Cloud Adoption

Cloud Assessment & Cloud Strategy

Cloud assessments and cloud strategy are essential components in achieving the business goals outlined and continued success. These assessments provide a detailed understanding of the organisation’s current technological state and potential challenges. On the other end, the cloud strategy aligns execution to business objectives, selecting the right cloud provider and services, while defining a clear roadmap for a successful cloud migration and sustainable utilisation.

This process provides a structured approach for organisations to plan and execute their cloud journey.

As part of a cloud journey organisations plan their cloud strategy based on various assessments and business goals. The assessment outcomes identify the right workloads to migrate, and establish governance as well as operational practices. Documented in the cloud strategy is the guidance on aligning business objectives with cloud capabilities, managing organisational change, optimising costs, while ensuring security as well as compliance.

The Importance of Cloud Assessments & Strategy

Cloud Journey

Understanding Existing Infrastructure

Cloud assessments involve evaluating the organisation’s existing IT infrastructure, applications, and workloads. This process helps identify which components can be migrated to the cloud, which ones need modifications, and which are not suitable for cloud adoption. Understanding the current state of the infrastructure ensures a smooth and well-planned migration to the cloud.

Cost Analysis & Optimisation

Cloud assessments help estimate the potential costs of running workloads in the cloud. This analysis considers factors like cloud resources, compute and data storage requirements, as well as data transfer costs to provide a clear understanding of the financial implications. Utilising this information, organisations can optimise resource usage, minimise costs, and choose the most cost-effective cloud services.

Security & Compliance Evaluation

Cloud assessments surface the security measures in place and identifies potential security vulnerabilities. Evaluating security and compliance requirements ensures that the cloud strategy includes the necessary baseline security controls as set out by the cloud provider as well as the end-state industry regulatory demands required alongside best practices.

Identifying Business Objectives

A well-defined cloud strategy starts with understanding the organisation’s specific business goals and objectives. Cloud assessments help align cloud adoption with these objectives, ensuring that the selected cloud services and technologies directly support business needs and tactics.

Selecting the Right Cloud Provider

Assessing different cloud providers and their services helps organisations choose the one that best aligns with their requirements. Each cloud provider has its strengths and offerings, and a thorough assessment helps ensure the selected provider can meet the organisation’s needs effectively.

Risk Mitigation & Planning

Cloud assessments identify potential risks and challenges that may arise during cloud migration and modernisation. This information allows organisations to develop a comprehensive risk mitigation plan and informs a systematic roadmap. Ensuring the organisation can prepare for any obstacles that may occur during the migration or modernisation process.

Architecture Design & Optimisation

Cloud assessments provide insights into the architecture design required for a successful cloud journey. This includes determining the right mix of cloud services, designing the appropriate level availability, as well as implementing best practices for security, scalability and performance.

Change Management & Training

A cloud strategy incorporates change management practices, ensuring that the organisation’s employees are ready for the transformation. Cloud assessments help identify training needs alongside the maturity of DevOps and FinOps practices to be implemented in order to facilitate a smooth transition to the cloud for the entire workforce.

Cloud Migration & Modernisation

Cloud Strategy

An organisation’s cloud strategy is aligning to its core business objectives, this ensures that every aspect of the cloud plan contributes to strengthening its mission and vision. This strategic approach allows the organisation to fully leverage cloud technology, while fostering agility and efficiency when presented with challenges as well as opportunities.

A pivotal outcome of the organisation’s cloud strategy is the architectural design, devised to surface optimal performance, scalability, and availability. Embracing industry best practices, the organisation cloud strategy delivers a roadmap highlighting the most effective mix of cloud services in order to fully unleash the potential of cloud computing.

Furthermore, the cloud strategy defines the change management and training requirements of the business in order to facilitate the smooth cloud transition for the workforce. Through comprehensive training and support initiatives, employees will be equipped to confidently embrace cloud transformation. Utilising appropriate DevOps and FinOps capabilities the business is positioned to capitalise on the benefits of cloud which opens up the ability to drive growth and foster innovation.

The cloud strategy places significant emphasis on governance, policies and security measures, aligned with industry regulations, best practices, and standards. These are essential to establishing a resilient, cost effective and secure cloud environment.

Cloud Journey

Cloud Assessments

The cloud assessment process is designed to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the organisation’s current IT landscape, applications, and workloads. The various assessments ensure a clear understanding of the resources and systems currently in place. It is this clarification that enables strategic as well as architectural decision making regarding what can be migrated to, and modernised in the cloud.

Additionally, these assessments identify the organisation’s cloud readiness, evaluating critical factors such as, security measures, compliance requirements, as well as the proficiency of the IT team. By discerning the business’s cloud readiness, the team is able to proactively address potential challenges and gaps, ensuring a seamless cloud adoption journey.

These assessments enable cost analysis and optimisation as they estimate the potential costs of cloud adoption, taking into account various factors including, cloud resources, data storage, and data transfer.

All our cloud assessments are conducted by a Cloud Architect and overseen by a Cloud Principle to ensure the robust analysis of the environment alongside effective strategic outputs.

Depending on the client’s current environment and journey, The Argo will devise a cloud assessment and strategy package. These packages are built based on best practices as well as standards and cannot be changed or altered. Electing to forego various assessments will have unintended consequences on the success of a business’s environment.

All new client engagements with The Argo require cloud assessments in order to define a strategy. Alternatively, these assessments and strategies can be utilised by skilled and experienced cloud consulting firms to deliver a sustainable and efficient cloud environment.

Below is a list of assessments we conduct in isolation or through individually formulated packages. Each assessment has a distinct purpose and deliverables, which will be highlighted in the proposal. Many of these assessments are synergistic in the delivery of an agile, scalable and cost-effective cloud environment.