7 Essentials

for a Successful Cloud-First

Transformation
The critical stages that will get your
whole business safely into the cloud
 Cloud in the enterprise has grown up. And increasingly, theyre finding no good reason
Its no longer just a sandbox for developers, to keep that app or workload on-premises.
or a sneaky backdoor way for business units
to get more IT resources fast. If youre thinking along the same lines, youre in
good company. Today, global corporations like
Now, IT leaders are seeing the big picture: Time, Inc. and Netflix run their entire business
cloud as the de facto model for delivering in the cloud.
the whole of IT to the whole of the business.
Increasingly, theyre adopting a All of them have made the journey from data centre
Cloud-First mindset. to cloud, and shown how to do it successfully.

Weve captured the seven essential elements of

In a Cloud-First mindset, the question for that journey in this ebook. Its a template for CIOs,

any app or workload from the newest CTOs and other IT leaders who have an ambitious
Cloud-First vision, and who want to make sure
web service to the oldest legacy system the whole business is along for the ride.

isnt Why cloud? but Why NOT cloud? One thing to note before we start:
The seven essentials arent necessarily a linear
In a Cloud-First mindset, the question for any process. How you structure your cloud journey
app or workload from the newest web service is up to you but you should certainly evaluate
to the oldest legacy system isnt Why cloud? every one of these stages as you progress
but Why NOT cloud? on your journey.

Enjoy the ride!

 Executive Buy-In
For any business thats currently running its own data centre(s), going
Cloud-First is by definition a transformation project. And successful
transformation projects are always driven by a senior executive.

Without that buy-in, you might get a few apps into For example
the cloud, but you wont get the gnarly stuff there:
the legacy systems, the customer databases, The CEO may be concerned about
the back-office ERP. staying ahead of competitors.

You know the end result will be worth the hassle. The CIO may be feeling pressure to deliver
But with no business sponsor, the minute things new services faster and more efficiently.
get difficult, others may become sceptical
and your progress will slow. The CFO may be fretting about cash flow
and looking for ways to save money.

So how do you get senior The CMO may be itching to respond faster PRO TIP

execs on board? to market changes, experiment with new

approaches or make smarter use of analytics.
To keep your sponsor on board
and cheerleading for you, youll need
And do you have to get to achieve some quick wins that align

support from all of them? And the CISO may be exercised by the need
for more visibility, auditability and control.
with their priorities see Essential #3.

So how do you get senior execs on board? If you can get buy in from all of these people, Resources to Help You Get Executive Buy-In:
And do you have to get support from all of them? great. But if you can demonstrate even to one of How to partner with top execs
them that making the journey to cloud will deliver Business value of AWS
Experience dictates that you get them on board by the benefits theyre seeking, youll have a powerful Gartner Magic Quadrant
appealing to their own priorities. Which business sponsor. Theyll be able to evangelise for you, IDC business assessment
pain points are they most concerned about and keep the whole business focused on why
and how can cloud solve them? were moving to cloud and what well be able
to do when we get there.
 Aligning IT Staff
On the journey to cloud, you dont just need exec buy-in. You need your whole IT team on
board committed to achieving the vision, and prepared to work in completely new ways.

All evidence suggests that most techies love it. So heres what you do: and in huge demand. So the best approach is to
And whats not to love cloud is a chance to learn Be very firm and clear about the certainty of the upskill your whole team as fast as you can
new skills, play around with new ideas, test stuff cloud journey: its non-negotiable, theres senior maybe using an external provider or partner
out to see how it works, and actually make exec sponsorship, and the results will be for some rapid knowledge transfer.
a difference to the organisation. transformative for the business. You need everyone
on board with you, engaged and excited for what Bear in mind that its not just hard skills like
Most people will snap your hand off to get at the future will bring. learning the best way to move applications to
some of that. But you may find that some of your the cloud (lift and shift, or re-architect?), or how
people resist change. And any resistance will Of course there are bound to be worries your to use emerging cloud-based services. A cloud
at best hinder your progress, and at worst data centre team will soon find themselves environment is one of continuous delivery,
derail the whole venture. operating in a hybrid world, with progressively less integration and testing which means your
on-premises infrastructure to manage, and an developers will need to work in concert with your

But you may find that some of your abundance of new and innovative cloud
technologies to master. So its essential that you
operations people in a DevOps culture. So for best
results, build both tech skills and workstyle skills
people resist change. And any resistance articulate exactly how their role will change, over into your training plan.

will at best hinder your progress, what timescale, and what opportunities they will
have in the Cloud-First world. Resources to Help You Align Your IT Staff
and at worst derail the whole venture. Find comprehensive AWS training resources at
When everyones on board, you need to think http://aws.amazon.com/training
seriously about skills. Great cloud skills are scarce,
Get Some Quick Wins
If youre committed to Cloud-First, it means that, at some point down the road,
youre going to be moving some or all of your gnarlier systems to the cloud.

