02-07-23 | Blog Post
Several organizations are taking a cloud-first approach to run their business. While this is ideal, adopting the cloud journey is a process, and the final state is unknown. IT teams must implement cloud governance to get the best out of it and ensure the company remains safe throughout the journey.
These rules, guides, or principles describe the experience of a company based on the experiences of its customers. The principles help in setting guardrails and milestones for cloud experience.
Though cloud governance follows general guidelines, every organization is different and will have different requirements. To get the best out of it, organizations should define their principles and ensure they align with their business goals or vision. Here are some stages of governance.
Since adopting the cloud experience is a journey, it should have an expected final destination. Before taking the first step in this journey, you need to picture the end. The requirements for governance can change in the course of the journey, and a different approach to governance may be necessary.
Organizations should have a proactive approach and ensure the process remains relevant, moves quickly, and can keep up with business demands. Having a different approach to governance helps in enabling these traits.
To establish a good foundation for adoption and governance, IT teams will rely on a set of processes, policies, and tools. This foundation is known as the minimum viable product (MVP). It allows the team to incorporate cloud governance into implementations throughout the journey swiftly.
Every business is exposed to risks. These risks vary according to the industry, size of business, location, and more. To get the best cloud experience, it is important to know the risks involved in your business and address them critically.
Therefore, before starting the journey of governance, critically document the evolving business risks in your industry and the risk management strategies you have implemented. This should be based on data.
Corporate policies are critical in driving cloud governance. Since governance focuses on the unique aspects of a company’s policies, you must define your corporate policy. This includes identifying corporate risks and converting them into policy statements that will support your compliance requirements.
This stage also involves implementing the disciplines of cloud governance. The policies will serve as a warning system and help identify potential problems, and the disciplines help a company in creating guardrails and managing risks.
Organizations should define processes that can ensure adherence to corporate policies, compliance, and the disciplines of governance. The processes a company defines should help them throughout the journey and ensure they are in line with their goals.
There are five disciplines of governance that can help align tools and inform policies along the journey. These disciplines support corporate policies and protect the company from potential setbacks. They include:
Cost is a major concern for all companies using the cloud. While establishing policies and processes for governance, you should ensure your IT expenses translate directly towards value for your business.
To avoid overspending, evaluate and monitor your IT costs and expenditure, and ensure cost accountability. Have a roadmap and guidelines to help your IT team focus on what’s important and keep your plan lean and straightforward.
You need to have a proactive security baseline that is very reactive, adaptive, and quick in responding to risks. Once you establish a baseline for security, cloud governance policies and enforcement will apply to requirements that include asset configurations, data, and networks.
Define how your team interacts with the solution in place and set user requirements for accessibility, permissions, and compliance.
Resources, including hardware, software, and the IT team, is crucial to the success of cloud operations and governance. Resources and tools should be constantly configured to manage any risks related to recovery, discoverability, drift, and onboarding.
The ideal infrastructural solution and strategy should assist you in monitoring the daily workloads of IT team members, performance of key assets, and applications.
Variations or irregularities in the applications of identity requirements can spiral the risk of breach. This discipline ensures that the IT team has governance policies and processes that are actionable and can detect and alert users of risks. Identity baseline serves as a critical way of having data-driven and precautionary guidance.
The ideal deployment acceleration strategy should capitalize on automation, reduced process bloat, and proven technical innovations. All these should focus on where you are now and your end state.
When provided through cloud-based governance tooling, consistency, standardization, and centralization will create a cloud factor that can speed up deployment activities.
Cloud governance can be very challenging to handle, especially for startups or if you are new to cloud adoption. Since this is a journey and there are several steps involved, it is best to work with the right team. OTAVA can be your trusted partner in cloud governance. We will help you learn more about governance and walk you through the process. To learn more about our cloud governance, visit our website or contact us today.
