Establishing a robust cloud platform and operational model through the CCoE
This post is part three of a four-part series that addresses how a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) can be a viable solution to address the challenges of digital transformation. Part one focuses on what a CCoE is and how it, combined with the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), can help your enterprise with its digital transformation. Part two focuses on the three nontechnical perspectives of the AWS CAF. Part three addresses the three technical perspectives of the AWS CAF. And part four will discuss a framework for defining organizational areas of responsibility.
While the business, organizational, and governance perspectives of the AWS CAF discussed in part two are crucial, the CCoE must also focus on the technical capabilities required to build and operate a cloud environment that meets the organization’s needs. These technical perspectives include platforms, security, and operations.
As mentioned in the previous post, we recommend that organizations take a crawl, walk, run approach to their cloud adoption. This approach breaks down the cloud journey into three distinct phases, allowing organizations to transition to the cloud in a structured and incremental manner.
Platform perspective
The platform perspective of the AWS CAF focuses on the core infrastructure and services that will underpin the organization’s cloud environment. Key elements include:
- Reference architecture
- Defining a clear reference architecture for the cloud environment
- Including the account structure, networking, storage, and other foundational elements
- Naming and tagging standards
- Establishing consistent naming conventions and tagging taxonomies
- Ensuring the cloud environment is well-organized and easily managed
- Service roadmap and catalog
- Developing a roadmap for the cloud services and capabilities
- Curating a self-service catalog to enable on-demand access
- Infrastructure as code
- Taking advantage of infrastructure as code (IaC) practices
- Automating the provisioning and management of cloud resources
The following diagram illustrates the domains and capabilities that fall into each of the crawl, walk, and run stages for the platform perspective.
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Figure 1. The crawl, walk, run approach for the platform perspective. The illustration highlights which domains and capabilities to undertake at each stage.
Security perspective
Turning to the security perspective of the AWS CAF, we know that security is a critical concern for any cloud adoption initiative, and the CCoE must address the necessary capabilities:
- Baseline security controls
- Implementing foundational security measures
- Identity and access management, network security, logging and monitoring
- Security automation
- Automating security processes like vulnerability scanning and patch management
- Making sure the cloud environment remains secure at scale
- Security integration
- Integrating the cloud environment with the organization’s security tooling
- Ensuring visibility and consistent security practices
- Specialized security services
- Using cloud-centered security services such as AWS WAF, distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, and security analytics
- Addressing advanced threats
The following diagram illustrates the domains and capabilities that fall into each of the crawl, walk, and run stages for the security perspective.
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Figure 2. The crawl, walk, run approach for the security perspective. The illustration highlights which domains and capabilities to undertake at each stage.
Operations perspective
The operations perspective of the AWS CAF is crucial for maintaining a reliable and well-performing environment. Key operational capabilities include:
- Incident and problem management
- Establishing incident response processes and problem management practices
- Quickly identifying, diagnosing, and resolving issues
- Change and release management
- Implementing structured change control and release management procedures
- Making sure cloud updates are applied safely and efficiently
- Monitoring and observability
- Deploying comprehensive monitoring and observability tools
- Proactively detecting, investigating, and resolving performance and availability issues
- Disaster recovery and backup
- Implementing robust disaster recovery and data backup and restore capabilities
- Making sure the organization can recover from unexpected events
The following diagram illustrates the domains and capabilities that fall into each of the crawl, walk, and run stages for the operations perspective.
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Figure 3. The crawl, walk, run approach for the operations perspective. The illustration highlights which domains and capabilities to undertake at each stage.
Summarized roadmap for the technical perspectives
This post summarizes the crawl, run, walk approach for the platform, security, and operations perspectives, addressing the most critical technical activities. To help organizations navigate their cloud adoption journey, the CCoE can use a crawl, walk, run approach:
Crawl
- Establish a foundational cloud reference architecture
- Implement baseline security controls and logging and monitoring
- Set up incident and change management processes
Walk
- Automate resource provisioning and configuration management
- Integrate security tooling and implement advanced security services
- Enhance monitoring and observability capabilities
Run
- Continuously optimize the platform and automate operational tasks
- Implement disaster recovery and business continuity measures
- Use advanced analytics and AI operations (AIOps) for proactive issue detection
By addressing the technical perspectives of the AWS CAF alongside the business and organizational aspects, the CCoE can deliver a comprehensive cloud solution that meets the organization’s strategic objectives.