Article The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework

Most Service Providers turn to the cloud to prepare their organization for the future. Some are already migrating; others are still at the beginning of their cloud journey. At Insight, we have already guided many partners through the structured and successful migration to Microsoft Azure with the Insight Cloud Journey.

Another way to prepare for the cloud is with the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) for Azure, a framework full of tools and documentation for cloud adoption, management and optimization. In a new series of blogs, we take you through the different steps of CAF, sharing our views and advice on how to use this very comprehensive framework for your success.

The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

Microsoft developed the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure as proven guidance to help organizations adopt Azure with confidence and control. CAF is a collection of tools, documentation, and best practices to achieve business objectives, prepare the business for the cloud, and migrate resources and procedures to the cloud and optimize them. CAF is rooted in practice and advertised as ‘proven guidance’ because it is built on the best practices of Microsoft’s employees, partners, and customers.

Technology, business, people

Each Service Provider organization follows its own journey to cloud. However, there are a number of steps that almost every organization goes through: defining your strategy, making a plan, getting the organization ready, adopting the cloud, and governing and managing the digital estate. CAF provides a structural approach to successful cloud adoption, focusing on the three critical factors that need to be align ed in every step of the cloud adoption process: technology, business (or processes) and people.

8 phases in cloud adoption lifecycle

Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure covers the entire cloud adoption lifecycle in eight phases (the seven ones below plus the eighth phase to align your organization): from the initial understanding of how Azure works and its fundamental concepts to the phases of governing, managing and innovating your cloud infrastructure and services. Each phase provides methodologies to overcome common showstoppers and get you back on track.

Getting started

In this blog series we go deeper into the eight phases, while sharing our years of experience and best practices. Each phase connects to one of the four cornerstones in any cloud adoption process:

• Document foundational decisions
  First of all, there is the need to understand and document the basic concepts of the cloud – Azure in particular – and align these concepts with the entire team involved in the cloud adoption programme. CAF provides a checklist to document these decisions, help you understand the portfolio of workloads that can be hosted in the cloud, and establish a naming and tagging standard.

• Accelerate migration
  Before one or more workloads are actually migrated to Azure, all stakeholders must be aligned on motivations and expected business outcomes with tangible, relevant costs and returns. A mutually supported business case, migration plan, landing zone and the migration of the first workloads contribute to a smooth, hick-up free migration process.

• Deliver operational excellence
  When you transform your organization to Azure, you want to ensure operational excellence during the transformation process. A change management approach with regular adoption waves – or releases – ensures that business outcomes can be continuously tested against the outcomes and other criteria every time a set of workloads is delivered to the cloud.

• Align your organization
  A successful adoption of the cloud depends to a large extent on how well the people in your organization are skilled. Are they able to do what is necessary in their new roles to achieve clearly defined business goals? A well-aligned organization is an indispensable asset to adopt a successful cloud model. The Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure ensures you pay adequate attention to the essential people aspect of cloud adoption.

Accelerate your business with Azure

The real benefit of cloud adoption is not so much in migrating workloads to the cloud. It is in how you will use the cloud to accelerate your business with improved or new services and solutions faster, more agile and more tailored to what your customers need today. The Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure will help you to take the first steps in your Azure Cloud Journey or help you continue if you are already on your way.

You can work with the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure on your own or with the Insight Cloud team as your partner. We work with the tools and methodology of the Framework on a daily basis in the Insight Cloud Journey. For example by offering a governance service in which we create a ‘landing zone’ based on CAF best practices to help you set up for migrating your first workload and manage your cloud estate. Contact us for more information. If you want to learn more about cloud migration, then follow our blogs on cloud adoption for Service Providers or read our client stories.