04/22/2021

How to Deploy a Cloud Center of Excellence

Published 21 January 2021 - ID G00739627 - 8 min read

By Analysts Maggie Schroeder-O'Neal, Lydia Leong

Initiatives: Executive Leadership: Cloud for Business Enablement; Cloud and Edge Infrastructure

Executive leaders must plan for successful execution of their organizations’ cloud
strategies. This research advises how to successfully facilitate this execution by
deploying a cloud center of excellence as a best practice for cloud adoption.

Additional Perspectives

■ Summary Translation: How to Deploy a Cloud Center of Excellence

(03 February 2021)

Overview

Key Findings
■ Many organizations struggle with unstructured and ungoverned cloud adoption. This is as a result of
not only “shadow IT” adoption, but also business units moving faster to adopt cloud than central IT is
prepared to support.

■ A cloud center of excellence (CCOE) is an effective initial practice for facilitating successful cloud
adoption in enterprise organizations, regardless of the organization’s cloud strategy or structure. A
CCOE is particularly effective in organizations where IT is distributed into the business units, but is
also useful when IT is centralized. It is most important for agility-focused cloud adoption, but is also
useful for cost-efficiency-focused adoption.

■ The CCOE is an enterprise architecture (EA) discipline and IT function that provides cloud brokerage
capabilities, structures cloud governance and leads the organization’s cloud community of practice. It
may consist of a single architect tasked to lead the CCOE or may be staffed by a small team of cloud
architects.

Recommendations
Executive leaders responsible for cloud for business enablement should:

■ Establish a CCOE with an executive mandate and well-defined role. Appoint an enterprise architect as
the organization’s chief cloud architect to lead the CCOE.

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 1 of 6

04/22/2021

■ Drive transformation across the organization by ensuring the CCOE works collaboratively with cloud
computing stakeholders across the organization via a cloud strategy or cloud computing advisory
council.

■ Ensure the CCOE creates or refines policies and standards for cloud computing. The CCOE should
provide governance via guidelines and guardrails and offer consultative capabilities to business
stakeholders seeking the best cloud solutions for their business needs.

Analysis
This research has been adapted from Innovation Insight for the Cloud Center of Excellence.

Over more than a decade of Gartner client discussions, the vendor-neutral CCOE has emerged as the best
practice for leading cloud computing adoption and maturation across geographies, verticals, company
sizes, IT operating model maturity levels and cloud strategies. However, not all organizations need a
CCOE. Some organizations may need just a cloud management office or virtual teams to get started,
with a CCOE as a long-term aspirational goal (particularly midsize businesses or departments).

What a CCOE Is
A cloud center of excellence is a centralized EA function that leads and governs cloud computing
adoption within an organization.The CCOE provides central IT with a way to execute the organization’s
cloud strategy, enable the business to choose the best solutions, provide governance through policies
and cloud management tools, and gather and disseminate cloud best practices. Additionally, a CCOE
governs all types of cloud service models — infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service
(PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). It also provides significant input into the cross-functional
cloud-oriented operating processes related to the use of these cloud services.

A CCOE is also distinct from a cloud strategy or advisory council. This council is not a formal
organization (as is the CCOE); it is a committee/council responsible for the cloud strategy as a living
document and providing ongoing advisory to the CCOE. The chief cloud architect may lead both the
CCOE and the council, but this is not a requirement. The CCOE is focused on answering “how” to do
cloud, while the council is more focused on addressing “why.”

The CCOE has three core pillars (see Figure 1):

■ Governance: The CCOE creates cloud-computing-related policies and selects governance tools. Policy
is created in IT collaboration with a cross-functional team and enforced by a mixture of tools and
appropriate organizational processes. This approach provides appropriate risk management as well
as financial management.

■ Brokerage: The CCOE assists users in selecting cloud providers, architects cloud solutions and
collaborates with the sourcing team for contract negotiation and vendor management.

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 2 of 6

04/22/2021

■ Community: The CCOE raises the level of cloud knowledge in the organization, and captures and
disseminates best practices. This is accomplished through a knowledge base, source-code repository,
cloud community of practice councils, training events, and outreach and collaboration throughout the
organization.

Figure 1: The Three Pillars of a Cloud Center of Excellence

Benefits and Uses

Executive leaders should align the CCOE’s high-level goals to the purpose of strategic planning activities
and goals. These goals usually include:

■ Supporting cloud adoption, and teams inside and outside IT, through advising on solutions, building
reference architectures and providing implementation guidance.

■ Establishing lightweight governance that enables self-service while managing organizational risks.

■ Accelerating digital transformation through cloud-enabled business-led innovation efforts, and

advising on strategic business decisions that could be impacted by the use of cloud computing.

The CCOE provides brokerage, governance and community benefits, as summarized below.

Brokerage Benefits

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 3 of 6

04/22/2021

A function of a CCOE is as an internal cloud service broker. In this capacity, it provides capabilities that
help the organization choose, integrate and customize cloud solutions. Its brokerage benefits include the
following:

■ The CCOE provides expertise on cloud provider solutions.

