iors? Have you created new roles and set up cross-func-
tional teams? Have you assessed which workers can adapt
to new roles? Have you set up targeted training sessions for
existing workers and those brought in from the outside?
Data Gravity: Are Data and Cloud Get-
ting Along?
Organizations tend to be well into their cloud transforma-
tion journeys before they recognize the importance of tying
together a universal view into their data. It is not uncom-
mon for organizations to have one initiative underway that
looks at how they can make better use of data and analyt-
ics, and a separate initiative for cloud transformation. Ide-
ally organizations will have both as fully fledged initiatives,
developed as if they were joined at the hip. If not, you are
just creating more data sprawl by spreading it out to differ-
ent places in the cloud. And if you do not have a data initia-
tive at all, we strongly recommend you get started!
The first step to an integrated, holistic data/cloud strategy
should be to assess, tag and map all your data assets. Get-
ting all these resources aligned helps the organization do a
better job of migrating applications strategically and
securely. This effort really should be undertaken early on,
as the organization gets its cloud project off the ground. In
reality, it often is not tackled until the project is well under
way, when organizations should be seeing value, rather
than scrambling to get assets to work together.
If you are in this predicament, push hard to catch up. Full
knowledge of your data is critical to the long-term success
of your cloud project, and it is foundational for innovation, if
this data is expected to power those initiatives. Cloud ser-
vice providers and cloud-friendly third parties offer many
tools to help with this data discovery. By integrating data,
creating an overarching metadata layer and data catalog
and migrating data from older systems to cloud-native
resources, organizations can gain better value from their
data, and operate with greater agility.
Economics: Optimize Your Costs in the
Cloud
Most organizations that commit to a cloud transformation
ultimately want to save money. Cost optimization, after all,
is a defining benefit for cloud over on-premises computing
(once you have a plan for overcoming the cloud adoption
agility bubble). But costs do not magically fall out of the
overall IT equation just from using the cloud. Clients typi-
cally build and deploy workloads to gain experience in how
those workloads perform in the cloud for real vs. their
hypotheses. After successful controlled testing, organiza-
tions have to institute cost controls and manage the costs
of cloud usage. The cloud cost control work needs to be
done early in your cloud journey to reach your stated finan-
cial goals.
Determine the appropriate metrics, and leverage cost opti-
mization tools to gain more visibility into overall cloud
spending. Tools offered by technology providers such
CloudHealth and Cloudability, or our own Continuous Cost
Control managed service, include dashboards that show
which cloud resources are being used, how much they cost,
when usage peaks and how different cloud providers
charge for their services.
Along the cost optimization continuum, organizations need
to establish solid procedures for stakeholders to do a better
job of managing costs. For example, if cloud instances are
not rightsized based on their utilization metrics, automating
this optimization process will yield returns. Advanced capa-
bilities enable organizations to set triggers to automate
decommissioning based on certain factors. If workloads are
no longer needed—say, for a completed model validation
—codifying, communicating and automating proper
hygiene of your cloud estate is essential to managing costs.
Later in the continuum of economic management, firms are
aligning the automation of resource decommissioning to
optimize flow through their SDLC environments.
As organizations work their way through their cloud trans-
formations, they not only need to start dialing up the func-
tionality of these cost-management tools, but also should
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