All you need to know about AWS Cloud Adoption Framework — Governance Perspective
Hi! Welcome to my next story — it is great to have you here again! Today we will focus on data migration and journey towards cloud adoption. It not only seems like a complicated process — it actually is. That being said, it is also worth mentioning that AWS created AWS Cloud Adoption Framework — feature that helps organizations develop and execute highly effective plans for the cloud adoption journey. AWS CAF provides also the right guidance and a comprehensive approach. This ensures business benefits and faster cloud adoption with lesser risk. Sounds interesting? Let’s find out more about that!
Cloud adoption has increased drastically in the IT and the Software development landscape. As the ongoing demand for agile and rapid development increases, industries’ movement to the cloud is inevitable. AWS has been the market leader in Paas and IaaS services. AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is one of the unique features that AWS offers as its professional services. Before I go too much into details, let’s have a look at Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, which clearly shows AWS as the market leader. This analysis also inculcates the thought to adopt AWS cloud to support the IT infrastructure.
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: Where does it help?
The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework helps organizations in quickly understanding the cloud adoption techniques. It also allows organizations to identify the gaps and the risks when it comes to adopting cloud practices. The significant benefits of AWS Cloud Adoption Framework are:
- Increasing the agility of running the business.
- More economical as Cloud Service Providers have a pay-as-you-go model.
Main focus areas of AWS CAF
AWS has defined six different focus areas in AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, called perspectives. Every perspective covers gaps, processes, and the action plan to fulfill those gaps. All these perspectives have distinct workstreams, responsibilities, and stake-holders. Here are all of them:
- Business Perspective
- People Perspective
- Governance Perspective
- Platform Perspective
- Security Perspective
- Operations Perspective
On a high-level, Business, People, and Governance fall under the Business capabilities of the organization. The Platform, Operations, and Security fall under Technical capabilities.
Governance Perspective
In my story, I am mainly going to focus on the Governance Perspective. This focus area is principally meant for CIOs, Program Managers, Business Managers, and Portfolio Managers.
Governance deals with the areas where IT and Businesses meet and stay in sync with consistent decision-making and risk management. The perspective ensures to achieve a maximum value of the company’s business strategies and goals. Governance Perspective helps in creating an efficient, secure and regulatory compliant technology environment.
Factors defining AWS CAF Governance Perspective:
With a focus on skills and processes, the Governance Perspective aligns to the goals of IT strategy and the business. The image below shows the different factors which define the Governance Perspective of AWS CAF:
- Portfolio Management: Portfolio Management helps in managing and prioritizing IT investment programs with projects for business enhancements. It contributes to the mechanism of prioritizing the workload on the way towards the movement to the cloud.
- Program and Project Management: This factor manages several projects for improving organizational growth. It also addresses the organization’s performance and project completion within timelines and budget.
- Business Performance Measurement: Cloud computing offers newer and better means of process automation and cost optimization, hence, ensuring business growth. Cloud services provide better and effective automation and optimization techniques. This helps in leveraging the new cloud-centric Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- License Management: It explains the ability to manage the licenses for not only the IT services, but also the softwares. The cloud services models demand a new approach in procurement and management of licenses.
To sum up, AWS Cloud Adoption Framework helps the organizations understand how they can leverage the cloud strategies that align with their business. AWS CAF has long-term benefits in all the key areas and with all the stake-holders in all the functional areas. AWS CAF provides the leading and best business experience to adopt and migrate your business toward the cloud. My next stories will be about other AWS CAF Perspectives so… stay tuned! ;)
Articles is based on AWS Whitepaper: An Overview of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework — Version 2.
