Author: Mike Buglewitz

There are many business advantages in the cloud. A partial but not complete list is:

• Scale: Because of scale cloud services are deliverable more efficiently and effectively than those traditionally found in corporations not at scale, operating at a reduced scale with full scale expenses or contenting with scale mismatch, i.e., maintaining an overly large infrastructure simply because hardware devices are too large to neatly fit with a smaller corporate environment.
• Expertise: Cloud providers provide services twenty-four hours a day, seven days each week, three hundred and sixty-five days per year and nothing else.  Thus cloud providers gain exceptional expertise and control over the services they deliver to their customers. Cloud providers know their hardware, and in the case of Microsoft not only does Microsoft know its hardware Microsoft also understands the hardware’s compatibility with Microsoft software that Microsoft indeed produces.  Thus from a Microsoft Cloud perspective, Microsoft can control the Office 365 software, or Azure environment to a level of granularity and scope that no other cloud service provider can match.
• Keen Business Focus: To outsource some or all of an infrastructure to the cloud, a corporation or entity must have a very clear business focus. That focus has as a foundation:
  • Clarity of the business’ purpose,
  • A realistic set of expectations and deliverables between the cloud provider and customer,  and
  • Cloud service level expectations and agreements, which form the foundation of internal business functions.
• High Value to High Value: One of the biggest mismatches in corporations occurs when high value employees engage in lesser value operational level tasks. By moving to the cloud, a corporation can align its high value employees to its high business value tasks.  IT business enablers do their best work strategically enabling businesses to gain competitive advantages through information technology strategies, not maintaining email servers.
• Decision Makers: In the cloud high value employees become consumers of cloud services and subsequent corporate data rather than operationalizing and producing data. Decision makers and business leaders can focus on business decisions and achieving business objectives rather than on the production and operations of an IT infrastructure which in turn produces data on which decision and future business direction is taken.
• Security:  Somehow the concept of outsourcing all or some of an entity’s infrastructure including corporate data and the concept of security seems incongruous.  Yet, because of specialization, scope, cloud complexity and resources, the cloud can actually be much more secure than many current corporate environments.  Additionally, reputable cloud as matters of policy let alone legalities would notify a cloud customer of any security incidents affecting that entity’s data or communications, something that could easily be hidden within a large organization’s IT infrastructure. The best cloud providers adhere to strict government standards and international standards. For example, Microsoft’s Office 365 is FISMA compliant and certified to ISO27001 standards.

Key Considerations for Moving to the Cloud

Proper planning is essential to success in moving to the cloud. Whether a very simple IT environment or a globally distributed complex IT environment failing to plan is planning to fail. Microsoft has a wide variety of services and leadership available from Microsoft Consulting, Microsoft Partners and Premier Field Engineering to help make a move to Microsoft cloud services (O365, Azure, and CRM Online) successful.

• Clear understanding of the business functions moving to the cloud, and the reasons for those functions to move to the cloud. Even though there are significant benefits to be gained by moving to the cloud, moving to the cloud won’t compensate for a poorly run business.   A clear business direction and understanding of how the IT functions and application support that business direction is a foundational cornerstone of any move to the cloud. Microsoft Consulting is a great business partner to engage when considering a move to the cloud based on their experience and insights.  Making the time early to define core considerations is key:
  • Expected specific business gains
  • How those gains will be measured
  • Real costs associated with the move and expected return on investment
  • Changes in policies and practices that will need to occur in your business to support a move to the cloud
• A clear analysis of the current IT on premise infrastructure that currently operates in support of those business functions. The IT world can evolve quickly and in self-hosted distributed environments both large and small. Even keeping accurate network topology diagrams can be daunting.  However, it is essential that during the planning phases, a complete and accurate understanding of the existing IT infrastructure be factored into the overall plan.
  • The IT functions moving to the cloud must be in an optimized condition.  Moving to the cloud won’t fix an environment that is broken, as without proper planning and remediation those very same problems will move into the cloud. Thus, the systems moving must be functionally healthy.  As previously mentioned Microsoft has many services available from Microsoft Consulting, Microsoft Premier Field Engineering, Microsoft Partners and Microsoft Technical Support that can optimize an environment prior to migration to the cloud.
  • Clean desktops, networks and Active Directory are crucial: Microsoft has remarkable services available to help prepare environments for a move to the cloud.  Microsoft’s Premier Field Engineering can conduct desktop, network and active directory Health checks, RAPS and based on findings can also assist in mitigating anomalies which could have a negative impact on a corporations move to the cloud.
• Don’t go to the cloud alone: Moving to the cloud is not trivial. It is an investment in your corporation’s future.  As the old adage states, “Plan your work and work your plan”, and nothing could be truer than the need for careful planning when moving to the cloud.  As previously stated, Microsoft Consulting  and Microsoft Partners have assisted in making cloud transitions successful many times over for many customers.  Having experienced guides assist a corporation into the cloud is one of the quickest paths to success.
• Clearly defined processes and controls understood by corporate constituents in advance of moving to the cloud. There are technical aspects of moving to the cloud that must be acknowledged and addressed.  Conversely and perhaps more importantly, there are likely people and process adjustments within a corporation that as well need be addressed in moving to the cloud.  Carefully considering the impact on human process and the ability to influence human behavior in an organization is yet another fundamental building block to success in the cloud. A good example of managing a process change and a human behavior change occurred when a very large multinational corporation made the decision to move to Microsoft’s Cloud Services.  The corporation was migrating from Lotus Notes to a dedicated O365 environment which included Exchange. Microsoft Consultants and Partners worked with the corporation to create ‘leave behinds’ which were simple yet effective documents that helped employees with migrating usage patterns from Notes to Exchange. The document clearly illustrated that for example if you are used to doing X to send an email in Notes, in Exchange you send an email by doing Y. Those ‘leave behinds’ helped shape behavior and smoothed transition issues that could have easily overwhelmed the corporation’s Helpdesk.
• If sloppy or inefficient process exist (for example, change control process) prior to moving to the cloud, those sloppy processes will be impactful in the cloud. Once you’ve selected a cloud provider, corporate internal process control takes on a significance and visibility that requires more rather than less attention.  In the self hosted world, there are times when inefficient processes and change control can be counterbalanced by other means (e.g., more hardware, more bandwidth, more memory, etc.).  Change control and controls in general become much more impactful in the cloud as an unexpected and untested desktop change to the cloud client can impact the user experience and the service hosted in the cloud in unpredictable ways. Microsoft’s Cloud offerings clearly communicate significant change and by working through your Microsoft Account Team or Microsoft Premier Team, changes in the corporate environment can be vetted in advance. It is important to reiterate that a corporate Helpdesk will likely change from providing purely frontline technical support to providing business process support and user education.
• A clear understanding of any compliance and control issues that moving to the cloud can either help or exacerbate. Corporate compliance is a very important topic worldwide. Interestingly enough some corporations have been motivated to move to the cloud because of corporate compliance issues. For example, it is difficult in a global, multi-national company to enforce a globally compliant desktop. Yet by moving to the cloud where standardized desktop services are delivered globally, the headache of managing a myriad of desktop configurations and capabilities is minimized to a standard that enforces corporate standards for compliance.

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