interested to connect with, just as it did when the Internet came to prominence. 2.2 Cloud: YES, NO, MAYBE or DON T KNOW? The real conversation that interests business teams is this: Are we investing our capital in IT in the best way to serve our business? That should include: Do we understand the opportunity the cloud offers and do we have a consensus on the criteria to include the cloud in our IT initiatives? This firmly puts strategy (what matters to the business) ahead of technology (things the business uses) and will therefore need to engage a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the same way that the formulation of a business plan does if the outcome is to be supported and funded. The Internet transformed how we conduct business moving from static websites to self- service ecommerce and now customer interaction (social media). The cloud is an extension of the Internet with new options for delivery of IT to a business. In the distant past business agonised over the use of the Internet, we dealt with the question, recognised the benefits of progress and moved on. The cloud has been subjected to a significant acronym explosion (SAE) and that can detract from understanding the core issues and conversation of business. If you are delivering essential public services then your primary focus is on the efficiency and value for money in the supply- chain for those service. Thinking hats are on to understand the dynamics of the supply- chain and how the cloud can breakout cost through efficiencies or doing things differently aka innovation. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 7

8 As an example, and for illustration purposes without the use of acronyms, here is a conversation path: Define The activity and action such as: we may need to build a rocket (recall the supply chain for oranges supply chains are dynamic), do we have anyone on staff that has built a rocket before? In other words; what do we know about rockets. This defines the baseline (starting out) position. Optimise What will be the purpose of that rocket? Source Who can supply us a rocket or the things we need to build a rocket? The Cloud Readiness Assessment is the baseline in this illustration, substitute rocket for cloud. 2.3 Executive Summary There has been a meteoric rise of interest in Cloud Computing over the last three years coinciding with the global financial crisis starting 2008 although it would be folly to correlate the two events. Even so, it might one of many reasons for the rise of interest yet less important than understanding what is unique to the legacy of IT in a business. There is constant innovation occurring that challenges every business that has an investment in IT and prompts the question; do we with stick with what we have and know or do we change? Since throw away is not an option there is a need for a pragmatic inspection of innovation with regard to the value of existing investments, where they are in their useful working life and depreciation cycle. A useful way to put this in perspective is to look back 5 years and think about how you put IT to work in the business and the changes that have occurred over time. Some were planned events, refresh and upgrades but it has been business as usual for most. The Internet and increased workforce mobility presents some challenges as does the recent development allowing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). So it seems change is constant and we have to find a way to deal with that and that points some of the reasons for the interest in Cloud Computing that has ignited questions about the best way to deploy IT: before we didn t have a choice, now we do, what do we do? The majority of IT is delivered in an own and operate model with the assets on- premises and managed by employees. The Cloud presents an alternative with IT delivered by a provider that takes away the responsibility of own and operate and that changes a lot of things. It changes the accounting of costs to the business for IT, it provides access to the all the innovation that is occurring in the Cloud and most importantly has IT as a resource that is available on- demand. It has the potential to revolutionise how we think about IT and that is more change so everything points to understanding the impact of change. This Cloud Readiness Assessment report is a benchmark for looking at the most important aspects of change and that is how it impacts people, process and the formulation of a strategy for Cloud Computing to serve the broad spectrum of interests of the business that has many stakeholder interests. It puts strategy before technology and that is both rational and mindful of the fact that technology serves people not the other way round. The purpose of the Cloud Readiness Assessment is to rapidly acquire the collective intelligence of stakeholders in a business that has an interest in or responsibility for IT. An interest could be defined as a line of business management team that has a stake in ensuring that IT is optimal to support its business mission. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 8

9 The responsibility for IT is usually with IT either as a provider of a service to the business or as a manager of providers of services to the business and cloud services are in both categories. The assessment is a baseline position for the formulation of an IT strategy and usually includes many stakeholders. Strategy is a plan of action or policy with an overall aim and the assessment opens up the way for participants to input to the process. This assessment drives a process that exposes the cloud as choice to deploy IT and the knowledge base of stakeholders with an interest and/or responsibility and helps determine the readiness to make properly informed decisions about deploying cloud services. It is recognised within IT that there is significant potential for cloud computing to help reduce both operational and capital expenses. However when scoping this assessment several people in the management team commented to the facilitator that they knew assistance was required to help determine what the business value of migrating to the cloud was and how they could confidently justify this value to the business given the current economic climate. Several key vendors to the business have solution offerings and have provided overviews, presentations and in two cases proposals to executive management which has added to the need for the IT leadership team to be able to articulate a vision of where to from here for the organisation. The Assessment results have reinforced this perception, and provided initial outcomes that include: Additional education, targeting specific groups and individuals involved in selecting cloud solutions Key data points for the development of the organisation s overall Cloud Strategy and migration priorities. Targeted areas for early wins highlight the need to further determine the associated ROI. The following Assessment Summary shows the high- level readiness scores, outlining: The most pressing priorities to address Areas where further investigation is required A recommended timeline to deliver key next steps in order to meet the overall objective of the strategic plan for cloud within the target window of 3 months Assessment Scope In order to fully understand the readiness to adopt a Cloud Computing strategy a number of areas were assessed: Executive Strategy. Provides the leadership team a view into the organisation s readiness to achieve operational and capital savings for IT, while also assessing the opportunity to improve efficiency, agility, and innovation throughout the organisation. Cloud Computing Strategy. Gives an overview of the organisation s threshold for implementing different cloud computing models and technical potential for considering data center consolidation, disaster recovery, and required levels of security. Awareness and Knowledge. Provides a baseline in understanding how persons within the organisation understand the basics of cloud computing, identifying opportunities for training and thought leadership that will facilitate better decision- making and implementation of cloud computing projects. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 9

