How to Structure Your Cloud Governance Initiative for Success
The cloud has become the foundation that enables organizations to transform, differentiate and gain competitive advantage. According to a recent Gartner survey, 40% of organizations in North America plan to spend the majority of new or additional funding on cloud. With that much spending going towards cloud initiatives, how do organizations ensure successful adoption? Success starts with a solid foundation. For organizations to truly reap the maximum benefit from their Microsoft Azure cloud initiatives, having the right governance framework and processes is crucial.
So, what are some best practices and steps you can follow now to bring to fruition your organization’s cloud governance objectives?
Start with A Clear Vision
What is your organization’s vision for adopting the cloud? What are the key factors driving this vision?
- Are you bringing to market a new product or service and want to adopt a cloud-first approach?
- Are there compliance mandates or security concerns that the cloud solves?
- Are the needs or requirements that are being met in your current enterprise that cloud services and infrastructure will help solve?
- Are you looking to drive down costs or improve operational management?
These questions can help fuel discussions with key stakeholders as you begin to document your cloud governance objectives.
Establish a Baseline
In the planning stages of establishing your governance framework and processes one of the key activities your organization should undertake is to establish a cloud governance baseline, which is a detailed snapshot of your current governance processes and policies. The reason this is critical is because it provides a basis from which to measure success. As your cloud footprint grows this baseline will hold development, security, and infrastructure groups accountable to what gets deployed in the cloud. Microsoft Azure can regularly scan your cloud environment and detect and alert on deviations from your established baseline.
Prioritize Governance Objectives
Another factor that impacts the success or failure of your cloud governance initiatives is focusing on the objectives that are most important to your organization. Prioritize the list and keep a backlog of agreed upon objectives. Revisit on a regular cadence your cloud governance baseline and review the reports and dashboards in Azure Policy to locate gaps and areas of improvement in your overall strategy.
Implement Policy as Code
Policy as Code is an automated approach to applying policy definitions as part of your modern governance initiatives. By storing your policy definitions in source control as code you have the certainty of an audit trail when policy definitions are changes and when coupled with Azure DevOps this allows you organization to deploy policies at scale. In one broad stroke you can deploy policies that enforce your organization’s security best practices, compliance requirements and standards, and resource provisioning standards.
If you are ready to accelerate your organization’s governance transformation, contact InCycle to schedule an introductory call. Together, we can explore modern governance to help you achieve your goals. Download our Cloud Governance Playbook today.
Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-04-02-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-g
