Cloud Management - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 92

The experts, third-party or in-house, should be able to help with the overall flow of the
workshop and especially help those present to formulate their own ideas, which can lead to
solutions unique to the organization. The experts can help with the following tasks:
■ Understand, and then refine the cloud objectives.
■ Help analyze the current IT environment and infrastructure in both physical and
virtual fields.
■ Get a detailed gap analysis between the current and the desired IT states.
■ Conduct a detailed review of and showcase the best-in-class cloud environment models
as well as what the competition has to offer.
■ Detail model use cases and various requirements for cloud deployment.
■ Come up with a detailed road map arranged in phases and milestones for deployment.
■ Create a risk and change management plan.
The duration and topics covered by the workshop will depend on what the body of
attendees has come up with from the preceding list. Each one should be meticulously dis-
cussed, planned, and documented, so there should be no rush in finishing the workshop.
A well-thought-out plan is the first step for smooth sailing. But the general length of the
workshop for smaller projects with daily meetings would be two to three weeks.
The workshop should be focusing on the organization's strengths as well as finding
solutions to patch up weaknesses. So at the end of the workshop, there should be a number
of unique services that have been generated or simply newer takes of generic services with
added value that are sure to draw in customers. And since these services are built around
the organization's strengths, they are in a position to deliver with quality. This will help
the organization understand the exact level of effort, commitment, risk, and business
process changes that is necessary to plan, develop, deploy, and manage innovative cloud
services that act as major differentiators of the organization to its competitors. The length
of the workshop will depend on the scope of the objectives, with each workshop being tai-
lored to address a combination of service planning and design.
Here is a sample workshop agenda:

Introductions

■

Review of the organization's cloud drivers

■

Overview of the organization's current state in IT hosting as well as current and
planned cloud initiatives

■

Overview of planned solutions or vendors to contact, weighing of pros and cons

■

Review of best-in-class cloud implementations and services and explanations of how
those were achieved

■

Current state of IT assessment

■

Use case modeling for cloud services

■

Determining deliverables, taking into account risk, change management, and organiza-
tional readiness

■