Building a

Cloud Center
of Excellence
Contents

Ensuring success in the cloud .................................................................... 1

The Cloud Center of Excellence
The Google Cloud Adoption Framework

A deeper dive into the Cloud Center of Excellence .......................... 4

The characteristics and focus of a Cloud COE
The evolution of the Cloud COE
The Cloud COE and measurement
The most significant measure of success

Building a Cloud Center of Excellence .................................................. 11

Strong executive sponsorship
Organizational analysis
Team member activities
Team member roles
Team member skills
Team member training
Staffing the Cloud COE
Engaging with the organization

Checklist: What's your readiness for a

Cloud Center of Excellence? ................................................................... 24
 1

Ensuring success in the cloud

The rush to the cloud is accelerating, as the benefits of a move to the

cloud increase. To make that transition smooth and successful,
however, your organization will need to do some careful preparation.
You’ll want to align your cloud strategy with your larger organizational Foster engagement
strategy and to consider also how your business will transform as a and momentum
result of this technological change.
organically, and
And you’ll need solid and widespread advocacy from within the create the
organization. Without such advocacy, all responsibility for generating infrastructure and
enthusiasm and momentum for cloud adoption rests with the
executive sponsors. This top-down approach can be slow to scale, frameworks to
but also fails to embrace the inherent democratization of IT resources become a cloud-first
that cloud computing offers.
business
One way of generating such advocacy is to bring together a group of
people from within the organization to provide leadership, best
practices, research, support, and training for the move to the cloud.
With a team like this, it becomes easier to foster engagement and
momentum organically, and also to create the infrastructure and the
frameworks necessary to become a cloud-first business. As the
strongest advocates for cloud adoption within the organization, the
team helps to ignite enthusiasm. They can also serve as a catalyst for
innovation. They will find new ways to achieve the desired goals
— and deeply attuned to the business strategy as they are, the
initiatives and pilot projects that this group develops are more likely to
evolve into endeavors that position the organization for long-term
success.
 2

The Cloud Center of Excellence

Building an internal team to drive success is a natural inclination. At Google, we’ve seen this team called
many different things. Cloud Services, Innovation Council, Cloud Engineering, even Cloud Platform. We
refer to a team so organized and directed as a Cloud Center of Excellence, or a Cloud COE.

A well-appointed Cloud COE begins with a small team who understands the Google Cloud Adoption
Framework and is able to use it as a guide for implementing cloud technology aligned with a business’s
goals and strategy. The Cloud COE team then becomes the conduit for transforming the way that the
other internal teams serve the business in the transition to the cloud.

The Cloud COE team accelerates cloud adoption by:

• Driving momentum across the organization

• Developing reusable frameworks for cloud governance

• Managing cloud knowledge and learning

• Overseeing cloud usage and plans for scale

• Aligning cloud offerings to the larger organizational strategy

A Cloud COE is not a static entity. Rather, it continually evolves to keep pace with the innovation
associated with adopting the cloud. Executive leadership should design the Cloud COE as an adaptive
structure that evolves as the needs of the organization do.
 3

The Google Cloud Adoption Framework

A successful Cloud COE is guided by the Google Cloud Adoption Framework, which builds a structure
on the rubric of people, process, and technology that produces actionable programs within the themes
of Learn, Lead, Scale, and Secure. This framework is informed by Google’s own evolution in the cloud
and many years of experience helping customers.

The Cloud COE is the team that drives the cloud maturity of the organization forward and sets the
agenda of the activities articulated in the Google Cloud Adoption Framework
 4

A deeper dive into the Cloud Center of Excellence

Running a Cloud COE is a full-time job in a large organization. Its team members are aligned with the
business strategy. They collaborate with the rest of the organization in achieving their goals. And they
are fully committed to the success of this move to the cloud.

The team that makes up the Cloud COE must also be cross-functional. As they will have the authority to
make decisions regarding architecture and process, they will need expertise in all things cloud.