■ The CCOE establishes cloud architectural standards and recommendations.

■ The CCOE determines the process for adopting cloud providers within the organization.

■ The CCOE “future-proofs” cloud adoption.

Governance Benefits
The CCOE plays a critical role in cloud governance. The goal of governance is to manage organizational
risks, promote the use of good practices, and successfully manage cloud providers and associated
costs. However, good governance empowers the business and allows self-service and flexibility in the
use of cloud services, so that both IT and the business gain the benefits of agility. Therefore, the CCOE
assists with the alignment of IT and the business through the cloud strategy or advisory council. The
CCOE must work through the strategy council to ensure input and communication regarding governance
to the broad enterprise audience and stakeholders, not just IT.

Governance is distinct from the notion of “control,” and consists of two elements:

■ Guidelines communicate good practices and where the risks are.

■ Guardrails are mechanisms designed to prevent a bad outcome from occurring, even if someone does
something wrong — intentionally or otherwise.

The CCOE’s governance benefits include the following:

■ The CCOE establishes cloud adoption policies. These are the policies that govern when cloud services
can and should be used, and what cloud solutions are appropriate under a given set of circumstances.

■ The CCOE helps manage cloud-related risks. The CCOE establishes cloud risk management and cloud
security policies for enforcing guardrails on cloud adoption. It does this in conjunction with the
organization’s security, risk management and legal functions.

■ The CCOE helps govern cloud costs. The CCOE advises internal stakeholders on cloud cost
optimization, and assists in forecasting cloud provider demand. It plays a collaborative role in helping
ensure that actual cloud spending is aligned against the forecasts and budgets.

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 4 of 6

04/22/2021

The CCOE builds policies for guardrails, but the implementation of guardrails is generally the
responsibility of cloud engineers or others in the organization. There is no “one size fits all” for the
balance of guidelines and guardrails within organizations but in general, automated enforcement is
preferable to manual enforcement, and such automation should be implemented as early as is practical.

Community Benefits
The organization and its cloud-related skills often pose the biggest barrier to successful cloud adoption.
Thus, the CCOE’s role in guiding the organization through cloud adoption, and possible cloud
transformation, is just as vital as its brokerage and governance roles:

■ The CCOE is responsible for establishing the cloud community of practice (COP) — a virtual
community. It brings together cloud stakeholders, facilitates collaboration and encourages cloud skills
development throughout the organization.

■ The CCOE helps the organization adapt itself for cloud adoption. The CCOE leads the COP, provides
the means of collaboration to that community, and coordinates virtual and physical events to promote
COP member interaction. The CCOE also facilitates cloud-related training and skills development.

Risks
The most significant organizational concern with the implementation of a CCOE is the possibility that
the CCOE will be ignored. This typically results from one of the following problematic root causes:

■ The CCOE lacks a mandate. CCOE needs executive leader sponsorship and for the executive leader to
have persuaded other business leadership to adhere to the CCOE’s policies.

■ The CCOE is impractical. If the CCOE sets standards and guidelines that cannot be realistically
implemented given the organization’s resources and skills, it will be ignored out of necessity. The
CCOE should lay out a maturity roadmap that helps the organization reach the desired future state on
an incremental basis.

■ The CCOE is not properly “marketed.” Some thought needs to be given to ensuring that the CCOE’s
messages are attractive to the business and are focused on business outcome benefits, as
determined and documented by the organization’s cloud strategy.

Recommendations
Executive leaders should:

■ Take the lead in establishing a CCOE. Choose an EA leader or member of the EA discipline as the
organization’s chief cloud architect and assign that person to lead the CCOE. The architect should be
a change leader with a forward-thinking collaborative style of technical leadership, and should have a
strong understanding of the business and excellent relationships within the business. It is useful for
the architect to have some previous experience with cloud computing, but it is possible to obtain cloud

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 5 of 6

04/22/2021

training after being appointed to the role. However, don’t allow the creation of a CCOE to delay cloud
adoption. While the CCOE needs to be led internally, some organizations may benefit from engaging a
cloud professional service provider to assist with CCOE foundations.

■ Drive collaboration with cloud computing stakeholders across the organization. Executive leaders
should direct the chief cloud architect to chair or participate in a cross-functional cloud computing
strategy or advisory council that brings together representatives who are directly involved in cloud-
related uses and issues.

■ Provide cloud brokerage and governance. The CCOE should establish policies and standards for
cloud computing, gathering good practices from across the organization, with a focus on governance,
not control. The CCOE should provide guidelines to foster “doing the right thing,” but also implement
guardrails to limit exposure to cloud-related risks.

© 2021 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its
affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior written permission.
It consists of the opinions of Gartner's research organization, which should not be construed as statements of fact.
While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, Gartner
disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner research
may address legal and financial issues, Gartner does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not
be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by Gartner’s Usage Policy. Gartner
prides itself on its reputation for independence and objectivity. Its research is produced independently by its research
organization without input or influence from any third party. For further information, see "Guiding Principles on
Independence and Objectivity."

Gartner, Inc. | 3995777 Page 6 of 6