With cloud technology now underpinning most aspects of business operations, there’s never been a better time to establish your AWS Cloud Center of Excellence.
If you’ve never heard the term Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) before, it’s more straightforward than it might seem. A CCOE is simply a centralized team of cloud experts who oversee the governance of the organization’s cloud stack. Now that you know what a CCOE is, do you need one?
Whether your organization is already using AWS and wants to expand your footprint, make the most of it, or you’re planning to adopt the cloud platform in the near future, having a CCOE is the best way to set yourself up for success. Cloud is no longer the sole domain or concern of the IT department. While they may still be responsible, along with the vendor, for managing the cloud environment, the chances are that cloud products or services are being used across the organization.
You might already have a team of cloud professionals who look after the day-to-day administration and optimization of your AWS environment, but that’s not a CCOE.
Your AWS Cloud Center of Excellence should be looking at the bigger picture, concerned with the overall cloud architecture that your business depends on.
Things like developing cloud policy, assessing and selecting vendors, and planning out the most appropriate solution architecture are what it’ll be responsible for. The overall goal of the CCOE is to mitigate risks, promote effective use, and pursue better outcomes for all users of their cloud environment. Having an AWS Cloud Center of Excellence in place, and creating a robust framework to help it govern, is crucial for ensuring cloud harmony within your business, but it can be tricky.
Here are five of the most commonly made mistakes you’ll want to avoid before you get started building out your CCOE.
5 common mistakes to avoid before building out your CCOE
Mistake #1: Thinking your Cloud Center of Excellence is an IT problem
These days, there’s barely any part of a large organization that’s untouched by cloud technology. Cloud platforms aren’t just being used to manage infrastructure or back-end operations; tech is playing an increasingly large part in driving commercial strategy, enabling the adoption of new business models, and delivering great customer experiences.
As more businesses adopt a digital-first approach, and the role of the CIO becomes ever-more intrinsic to planning and decision-making, brushing off cloud transformation as something only IT teams should be involved in is a big mistake. Your CCOE should not only include technical cloud experts and IT leaders, but stakeholders and spokespersons from all departments. To effectively harness the power that the cloud offers, everyone needs to be on the same page; especially when it comes to serious issues like security and data access.
Your CCOE should be representative of your entire business. You want people to engage with it and view it as a useful resource. They won’t do that if they think it’s just another IT committee that doesn’t have anything to do with their daily roles, so how you position your CCOE from the start is important.
Mistake #2: Not having a clear and well-communicated plan for your Cloud Center of Excellence
Your Cloud Center of Excellence should be aligned with your overall business aims. After all, organizations don’t implement cloud technology for no reason. Hone in on what your company wants to achieve by utilizing cloud products, and use those objectives to create goals for your CCOE. It’s all well and good giving your team a high-and-mighty purpose of governing your cloud environment, but what does that mean in reality? Creating a mission statement for your CCOE will prevent it from becoming a rudderless entity that’s all talk and no action.
When you hire new AWS professionals and grow your CCOE, they should know right from the start what you want out of your cloud platform, so they can take your specific business pain points and develop solutions.
Mistake #3: Trying to be a Jack-of-all-Trades when it comes to cloud applications
AWS offers more than 175 products and services on its platform, for practically every business use case. This integrated ecosystem of tools makes it easy to adopt multiple cloud products across a business, and judging by stats from a recent study, most AWS customers do just that.
The latest Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition found that 79% of AWS Partner customers implement more than one AWS product when migrating to the cloud.
If you’re one of the many customers using multiple AWS products (and if you’re thinking of setting up an AWS Cloud Center of Excellence, we’ll assume you are) then you could be at risk of biting off more than you can chew. The complexity of the products, and the number of users you’ll likely be supporting, makes trying to master them all at once a fool’s errand. Start by focusing on your most widely-used product or most business-critical issue. Roll out best practices, and get your organization comfortable with the basics first, before you start tackling more complex governance challenges.