The characteristics and focus of a Cloud COE

Central to the Cloud COE’s role is setting the foundation for a successful cloud migration and
encouraging a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Cloud COE team members advise on
and implement solutions, providing both thought leadership and hands-on support. In practical terms, a
Cloud COE can be established based on practices, workstreams, processes, tools, or other significant
structuring factors.

As it is the needs, the priorities, and the capabilities of the business that drive the structure and scope
of the Cloud COE, each Cloud COE will look a little different. And the current state of cloud maturity of
the team will drive its orientation and activities.

Across organizations, however, there are several characteristics that successful Cloud COEs will have in
common:
 5

The most successful Cloud COE teams are:

• Multidisciplinary: Members of the team reflect the diverse perspectives of the stakeholders in the
project.

• Empowered: The Cloud COE should have decision-making power without need for higher-level
sign-off.

• Visionary: The Cloud COE should consider a multi-project viewpoint to understand repeatability
and long-term benefits or goals for the organization.

• Agile: The Cloud COE should understand the necessary requirements to be able to deliver short-
term wins such as short development cycles and an iterative approach to building products.

• Technical: The Cloud COE should include experienced individuals with a history of architecting and
building past solutions within the organization.

• Engaged: The individuals within the Cloud COE should be dedicated, able to commit full-time to the
endeavor and the process.

• Cloud-centric: The Cloud COE should include members who will specialize in the cloud and cloud-
specific functions.

• Integrated: The individuals within the Cloud COE should be sourced from existing areas of the
business to allow for easy integration into existing teams and organizational constructs.

• Hands-on: Within a Cloud COE, there should be individuals who are able to do the hands-on work
needed to build and test cloud solutions.

• Small: The Cloud COE should start as small as possible, ideally 10 team members or fewer, while
still incorporating the knowledge and expertise to accomplish the other characteristics.
 6

Both the cloud maturity level of the organization and its business strategy determine the focus of the
Cloud COE. Some Cloud COEs focus on best practices; others focus on standardization, improvements,
or innovation. In terms of cloud maturity level, a focus on driving transformational cloud maturity for an
organization would mean:

• Inspiring engineers to work on cloud technologies, including training and enablement

• Leveraging agile techniques and a fail-fast approach to research services that fit the model
appropriate to the organization and existing data center platforms

• Collecting the data that will determine the patterns of future success

Which focus to adopt depends on the most pressing needs and goals of the organization. Those needs
and goals are defined by the executive team, and the Cloud COE streamlines its services based on
them.

The Cloud COE is designed to meet the needs of individual organizations. No two Cloud Centers of
Excellence will look quite the same.
 7

The evolution of the Cloud COE

Individual Cloud COEs differ across organizations, and they also differ across time. The organizational
knowledge and capabilities that the Cloud COE reflects will evolve over time, as will the cloud maturity
level of the organization. The Cloud COE must evolve with it.

As the Cloud COE evolves, it will increasingly be populated with engineers who have experience and a
deep understanding of how critical functions currently operate. They will know how to translate existing
data center–based platforms into cloud-based platforms, and how to host greenfield applications on
the cloud platform using cloud-native services.

A high-level view of the evolution and alignment of a Cloud COE captures the activities and outcomes in
terms of timeframe:
 8

The Cloud COE and measurement

A successful cloud migration is determined by how well an

organization adopts the cloud relative to their desired goals.

The Cloud Adoption Framework anchors the concept of cloud

maturity in four themes (Learn, Lead, Scale, Secure) and the
corresponding workstreams (or epics) required to determine
successful cloud adoption. To define their goals for cloud adoption,
Your metrics for
the executive team should agree both on the current cloud maturity
level for the organization and on which level they’d like to take it to. success should align
both to your larger
With cloud maturity goals defined, success metrics can then be
developed. These metrics should align both to the larger business
business strategy
strategy and to the cloud maturity goals, defining desired outcomes in and to your cloud
terms of tangible, measurable results.
maturity goals
The role of the Cloud COE is to drive progress towards these tangible
and measurable results. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs)
allows the executive team and Cloud COE members to align
communications, training, and practices to help employees internalize
the change and incorporate the cloud into their work.

