A Practical Guide to Cloud Migration

Chapter 6. Developing Centers of Excellence

Kuntal Mitra, Staff Solutions Consultant

Who

• Technical Leads

• Engineers

• Enabling Team Leads

• CxOs

• Managers

Why

Building an internal team to drive cloud adoption success through common practices is a natural inclination. At Google, we’ve seen this team called many different things: Cloud Services, Center of Engineering, Innovation Council, Cloud Engineering, Community of Practice, and even Cloud Platform. We refer to a team so organized and directed as a Cloud Center of Excellence, or a CCoE. A well-appointed CCoE begins with a small team that understands the vendor’s cloud adoption framework¹ and is able to use it as a guide for implementing cloud technology that is aligned with business goals and strategy. The Cloud Center of Excellence team then becomes the enabler for transforming how other internal teams serve the business in their transition to cloud. However, a CCoE should not be considered a blocker for transformation or for migrations to occur.

The CCoE team accelerates cloud adoption by:

• Aligning cloud goals with the larger organizational and business strategy

• Providing leadership, best practices, research, support, and training for the move to cloud

• Advocating for cloud adoption within the organization and helping to ignite enthusiasm

• Serving as a catalyst for innovation

• Creating the infrastructure and framework that are necessary to become a cloud-first business

Furthermore, we’ve observed that ...