Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Exploration with HashiCorp’s Terraform

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for AWS helps enterprises rapidly build secure cloud environments that are scalable, robust and reliable. This enables you to accelerate innovation, modernization, upgrades, and decision-making and deliver applications that quickly adapt to customers' changing needs and environment.

With Cloud IaC, you can also automate processes, reduce human error, and ensure your documentation is transparent.

The Cloud Kinetics IaC with Terraform Enterprise exploration process is a customized consultation that includes discovery, identification of areas of impact and actionable themes, strategy, value proposition, investment and more. It leverages Terraform, a leading platform-agnostic tool that helps define and manage infrastructure as code.

This guiding process:

• Helps you understand the IaC journey, with a tailored approach to application and organizational transformation.
• Offers a series of workshops with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to share their experience and insights on your current delivery process/systems.
• Builds a common appreciation for the challenges and opportunities and helps define collective goals.
• Connects actionable areas of focus using the aggregated clusters of key activities and impact findings under common themes

Cloud Kinetics offers flexible and tested engagement models to help you navigate change efficiently. Using Cloud Kinetics' expertise and HashiCorp's Terraform, your organization can safely develop and modernize infrastructure to better serve your customers. We offer 3 packaged solutions:

PACKAGE 1: DISCOVERY, IMPACT, THEMES AND PRINCIPLES A deeper understanding of how an organization delivers applications to market enhances any plan's inherent value. To understand what a complete solution and program entail, team alignment and a shared understanding of the current state are crucial. The findings of application delivery inform the later strategic prioritization and value calculations.

ANALYSIS ARTEFACTS AND OUTCOMES:

• 4 x Discovery Workshops (Teams, Process and Systems, Challenges, Insights; 1–2 hours per workshop)
• Application Delivery Impact View
• Actionable Theme Extraction
• Enablement Principle Guidance

PACKAGE 2: DISCOVERY, SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE, TOOLING AND AUTOMATION Organizations that have validated current state understanding and undertaken internal analysis may choose to engage at the Solution Architecture Design, Tooling Alignment Review and Automation Implementation phases. We hold discovery workshops to focus on absorbing the existing analysis. Only where identified and endorsed, we validate or complete finding(s) capture through gap analysis, to ratify the target state.

ANALYSIS ARTEFACTS AND OUTCOMES:

• 3 x Discovery Workshops (Tooling, Architecture, Automation; 1– 2 hours per workshop)
• Current Tooling Automation Alignment
• End-to-End Solution Architecture, articulating Governance / Delivery Stages, Pipelines, Teams, Version Control Systems, Terraform Enterprise and On-Premises / Cloud Resource Provisioning
• Identified Automation Implementation, Processes and Engineering Coverage

PACKAGE 3: DISCOVERY, STRATEGY, VALUE, DELIVERY AND INVESTMENT This package is suited to organizations looking to establish an Investment Strategy with Terraform Enterprise which plans and validates the value proposition basis the business case.

Discovery focuses on understanding the current approach to application delivery within an organization, with the intent of defining operational transformation through Terraform Enterprise-enabled IAC.

ANALYSIS ARTEFACTS AND OUTCOMES:

• 2 x Discovery Workshops (Process and Systems, Strategic Goals; 1–2 hours per workshop)
• Strategic Roadmap ( 2– 3 outlook )
• Value Proposition, calculating the magnitude of gain
• High-Level Phased Delivery Plan
• Investment Plan for IAC Program Business Case Assessment

COMPLETE PROCESS (PACKAGE 1, 2 AND 3) The Complete Process connects each element of understanding from Discovery, Impact, Actionable Themes, Principles, Solution Architecture, Tooling Alignment, Automation Process and Implementation Goals, Strategy, Value Proposition, Delivery Program and Investment Plan.

ANALYSIS ARTEFACTS AND OUTCOMES:

• All items from Package 1, 2 and 3
• 5 x Discovery Workshops (Teams/Process and Systems, Challenges and Insights, Tooling and Architecture, Automation, Strategic Goals; 1– 2 hours per workshop)

Cloud Kinetics endorses HashiCorp's recommendation for deploying Terraform Enterprise on AWS with the following services:

Primary AWS Services

• EC2 (via Auto Scaling Groups - ASG)
• RDS
• S3

Referenced architecture: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/enterprise/reference-architecture/aws