Measuring and analyzing the right KPIs is critical for understanding

the value delivered by the cloud both to individuals and to the
organization. This, in turn, allows for more rapid cloud maturity, as
measurable success drives user buy-in and senior sponsorship, as
well as identifying key areas for focus and improvement.
 9

The most significant measure of success

A Cloud COE is successful to the extent that it successfully drives cloud adoption.

If employees feel that the Cloud COE is collaborative and that it helps facilitate cloud deployment
and usage, they will be more likely to use its services to work together in building better technology,
processes, and culture. If they feel coerced or that the Cloud COE has its own separate agenda, they
are less likely to embrace the COE or work with it.

The Cloud COE must strive always to inspire, to guide, and to support. It is an enabler of success
and exists to help the overall organization achieve its goals. The Cloud COE is only successful if the
various teams and organizations it supports are successful on their cloud journeys.
 10

Building a Cloud Center of Excellence

The best timing for building your Cloud COE is well before undertaking the first cloud migration.
However, there is never a bad time to introduce best practices and cloud governance. Setting up a
Cloud COE midway through your cloud journey still offers many opportunities to realize benefits and
better alignment with your strategic goals for cloud adoption.

Once the Cloud COE members are selected and the Cloud COE is evangelized across the organization,
it is important to quickly create momentum and begin the work to set the foundation for the cloud.

Strong executive sponsorship

A successful Cloud COE empowers transformation. For a Cloud COE to be successful, it must itself be
empowered, endorsed, and supported by strong executive sponsors. Comprehensive buy-in should
expand across the C-suite and must reach across business functions, not just the Information and
Technology (IT) function. Strong executive sponsors are actively involved in cloud deployments. They
champion Cloud COE practices across the organization. And they support the Cloud COE through its
evolution.

Strong executive sponsors in the form of an executive committee will:

• Co-develop objectives with the Cloud COE to make sure that activities align with the business
strategy, and communicate this to the wider business and projects team(s)

• Create a communication channel for the Cloud COE for the purpose of quickly raising issues and
risks with the committee

• Announce and promote the Cloud COE communication channel(s) within the business

• Agree on the engagement model for the committee with the Cloud COE and between Cloud COE
and businesses/functions

• Secure funding for the resources to staff the Cloud COE and for all the initiatives led by the COE
 11

Organizational analysis

Any cloud implementation strategy should be grounded in an

organizational analysis. Included in the analysis are documenting the
organization’s cloud vision and establishing measurable goals. The
cloud vision maps business objectives and needs to technology
capabilities. It provides the sponsor with a key tool for selling the
benefits of moving to the cloud to stakeholders and decision makers
within the enterprise. The vision is critical to establishing a realistic Determining your
adoption strategy. It provides the business context for making cloud maturity level
computing transformational for your business.
enables you to
You might kick off an organizational analysis with a workshop to define measurable
discuss the cloud adoption journey and to make the key decisions
goals for successful
required. Include stakeholders with both technical and business
points of view. You will need both perspectives in the discussion. The cloud adoption
core question to be answered is, “What will adopting the cloud do for
us as a company? What outcome are we looking for?” To get at that
central issue, the conversation may explore questions such as these:

• Why are we investing in the cloud?

• How is technology used in our enterprise?

• How can the cloud address business challenges through three

distinct lenses: technology, economics, and security?

• Will we be striving for innovation? To be the best in our industry?

As part of the discussion, you will need to evaluate the maturity of

your organization’s cloud capabilities. Determining that maturity level,
in turn, enables you to define measurable goals for successful cloud
adoption.
 12

The Google Cloud Adoption Framework provides a Cloud Maturity Assessment to assist you with both
these tasks. Completing a Cloud Maturity Assessment then enables you to turn to questions such as
these:

• What is the critical path for achieving a successful cloud adoption?

• How can the organization’s culture be aligned with the technological changes?

• What policies and procedures will be impacted as part of the cloud adoption journey?

• What potential challenges can impact the training and communication required to drive cloud
adoption within the organization?

With capabilities and goals defined, you can then consider how best to shape your Cloud COE, with
questions such as these:

• Which projects can become a part of the Cloud COE as either a pilot or a proof of concept?