Mistake #4: Turning your AWS Cloud Center of Excellence into a one-way street
Your CCOE should not exist exclusively to choose which tier of S3 storage you’re going to use and mandate how teams should be using products. The mark of an effective CCOE is that it’s consultative; it provides guidance and shares best practices where needed, but it does not dictate every click. For starters, many AWS customers just have too much ‘cloud stuff’ going on for one team to painstakingly oversee every decision. Rather, it should be the job of your CCOE to steer the ship in the right direction.
A key way to ensure that your cloud transformation is on the right course is gathering feedback. To create truly effective solutions to business needs, a CCOE needs to connect with those who are using the platform and understand what’s working and what needs to change.
Again, this is why it’s so important to be engaging with representatives from every corner of your user base; you can’t fix a problem you don’t know is occurring. Think of your CCEO as a town hall discussion or a two-way street, rather than a body that dictates how things should be done. It should be collaborative, and actively work to solve user problems by listening to them, rather than just telling them what they should and shouldn’t be doing. And remember, any guidance that your CCEO produces should be a living, evolving doctrine. Things move too fast in the cloud space to carve your ten cloud commandments in stone and leave it at that. A CCOE is about encouraging and fostering excellence; don’t expect to obtain it right out of the gate.
Mistake #5: Making poor investments in your Cloud Center of Excellence talent
Every organization wants the best people for their Cloud Center of Excellence, and the tight talent market is making it ever more difficult to hire cloud professionals. But focusing on quick and dirty hiring strategies is a sure-fire way to doom your CCOE. Poaching experienced AWS professionals from other businesses has become a common practice within tech, creating mistrust and driving up salaries in the process. Clearly, cycling through the same pool of candidates is not a sustainable solution. And now that businesses are realizing cloud transformation is an unending journey rather than a destination, your Cloud Center of Excellence should be nothing if not sustainable.
Creating a future-proof pipeline of AWS talent is vital for achieving ongoing cloud success. Excellence comes in many forms, and not everyone in your CCOE needs to be a cloud veteran. You want to build a CCOE that grows and evolves.
Your CCOE should have a diversity of ideas and knowledge, a deep understanding of your business needs, and the agility and enthusiasm to tackle new challenges when they arise.
Partnering with talent creation companies that focus on creating net new AWS talent is a great way to achieve this Cloud Center of Excellence ideal. With Revolent, you get AWS-certified professionals with fresh perspectives, coming from a diverse range of backgrounds but all boasting IT industry experience.
We customize our Revols’ learning paths based on your specific business needs and objectives; tell us what you need and we can develop talent that fits the bill fast. And, it’s not just in-depth technical expertise you can expect—all of our Revols partake in our consultancy skills training, which equips them with the personal and professional skills needed to succeed in the industry. Our Revols are passionate about AWS and are always looking for ways to make the platform work better for our clients; making them a perfect fit to help build out your Cloud Center of Excellence.
Case study: AWS Advanced Consulting Partner
We caught up with one of our AWS Advanced Consulting Partners to learn more about their experience of setting up and managing an AWS CCOE. Here are some of their key insights on first steps and lessons learned.
What were the first steps you took towards establishing your AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCOE)?
“Finding a baseline of senior members of staff. We grew from a team of three and we’re now 50 people. At the start, we were just hiring as and when we needed people, then we started hiring for more senior people who we’ve built the business around and those people became our Cloud Centre of Excellence. We hired a Principal Consultant who would be in charge of heading up delivery. We hired a Service Delivery Manager and we hired a PMO Function. And those people are key to everything we do.”
What were the first steps you took towards establishing your AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCOE)?
“Rushing recruitment is one thing we’ve done–trying to get people in and not always making sure they’re the right people. That can be quite costly. We were also process-light at the start and we’ve now improved that. We have good processes and a framework in place. We were maybe a bit late to the table with that, but it’s been resolved now.”