Before you start asking people to work on the The need could come from anywhere in the AWS Resources to Help You Get Quick Wins
tough stuff, you need to prove that the journey is organisation, but for best results, look for Dev and test on AWS
worth it: that there are fantastic, tangible benefits something thats personally important to your Unilever case study
from going to the cloud. And to keep everyone executive sponsor. What kind of app would Nisa case study
engaged, its best to do this as quickly as possible. accelerate innovation in the business,
for example? What analytical functionality
The most effective way to do that is to get some does Marketing need in order to go real-time?
quick wins. Identify one or more applications or
workloads that can move quickly and easily to the
cloud, and which will deliver very visible benefits to Look for apps that the business
the organisation.
needs to meet its goals, but which
But which ones? Your existing apps are likely to have previously been deemed
have integrations with other systems that will
complicate and slow down the move to cloud. So
impractical to implement on-premises
its best to start with a net-new application, one
that will deliver immediate and tangible benefits. By identifying something really valuable to the
business, setting it up really quickly in the cloud
Look for apps that the business needs to meet and starting to deliver immediate benefits,
its goals, but which have previously been deemed youll show the organisation the real, tangible value
impractical to implement on-premises perhaps of Cloud-First operation. Plus, your team will have
because theyre resource-hungry, or will only gained valuable experience and skills in setting
be needed occasionally, or would have meant up and managing high-profile business apps
a high-end hardware investment. in a cloud environment.
 Engage Partners
Even as youre learning and building experience, you can get some quick and valuable
wins under your belt (see Essential #3). But as you start to turn your attention to your
business-critical and/or legacy apps, the challenge starts to ramp up.

This is where you should consider enlisting the independent software vendors (ISVs), those Your aim should be to learn everything you can
help of people who build, manage, transition or vendors should be able to help, too. Try mapping from the external partner with a view to becoming
integrate critical IT systems in the cloud every day. the vendors whose applications you use against self-sufficient once the initial transition period is
the accredited partners list maintained by your over. As weve seen, life in a Cloud-First world is
cloud provider. Again, if you go with AWS, one of continuous development, testing and
Try mapping the vendors you can browse our AWS partner network integration, so your team need to learn the skills

vwhose applications you to identify ISVs whove ported their applications

to our cloud platforms.
to be able to operate in that way indefinitely.

use against the accredited At AWS, this is exactly the aim of our professional

partners list maintained Thirdly, you may already have an established

partnership with one or more systems integrators
services team: to effect a full knowledge transfer
so that the clients team can run in a business
by your cloud provider. (SIs). These consultancies will almost certainly as usual fashion without further help.
have established cloud practices to help clients Other consultancies may try to persuade you that
reap the benefits of Cloud-First. They can help you need their help on an ongoing basis, but your
Your cloud infrastructure or platform provider you draw up your Cloud-First strategy, aim should be to try to become as self-sufficient
should be able to offer guidance and training. and create a roadmap and action plan as possible as quickly as possible.
If thats AWS, we have a wealth of scheduled for putting it into practice.
and bespoke training courses that can help, Resources to Help You Engage Partners
and our Professional Services division can A word of caution: if you bring partners and AWS Partner Network
provide consultancy and onsite assistance with consultancies in to help with your cloud journey, AWS Professional Services
your cloud transition. We also offer a free Cloud its essential to have your team work alongside
Adoption Framework (CAF), based on real-world them, and fully absorb the skills, knowledge and
best practice, to help you plan your cloud journey. practices that come with a Cloud-First transition.
If youre running packaged applications from
Establish a Centre
of Cloud Excellence
Weve already stressed a couple of times that once youre operating
in a Cloud-First world, a DevOps style of operation becomes the norm.

In a DevOps scenario, your development and It may or may not be the team who worked on
operations teams work closely together to build, your first enterprise cloud projects. And you may or An important thing to note: the Centre of
test and deliver continuous iterations of your may not call it a Centre of Cloud Excellence. Cloud Excellence is essential, but it shouldnt be
technology assets. But one things for sure: this is where your journey a permanent fixture. The team should aim to put
to Cloud-First really accelerates and this team itself out of a job as soon as possible by making
In this world, its not uncommon to make and is what keeps it on track. DevOps second nature throughout the IT function.
implement 4-5 updates to a given app in a given Once this is complete, the team can return
day. Its a far cry from the days when dev teams So what should the team do? Its aim is to to their day job and Cloud-First becomes
would work on an app until it was finished, establish a culture of DevOps working, so it will business as usual.
then pass it over the wall to the operations do everything it can to define, communicate and
team to implement and manage. oversee that culture. Youll probably want it to be Resources to Help You Establish
responsible at least for the following: a Centre of Cloud Excellence
I n the world of DevOps, youll need to implement AWS CloudWatch
and instill a whole new set of working processes Establishing best practice Implementing monitoring AWS CloudTrail
and company policy
and a whole new working culture. And thats AWS OpsWorks
why its critical to establish a Centre of Cloud Making sure teams are Automating as many AWS CodeDeploy
cost-optimising processes as possible
Excellence as early as possible in your
Cloud-First journey. Ensuring security is Addressing any barriers to
rock-solid adoption