• Who would be the stakeholders and/or owners for the identified workstreams?

• Who can become a part of the early cloud adoption program, while driving an effective feedback
channel to the Cloud COE?

Team member activities

The Cloud COE is a cross-functional team of people with deep skills and expertise. At a high level, the
team undertakes to shape and support the direction of the company across five domains:
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A range of activities underpins those efforts:

Cloud COE activities

Activities Tasks

Accelerate cloud adoption

• Increase cloud product/feature use
• Unlock cloud capabilities
• Implement a well-designed cloud architecture
• Advocate for cloud adoption by sharing success stories
• Develop reusable tools and artifacts

Encourage collaboration
Adoption
• Create and promote communication channels
• Minimize collaboration barriers across functions
• Define and monitor cross-functional collaboration activities

Increase awareness
• Give employees access to information
• Delegate authority and empower employees to take decisions
• Encourage open communication throughout the organization

Cloud advisory
• Advise on cloud methodology
• Advise on release management

Cloud optimization
• Oversee cloud utilization and address under- and overutilization
• Improve data usage and management
Governance
• Standardize processes and methodologies
• Incorporate agile methodology in cloud releases

Define cloud roadmap(s)

• Define future cloud products and features
• Align future cloud usage to the business roadmap
• Prepare for scale and optimization
 14

Governance
• Tailor cloud architecture to business needs
• Develop management governance for the design, build, and release phases
• Build cloud architecture frameworks
Governance • Design cloud processes
• Develop development guidelines

Retooling
• Standardize tools across functions
• Create tools to be used in cloud initiatives

Best practices
• Work with different functions to capture best practices
• Disseminate best practices across teams
• Continuously capture and propagate best practices
• Adjust processes based on best practices

Internal expertise
• Create technical excellence within the organization
• Advise on the recruiting, training, and upskilling of cloud employees

Knowledge management
• Serve as a centralized point of knowledge management
Knowledge
• Capture and encourage best practices
• Become the centralized point for questions about the cloud
• Support the development of the training approach

Learning culture
• Encourage continuous learning
• Develop a culture of excellence and knowledge

Thought leadership
• Develop practices that are specific to the organization
• Develop points of view on the cloud and the organization
• Manage asset creation and publication
 15

Cloud management
• Monitor cloud usage
• Manage cloud permissions

Cost optimization
• Monitor costs
• Manage billing

Metrics and KPIs

• Identify metrics
Operations
• Capture and update metrics
• Report metrics to executive team and organization

Onboarding
• Onboard new members to the Cloud COE

Security
• Incorporate security protocols into the cloud architecture
• Manage access and identity
• Manage cloud permissions

Growth
• Prioritize projects and initiatives
• Deploy the cloud strategy
• Modernize infrastructure technology
• Accelerate go-to-market products

Innovation
• Use the cloud to develop new use cases
• Spearhead technological innovations

Integration
Strategy
• Align the cloud strategy to the larger organizational strategy
• Promote cross-functional integration

Program management
• Plan sprints, releases, and upgrades
• Monitor access and identity

Strategic alignment
• Ensure business alignment
• Communicate with the executive team often to adapt a cloud strategy for
potential organizational strategy changes
 16

Team member roles

The roles in a Cloud COE will vary based on the organization’s maturity in the cloud and its specific
needs. Small organizations might have a number of people sharing particular roles (for example,
security and networking), but large organizations are likely to separate roles out by individuals. The
intent is to create a team with the ability to move at the pace necessary to achieve the organization’s
strategic goals.

The following roles are typical of well-staffed Cloud COEs:

Cloud COE roles

Cloud COE Oversees the Cloud COE. Responsible for working with the executive team on cross-team
Lead collaboration, next steps, sponsorship, and overall management of the Cloud COE.

