Cloud Adoption Framework is all about bringing together different departments and people to outline a business plan for moving all or some of their resources into the cloud.
The phases outlined below show the different methodologies used to put this plan together: –
Strategy
Plan
Ready
Adopt
Govern
Manage
Organize
This is the first in a series of blogs where I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of the above phases and how companies can/should take advantage of this new approach.
Who is best placed to adopt this framework?
Ideally on first glance you would say that a company that has all its resources on-premises is the best candidate, but this could also be a company that already has some resources in the cloud and some on-premises.
There are several benefits that can be obtained by moving resources into the cloud, most notably cost savings, resilience, reliability.
By following the different stages of the CAF this gives the company and its employees a structured plan to manage. They can refine and rework the original plan; this allows the on-going operation of their resources into the cloud going forward.
As with any good framework this must be solid, the CAF was designed to show businesses what could be achieved by better planning, better collaboration and more importantly more people being involved in the decision-making process.
The process follows Microsoft’s best practices, so you know you are adopting an already successful approach, but in greater detail. This allows better documentation to be written for users to follow, whether that is general users or more technical people, i.e. Cloud Architects or IT professionals.
This gives the users tools, guidance, and narratives to help implement and continue to grow their business in the cloud.
Also, although there are 7 stages listed above it does not mean a company needs to follow them in a linear fashion, they can jump in and out of each stage as they see fit and when they make progress or have new areas to address.
Below is a link to an overview of the Cloud Adoption Framework in full, outlining the different phases, but over the course of this series of blogs I will explain my thoughts on each phase.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/overview
In the next blog we will discuss Phase 1 of the CAF in detail, this being Strategy.
