One of the most critical aspects of a successful IT entity incorporating Cloud services is having governance policies defined and published. Over the years, I’ve seen organizations reactively send companywide emails regarding changes to staff Cloud consumption policies. I’ve also seen developers wander around looking to find which manager has purged their storage accounts to cut costs. The inclination and push to the Cloud without adequate governance preparation and thought leaves these companies with higher than expected bills, no overarching strategy, and the need to play catch up to minimize the negative impact to staff and business.
Here are the five of many areas of governance any IT outfit should consider when looking to fully incorporate Hosted Services:
Financial Planning for the Cost of Cloud projects: What are the true costs of the Cloud deployments when incorporating 3 to 5 years of usage?
Roles, Accounts, and Standards: Moving to an orchestrated and agile IT deployment changes the look of the traditional IT departments Have you identified and prepared new roles to manage?
Classification of Data: Are adequate attention, safe guards, and policies in place to help prevent data leaks?
Naming Standards: With a new generation of services, locations, and best practices, are the current naming standards suitable in Cloud deployments?
Usage Policies: Cost can spiral when inadequate usage policies and safe guards are in place. Have adequate policies been created to reflect modern usage policies for staff consumption of Cloud resources?
These questions tend to generate more conversation regarding Governance. To ensure employees can get to the required information from KB or Wiki entries, dialogue and results should be searchable using tagging. When a part of a larger successful IT strategy, that’s standing on a strong Governance framework, the Cloud can be confidently embraced and incorporated into everyday IT. Achieve One is here to help develop your own strategy for navigating the Clouds.