Developer
Responsible for the team’s project management and execution. In addition, aligns
Operations and
developers to best practices and essential standards. Consults on edge cases and unique
Infrastructure
needs. Builds the applications and tools needed for app deployment and management.
Lead

Specializes in working on cloud computing systems. Develops the next-generation

products and applications on cloud technologies. Helps determine how the system should
operate and provides guidance to the programmers who help write the application code,
aligning developers to best practices and essential standards. May design new systems or
upgrade existing systems.

Software Consults with the business team on how to design cloud applications for optimal scaling.
Engineer/ Represents the enterprise’s APIs to Cloud COE consumers and partners through
Cloud Architect evangelism, onboarding, documentation, and support.

Additionally, has a creative and technical mindset that empowers the organization to use
the cloud, likely using a “Train the Trainer” approach to train counterparts and achieve
scale. Keeps up to speed and promotes the latest trainings and certifications, and designs
and maintains customized programs
 17

Ensures that services — both internally critical and externally visible systems — have
reliability and uptime appropriate to users’ needs and a fast rate of improvement, while
keeping an eye on capacity and performance. Responsible for availability, latency,
performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and
Site Reliability capacity planning. Focuses on the health of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Engineer infrastructure.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that combines software and systems
engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, fault-tolerant systems.
SRE is also a mindset and a set of engineering approaches to running better production
systems.

Responsible for the team’s project management and execution. Oversees the cloud
Cloud
architecture, network engineering, security, and software engineers, cloud engineers, and
Engineering Lead
developers in the team.

Responsible for external-facing network infrastructure (public-facing IPs, firewalls, cloud

DNS, cloud interconnect, NAT/egress control), including connectivity to provide private
networking to other infrastructure. Helps to develop and ensure that the design and
feature enhancements keep systems running smoothly.
Network Engineer
Also ensures that network operations are safe and efficient by monitoring network
performance, coordinating planned maintenance, adjusting hardware components, and
responding to network connectivity issues. The network engineering team is responsible
for operating the cloud network reliably and at scale.

Responsible for the security of applications and infrastructure in the cloud. Helps to
ensure that software and services are designed and implemented to the highest security
Security Engineer standards. Performs security audits, risk analysis, application-level vulnerability testing,
and security code reviews for a wide variety of products. Works closely with other
software engineers to enhance the overall security posture.

Guides the process of configuring and deploying the cloud infrastructure, consisting of
identity and access management, network architecture, application security, logging,
Cloud Developer monitoring, billing, and more. Consults with various teams across the organization on how
Operations and to design their cloud applications for optimal scaling, including CDN design, load balancer
Infrastructure setup, caching, compute optimizations, continuous integration and delivery pipeline, and
Engineer more.

Additionally, works closely with Product Management and Product Engineering to build
and drive excellence across products.
 18

Works closely with engineering, site reliability, and deployment teams to improve the
critical tools and support process that enable cloud support engineers and internal
Technical customers to achieve success. Applies in-depth technical experience to develop a deep
Solutions understanding of, and drive enhancements for, cloud tooling architecture.
Engineer Builds and implements a global service and tooling platform to ensure stability, reusability,
testing, compliance, and overall reliability. Acts as the first line of defense, in regular
contact with cloud site reliability engineers, network engineers, and security engineers.

Leads the team of data scientists. Responsible for the team’s project management and
execution. Oversees data analytics and machine learning initiatives within an organization.
Enables data-driven decision-making by collecting, transforming, and visualizing data.
Data Designs, builds, maintains, and troubleshoots data processing systems with a particular
Scientist emphasis on the security, reliability, fault-tolerance, scalability, fidelity, and efficiency of
Lead such systems.

Additionally, analyzes data to gain insight into business outcomes, builds statistical
models to support decision-making, and creates machine learning models to automate
and simplify key business processes.

Evaluates and improves the organization’s products. Collaborates with a multi-disciplinary

team of engineers and analysts on a wide range of problems. Brings scientific rigor and
statistical methods to the challenges of creating, developing, and improving products
Data with an appreciation for the behaviors of the end user.
Scientist Works with engineers to analyze data and plan/design experiments, develops metrics and
methodologies to support strategic decisions, builds statistical models, integrates new
methodologies into existing systems, and communicates findings to engineers and
others, both verbally and in writing.