10 Existing Technical Architecture. Highlights existing IT capabilities, budget processes, and decision making within the organisation, allowing reference to compare the current IT environment with a model cloud environment. Security and Risk Assessment. Helps understand if cloud computing offers the opportunity to increase data security, address compliance and regulatory issues, and standardise data management within the organisation. These may already be in place while the economics of delivering the technology support for security can be expensive and the cloud may present the same or better options more economically. IT Governance & Management Strategy. Offers a comparison of existing governance and management of data at the organisational or user level for use in comparing the potential of cloud computing to provide greater structure to data management and control. This is proving particularly challenging for many organisations with the increasing mobility of the workforce and the use of multiple devices on the move (SmartPhone, ipad etc.) and how to provide access applying the best principles of information security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. IT Organisation and Training Plans. Cloud computing presents the IT organisation options to realign the allocation of its resources from maintenance to a more proactive role as an advisor to the business and look at opportunities, for example, to improve process and workflow. This Cloud Readiness assessment analyses a number of areas and is based on responses from four different groups each with their own perspective as follows: Executives: Board level or senior management within the organisation who drive strategic direction specifically with regard to IT services and the provision thereof. Technology Management: Senior management with responsibility for the management and provision of IT services to both internal and external customers. Business Management: Senior managers within the business with the responsibility for the commissioning and specification of IT services that support their mission. This group will have a close working relationship with IT. Technology Staff. Operations staff with the responsibility for the day- to- day delivery and maintenance of IT services. As agreed with the sponsor of the Cloud Readiness Assessment selected people have been allocated to each of these groups (see Appendix B for details) and each has responded to a number of relevant (to their function) online surveys. We have analysed the responses and identified consensus amongst the responses (where a majority agree on the answer) and used this to generate the detailed commentary in the following section. If no consensus was reached we have also highlighted this within the commentary Assessment summary - Readiness scores The following chart shows the overall readiness across each of the areas assessed and is broken down by the different perspectives: Assessment Findings A traffic light system is used to draw attention within the high/low impact analysis of the CRA. Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 10

11 An example of a high impact analysis showing alignment (indicated by traffic light symbols) between constituents participant to the CRA END OF ABBREVIATED REPORT THIS ABBREVIATED REPORT IS AN ILLUSTRATION OF SOME OF THE CONTENT OF A CLOUD READINESS ASSESSMENT REPORT. THE APPENDIX SHOWS A TABLE OF CONTENTS OF A TYPICAL REPORT WHEN COMPLETE. 2.4 Sample Questions Question Focus Question Possible Answers Which of the following is your organisation's biggest concern in adopting cloud computing? Common cloud concerns Hiring plan for cloud computing What is your current staffing plan for cloud or virtualisation- related staff? Availability Security Interoperability Portability My organisation has no concerns I am not aware of any concerns None, all required staff already in place Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 11

12 professionals Hosted applications (client/server) Level of virtualisation Existing applications are VM or Cloud ready Does your organisation currently support hosted applications common to many users? What level of IT or application virtualisation is practiced within your organisation? What is your estimate, if known, of the number of shared IT applications within your organisation that could be considered virtual machine ready or cloud computing infrastructure ready? Hire executive IT/Technology positions with cloud computing focus Hire executive and technician level staff with cloud computing experience, training, or skills Hire IT technicians with cloud computing training or experience No specific hiring plan in place Yes, only Yes, most organisational applications are client/server Yes, our organisation uses primarily "dumb" terminals and mobile devices No, all computers run local software Not sure or do not know Some applications are virtualized Most common or shared applications are virtualized Unknown Some, less than 20% Moderate number of applications, 20~50% Most applications are VM or cloud- ready, greater than 50% 2.5 Summary The assessment: Will Ask about your levels of awareness of cloud computing. Ask about whether your organisation is preparing to benefit from cloud computing. Cover a wide range of subjects including your organisation s current use (if any) of cloud services. Use language consistent with commonly used standards 1. Ask about your organisation s current IT environment and platforms. Will Not Refer to specific products and solutions. Be a test of the speed of your answers. Be a test of any kind. Expect that you will always know the answer. So Don t Know options are often available and are considered valid responses. 1 With reference to NIST Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 12

13 The key benefits of the CRA are to deliver in the format of a report: An easy to understand analysis of your readiness to support your decision- making process for cloud computing. A set of key findings that your organisation will need to address as a priority in order to develop a strategy that will align the needs of the business and inform the resulting discussions between stakeholders to include the IT organisation and IT vendors and / or external service provider. 2.6 Appendix Example Table of Contents for completed Cloud Readiness Assessment Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 13

14 3 Pricing Our price of 7,650 plus VAT is for the entire CRA exercise. 4 About DrPete Inc. Our cloud work is regularly recognised in media commentary, including the Financial Times, Management Today and CloudPro. DrPete Inc is an award- winning strategic Business and Technology advisory. Unlike the giant and impersonal consultancies, we take care to meet your needs in an engaging and productive way. We are used to working with organisations of all sizes in the UK and around the globe. Our teams have worked in many industries and as such bring a broad level of experience to their assignments, and fresh insight into business and operational challenges. We undertake our work using a published set of service values. In addition, we have strategic relationships with tier one providers such as Google to offer their cloud- based solutions. DrPete Inc Ltd Gilmoora House Mortimer Street London W1W 8HS Tel:+44 (0) Insightful Independent Advice g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Company Tel:+44 (0) g- cloud@drpete.co.uk Page 14