What is a cloud first strategy?
A “cloud first” strategy is an approach to information technology (IT) in which an organization prioritizes the use of cloud computing services over traditional on-premises infrastructure and software. This strategy involves moving as much of an organization’s IT infrastructure, applications, and data to the cloud as possible, and using cloud-based services as the primary means of delivering IT services to the organization. The goal of a cloud first strategy is to take advantage of the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of cloud computing, while also enabling the organization to respond more quickly to changing business needs.
What’s next? Once a cloud first strategy is established, the next step would be to use a Cloud Adoption Framework.
What is the Cloud Adoption Framework?
The Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a set of best practices, tools, and guidance provided by Microsoft to help organizations plan, design, and implement their Azure deployments. The framework aims to provide a structured and repeatable approach to cloud adoption, helping organizations to move to the cloud in a way that is efficient, secure, and compliant.
The Azure CAF consists of four key phases:
- Assess: This phase involves assessing an organization’s current IT environment, including its applications, infrastructure, and processes, and identifying opportunities for improvement and migration to the cloud.
- Plan: This phase involves creating a detailed migration plan that includes the resources, timelines, and processes required to move to the cloud.
- Implement: This phase involves implementing the migration plan, including deploying and configuring Azure resources, migrating applications, and training users.
- Optimize: This phase involves monitoring and optimizing the Azure environment to ensure that it is running efficiently and effectively, and making any necessary changes to improve performance, security, and compliance.
The Azure CAF provides organizations with a set of tools and guidance to help them plan and implement their Azure deployments. It can help organizations to move to the cloud in a way that is efficient, secure, and compliant, and to optimize their Azure environment to ensure that it is running efficiently and effectively. The Azure CAF is designed to be flexible, allowing organizations to adopt the framework in a way that best suits their needs.
For more information, visit the official Azure Cloud Adoption framework website.
What’s next? With workloads running in Azure, the next step is to run a Well-Architected Framework review.
What is the Azure Well-Architected Framework review?
The Azure Well-Architected Framework Review is a review process offered by Microsoft Azure to help customers assess and improve the overall design and architecture of their Azure-based solutions. The review is based on the Azure Well-Architected Framework, which is a set of best practices and design principles for building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient solutions on Azure.
The review process involves a review of the customer’s existing Azure-based solution by a team of Microsoft solution architects, who will provide feedback and recommendations on how to improve the solution’s architecture.
The review covers five key pillars:
- Security – Protecting applications and data from threats.
- Performance – The ability of a system to adapt to changes in load.
- Reliability – The ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function.
- Cost Optimization – Managing costs to maximize the value delivered.
- Operational Excellence – Operations processes that keep a system running in production.
The goal of the Azure Well-Architected Framework Review is to help customers ensure that their Azure-based solutions are designed and implemented in a way that aligns with best practices and takes full advantage of the capabilities of Azure.
For more information, visit the Azure Well-Architected Framework documentation.