Supports initiatives related to systems, processes, and data transformation. Dives deeply
into the data and understands the business processes supported, applying statistics and
data modeling to gain actionable business insights and drive recommendations. Interacts
Data with multiple stakeholders across business, product, and engineering teams, while
Analyst working closely with the data team to support reporting and business metrics.

Responsible for maintaining the data assets developed for underlying CRM ecosystem
(such as business glossary, CDE/Reference data, and DQ dashboards) and managing the
governance process for data model changes.

Organization Assesses the impacts of cloud adoption on the organization as a whole, as well as on
Change and individual teams and lines of business. Helps align change initiatives with business value
Communication and strategic cloud goals. Develops and leads strategies to communicate key initiatives
Specialist and successes across the enterprise.
 19

Team member skills

It is important that the skills of the Cloud COE team members be robust enough to support their roles
and activities. The following skills are recommended for Cloud COE team members:

Cloud COE skill sets

Skills Activities and tasks Roles

Strategy and adoption

• Cloud COE Lead
• Develop repeatable assets
• Cloud Engineering Lead
Project • Create deployment checklists and scope
• Data Scientist Lead
Management exercises for sprints
• Developer Operations and
• Define scope and resources requirements
Infrastructure Lead
for workstreams

Operations, knowledge, and governance • Software Engineer/Cloud Architect

• Define a cloud migration checklist • Network Engineer
Cloud relevant to the organization • Security Engineer
Deployment • Establish governance frameworks • Cloud Engineer
• Understand cloud deployment best • Data Scientist
practices and CI/CD tooling • Data Analyst

Operations and governance

• Communicate with both operations and
development communities
• Train and develop others
• Manage change and communication
activities within the organization • Site Reliability Engineer
• Influence support processes and • Developer Operations and
Change
requirements within the organization Infrastructure Engineer
Management
• Articulate DevOps or Site Reliability • Technical Solutions Engineer
and Support
Engineering methodologies • Organization Change and
• Build the expertise in the cloud to be Communications Specialist
subject matter experts
• Influence project teams to support their
applications
• Direct the success criteria of proof of
concept workloads and use cases
 20

Team member training

To provide the Cloud COE individuals with the knowledge, resources, and tools to succeed in their role, it
is important to equip them with the right training. A needs analysis will help define the training plan,
which captures information on which individuals will receive training, the format and course those
individuals will receive, and the targeted timeframe for training.

For GCP customers, Google Cloud Fundamentals is recommended to give the team the basic
knowledge of Google Cloud Platform. If team members are new to agile delivery, they should also be
trained in scrum and agile fundamentals.

To fill the key roles, the following learning paths are recommended:

Learning paths for key roles

Track Description Job roles

• Cloud COE Lead

This track is designed to designed for IT • Cloud Engineering Lead
professionals who are responsible for • Developer Operations and
Cloud implementing, deploying, migrating, and Infrastructure Lead
Infrastructure maintaining applications in the cloud. • Software Engineer/Cloud Engineer
Individual classes within the track are • Cloud Architect
designed for differing roles and interests. • Network Engineer
• Security Engineer

This track is designed for data professionals

Data & who are responsible for designing, building, • Data Scientist Lead
Machine analyzing, and optimizing big data solutions. • Data Scientist
Learning Individual classes within the track are • Data Analyst
designed for differing roles and interests.

This track is designed for application

• Site Reliability Engineer
programmers and software engineers who
Application • Developer Operations and
develop software programs in the cloud.
Development Infrastructure Engineer
Individual classes within the track are
• Technical Solutions Engineer
designed for differing roles and interests.
 21

It is worth considering the Google Cloud Certifications, as these certifications cover the design,
development, management, and administration of application infrastructure and data solutions on
Google Cloud technology. The Google Cloud Certified designation demonstrates mastery of the job
roles and skills recommended for the Cloud COE.

Staffing the Cloud COE

Plan to staff your Cloud COE with a technically capable and highly engaged team. Ideally, you’ll be able
to staff internally, so that team members are aligned with the corporate culture and come to the role
with their corporate networks already in place. To buttress the team with additional skills not available
internally, some organizations turn to external partners or consultants.