Your Centre of Cloud Excellence is a formal Setting architecture Setting build vs. buy
guidelines guidelines
DevOps team whose job it is to establish and
promote best practice throughout the IT function. Maximising reusable
It will probably include people from both technology
development and operations, and you may
want to include some IT security folk as well.
 A Hybrid Adoption
Framework
While many organisations have ambitions to move 100% to the cloud, the
realities of enterprise IT mean its likely to be a long journey.
Inevitably, there will be a period which could last will change, and make sure they get appropriate to benefit from cloud architecture.
for some years where youre operating a hybrid experience and training to make the most of This is a huge task and by far the biggest step
model: with some apps and workloads in the what cloud has to offer. towards Cloud-First. Getting it right will require
cloud, and others staying on-premises. The job of close co-operation between cross-functional
the CIO will be to continuously prioritise and Because this dual-mode stage is not going to last teams, expertise and skills gained from
re-evaluate what to move and what to keep, forever. If youre committed to Cloud-First, youll engagement with partners (see Essential #4),
especially as the pace of innovation in the cloud need a well thought-out strategy that sees you and the guidance of your Centre of Cloud
opens up new opportunities virtually every day. increasingly moving legacy apps into the cloud - Excellence (see Essential #5).
including the big, monolithic, complex legacy
During this time, youll need to continue to applications that are critical to your business. Getting everyone on board and having
communicate the Cloud-First plan, especially as a well thought out, well documented and
A small proportion of these legacy apps will never well communicated hybrid strategy will make
go into the cloud. These are the ones for which this transition period much easier to manage
If youre committed to Cloud-First, youll theres a good answer to the basic Cloud-First and much faster to complete.

need a well thought-out hybrid strategy question: Why NOT cloud? It may be that the
data is too sensitive, they cant be re-architected, Resources to Help You Implement
that sees you moving portions of your or there is no viable financial or business a Hybrid Adoption Framework

legacy apps into the cloud, with a view to advantage from moving them. Johnson & Johnson case study
St James Place case study
eventually shifting everything that will move. But for any application where there is a compelling
argument for cloud, youll need to set to work
that plan evolves. Youll need to keep your data pulling them apart and refactoring them into
centre team updated on when and how their roles decoupled components that are better able
 Reaching a
Cloud-First Standard
Cloud-First is all about shifting the enterprise IT mindset from Why cloud? to Why not cloud?
In this new world, you need a really convincing argument for keeping something on-premises.

And as cloud skills proliferate, DevOps becomes This is where every organisation wants to be
more embedded and cloud providers roll out and when Cloud-First becomes your standard,
more and more useful services, there are fewer youre there. You can move fast, deploy new
and fewer arguments for keeping apps, services globally, improve your security
posture, free up real estate, innovate on the fly,

This is where every organisation and respond to changes in an instant.

wants to be and when And in a market where so many organisations

Cloud-First becomes are held back by the many constraints of ageing

on-premises systems, thats a huge advantage.
your standard, youre there.
Resources to Help You Reach a
data andworkloads on premises. The alternative Cloud-First Standard
is just too compelling: Accelerating business innovation
Innovate with DevOps
Much, much lower IT costs AWS Marketplace
The agility to move faster than competitors
An on-demand environment for
experimentation and innovation
Near-infinite resources to support
game-changing initiatives
Conclusion
& Next Steps
Moving to Cloud-First may be the biggest re-engineering of enterprise IT since
minicomputers replaced mainframes / web-based apps replaced client-server
(delete according to how old you are).

You dont do change like that in an ad hoc way. Preparing for cloud
Rather, you learn from those who have been there, Cut through the waffle and mythology
done it, and transformed their organisation surrounding cloud security, compliance,
for the better. culture, expertise and performance.

The Seven Essentials outlined in this ebook are Following cloud pioneers
drawn from the experience of some of the worlds Find out how Time Inc., Phillips and Nike
most successful cloud practitioners, and some of have put Cloud-First mindset to work
the biggest enterprises on the planet. We hope to achieve major benefits.
it inspires you to follow in their footsteps. Watch These Short Videos

And if you need some guidance along the way, Are you ready for the next step?
AWS can either help directly or point you in the Then its time to give us a bit of detail on who you
right direction. are and what youre doing and well get back to
you to get the ball rolling. It will only
Ready to learn more? take a couple of minutes of your time.
Weve got lots of resources that will help you plan, Contact Us
manage and execute a Cloud-First transformation.
Here are just a few to help you on your way.