Cloud Management - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 91

giants who already offer every known service. So when planning your business solutions,
you must take into consideration a key question: What will you offer that will make custom-
ers choose you over the competition? It is a straightforward question that every business asks
itself, but it is the answer that will truly set the business apart. Often the easiest way to dif-
ferentiation is through fast and easy cloud migration and services that offer great customiza-
tion for customers.
Because the cloud is on everybody's radar right now, cloud services and cloud projects have
high visibility and inspire lofty expectations, as is fitting given its name. But so many planned
objectives often fall short because of the disconnect between the business and IT, even though
in this case, the business is IT itself. The common mistake of miscommunication between tech-
nical and executive staff is still pervasive, even though in this industry executives are technical,
or at least they came from technical backgrounds. The fact remains that the viewpoint of exec-
utives is broad compared to the viewpoint of technical engineers. Oftentimes very optimistic
time-to-market schedules exist and implementation is compromised, leading to the launch of a
half-baked service, with features that should have been in the release being added over time.
Aside from that, organizations that embark on the journey of the cloud service provider
without a comprehensive cloud service plan are often challenged to meet the demands and
offer the potential value that customers are looking for. Remember that in business there is
no such strategy as “if we serve it, they will buy it.” But if those services are well thought
out, architected to deliver business needs with more value, and designed to allow the end
user to maximize their returns, they are sure to succeed. There must be a series of steps
taken to properly plan for the cloud business. Even though this is supposed to be common
knowledge and standard operating procedure by now, a lot of organizations still fail to do
it properly or in a timely manner, perhaps because they are not exactly sure on how to go
about it.
Cloud Service Solution Planning Workshop
The most straightforward way to plan—which may differ from a regular planning session
where all the executives vote for which goals are the hardest to achieve and choose to imple-
ment those in the shortest time possible—is to have a planning workshop with representatives
from all stakeholder groups. This planning session will take a workshop format, meaning
everyone with any major role in the development and deployment of the services has to be
present and participate with their ideas and plans. This would allow top executives and the
technical team to see eye to eye so the technical people can better understand the business
needs that drive the decisions and how important they are to the success of those decisions.
It will also educate or at least remind the executives that not everything they want done can
be done, at least not in the way that they expect it to. This would ensure that at the end of
the workshop period of two to three weeks, the assembly will have reached some possible
solutions that meet both administrative decisions and technical applicability according to
the resources of the organization. It is also important to have a few cloud experts on hand
to guide the workshop. It won't help at all if everyone present knows less than the next guy
about cloud computing and its various ins and outs.