It can be tempting to think of turning the team that delivers the first cloud project into the Cloud COE.
This repurposing works only if the project team is highly experienced in cloud offerings and if they can
be committed to the responsibilities required for the Cloud COE on a full-time basis.

Engaging with the organization

Cloud COE members are the cloud champions within an organization. Their work should excite and
inspire other employees about the benefits of moving to the cloud. For better leverage, the Cloud COE
should be placed high enough within the organizational structure that the team will be able to create the
momentum necessary for conducting a successful migration.

To engage deeply with other teams and individuals across the organization, the Cloud COE team
members and the executive sponsors must work together to:

• Create a sense of urgency to help motivate employees to embrace the role of the Cloud COE in
adopting the cloud

• Communicate the vision, purpose, and operating guidelines of the group

• Involve other employees in Cloud COE initiatives and in the cloud migration

• Encourage cross-functional collaboration so that employees will feel both empowered and
represented
 22

It is important for sponsors and Cloud COE team members to understand both why these goals are
important and how to achieve them:

Cloud COE engagement goals

Goal Why it’s important How to achieve it

Change can be overwhelming • Providing a vision for the future and the necessary
for employees, which can lead road to get there
to delays in adoption. To help • Highlighting market trends and competitor cloud
Creating a
counter this, the executive usage
sense of
sponsors will need to • Sharing financial information to show potential gains
urgency
communicate the pressing from cloud adoption
nature of the change and • Organizing town halls or forums where employees can
discuss the road forward. raise questions

• Opening lines of communication across functions

• Establishing communication channels and
Effective transformation is built broadcasting them broadly
on strong communication. By • Creating awareness about the upcoming changes
communicating the Cloud • Creating a consistent messaging that aligns with the
COE’s purpose, the executive organization’s vision
Communicating
team is able to build credibility, • Overcommunicating goals, expectations, and actions
effectively
collaboration, and • Being transparent and open to dialogue
engagement. Employees • Centralizing and streamlining communication
should understand the vision • Repeating a consistent message across channels
and benefits of the change. • Establishing connectivity across employees
• Communicating purpose, goals, and next steps to
larger organization via town hall meetings
 23

Cloud COE engagement goals

Goal Why it’s important How to achieve it

• Hosting frequent training and knowledge-sharing

sessions
• Driving semiregular scrum of scrums to drive
common component reuse
To continually drive the rate
• Building and maintaining collaborative
of innovation with cloud
documentation
Encouraging adoption, the Cloud COE
• Conducting hackathons
collaboration should encourage cross-
• Making communication between groups as seamless
and functional collaboration and
as possible
engagement look for ways to foster it
• Bringing the teams together, ideally physically, as
within their teams and across
often as possible
the organization.
• Supporting the team’s successes
• Training and developing employees
• Recognizing and acknowledging employees
• Encouraging flexibility

Some employees are likely to be skeptical of the Cloud COE and its purpose. To overcome this
skepticism, Cloud COE team members need also to build credibility. They do this in large part by:

• Driving consistency across the organization by defining guard rails

• Providing transparency to the metrics by defining, capturing, and reporting on KPIs that are
important to the business

• Being responsible for actively sharing success stories, as well as learning from failures with the
wider organization
 24

Checklist: What's your readiness for a Cloud Center of

Excellence?

A well-designed and thoughtfully implemented Cloud Center of Excellence will not only help to jump-
start a large-scale, organization-wide transformation, but it also accelerates an organization's transition
to the new operating model.

To evaluate your readiness for establishing and managing a Cloud COE, apply the following checklist:

Cloud COE prerequisites

To establish a Cloud COE in your organization, you will need to take into account several important
considerations, or prerequisites. Without them, it would be extremely difficult to gather the support and
momentum required for a Cloud COE to be successful.

Identify/recruit To establish a Cloud Center of Excellence, you need a strong executive

executive sponsorship team. Sponsors should have access to the C-suite in order to secure
sponsors the funding and resources necessary to establish a Cloud COE.

A Cloud COE requires funding. This may take the form of FTEs or resources
dedicated to the group, budget for training, or budget to purchase products to
Secure Cloud
fuel cloud solutions. Determining the budget available will inform the size and
COE funding
scale of the Cloud COE. It can take months to set up a Cloud COE, so it is
important to account for this initiative’s recruitment and onboarding phases.

The foundation of a successful Cloud COE is its members. The level of expertise,
vision, and willingness to build the necessary tools for cloud delivery will dictate
the success of the Cloud COE and the cloud implementation. Therefore, it is
Identify/recruit important to select Cloud COE members carefully. These members can be
Cloud COE recruited internally, if they fit the qualification criteria, or can be hired externally.
members
The two main qualifying criteria for members are:
• Highly technical experience in cloud offerings
• Excitement about cloud offerings
 25

Cloud COE training

Training the right resources, at the right time, with the right tools is an important aspect of establishing
a Cloud COE. Select Cloud COE members before defining a training plan, and then train them well.

The following cultural and technical training can be considered by an organization

for Cloud COE enablement. These trainings are suitable for Cloud COE members,
the executive team, and cloud users:
Train Cloud
• Cultural training
COE members
• GCP training
• GCP certification
• Agile training

Cloud COE establishment

Once the executive sponsors, funding, and Cloud COE members are aligned and trained, it’s time to
begin building the Cloud COE. You’ll need to complete these high-level steps before you can begin
building cloud solutions.

A vision expresses a desired end state. To manage change successfully, you need to
Define Cloud define how the Cloud COE will support the business in achieving this end state. The
COE vision vision needs to be concrete, inspirational, attainable, focused, within scope, and
simple.

Once a vision is established, the Cloud COE and executive team need to define the
Define Cloud
best way to implement it. To better define an implementation strategy, a Cloud COE
COE strategy
can conduct an organizational analysis.

To excite employees, both the executive team and the Cloud COE need to engage,
Excite
communicate with, and encourage them. This approach will help build the necessary
employees
momentum to deploy to the cloud and build trust for the Cloud COE.

To establish trust and encourage employees to use Cloud COE offerings, the Cloud
COE will need to build credibility across the organization. To accomplish this:
• Define KPIs
Build • Run pilot projects
credibility • Communicate often and through consistent communication channels
• Be transparent with employees and address their concerns
• Hold town halls, when appropriate, to address questions and communicate
important decisions
 26

Cloud COE deployment

Before deployment to the cloud can begin, the Cloud COE will need to develop frameworks and tools to be
used in that deployment. There are several high-level steps for establishing cloud governance.

Define the Cloud COE charter. This charter should specify goals, operating guidelines,
workstreams, key roles, and responsibilities for the group. When developing these
Establish
principles, consider the following:
operating
• Networking
principles
• CI/CD
• Programmable infrastructure

Define Setting a plan helps you define how cloud solutions will be deployed in the
deployment organization. In addition, it will help establish how the solutions will be built with
plan respect to sprint cycles, team members, release cycles, and other relevant factors.

The Cloud COE should build a process where employees are actively capturing best
Encourage practices and incorporating them into their work. The Cloud COE should have visibility
best practices into these practices so as to ensure both that these best practices are aligned with the
frameworks developed and that they are incorporated across the organization.

Defining the future of the cloud within an organization is one of the responsibilities of
Define cloud the Cloud COE. For this reason, the Cloud COE should work with the executive team
roadmap to define next steps, future offerings, and potential cloud offerings that align with the
larger organizational strategy.

Cloud COE management

After deploying to the cloud, the Cloud COE will continue to work on capturing best practices and establishing
a process for incorporating those practices in the different functions. During this stage, Cloud COE members
will primarily manage and improve cloud usage. Having the members involved in this way also helps to ensure
a culture of cloud knowledge and thought leadership in the organization.

To accomplish the goals of this stage, the Cloud COE should consider how they will
manage the following:
• Cost control
Cloud COE
• Data management
management
• Instrumentation
• Identity and access
• Incident management