Many organizations are establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to take a holistic view of their cloud transformation, because in addition to technical challenges, there are also organizational and cultural aspects to consider.
The process of cloud implementation in established companies is often iterative and takes time. A Cloud Center of Excellence can support companies in the "cloudification" of corporate IT, the introduction of cloud services and other dimensions of cloud transformation.
As a center of excellence, the CCoE highlights established processes and methods and offers support in overcoming barriers and implementing new structures and working methods. It can thus accelerate the cloud transformation and ensure that employees are well prepared and have the necessary skills to successfully implement the company's cloud strategy.
Core tasks of CCoE
The specific tasks of a CCoE are diverse and can, in practice, differ significantly owing to the individual needs of a company.
Since the work areas of a CCoE are thus difficult to generalize, we present the core tasks here on the basis of a concrete CCoE that has already been introduced in this way in practice – the CCoE of the msg group.
The principle of the CCoE is also applied in the msg group and has been tailored precisely to the structures and special features of our group of companies.
As an internationally operating IT and consulting company with more than 10,000 employees in 31 countries, msg is not only user of cloud technologies itself, but also a provider of cloud products and services. The units of the msg group are organized on a decentralized basis, which has many advantages, but which also poses certain challenges: In order for everyone to work together towards common goals in a company-wide cloud transformation, close dovetailing across all units and the systematic creation and use of synergies are essential.
The CCoE of msg is thus organized as an internal, interdisciplinary (competence) team and has an inward-orientated function. This means that it does not appear on the market as a business unit and does not offer customers any direct services in its external appearance, but ultimately supports the company's market units in optimally serving the cloud needs of their respective customers. The following work areas are examples of how the msg group defines and applies the work areas of a CCoE for itself:
To empower employees to implement the company's cloud strategy, the CCoE develops training concepts and provides advanced training materials. The following applies here: It is usually more beneficial to use existing training courses instead of developing them from scratch. Hyperscaler materials, for example, are suitable for this purpose. Individual training courses are only created in special cases in which using an existing course is not suitable. In order to make the best use of the hyperscalers' training offerings, the CCoE consolidates the relevant information and makes it available to the workforce.
In addition, the CCoE supports the recruitment of new employees such as by co-designing job postings and selecting suitable recruiting channels in the cloud environment.
Technical support
The CCoE provides support for various technical issues, for example in the sales process, in customer projects or in the development of Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) offerings. These include:
- Reference architectures and best practices based on hyperscaler recommendations and accumulated experience
- Cloud migration consulting to determine the best migration and transformation approach for the respective application and then implement the migration
- Development support and consulting, both in the application of the reference architectures and in the implementation of the best practices
In addition, the CCoE also advises on topics and challenges where there are no general recommendations (yet) and provides support for specific technical problems.
Support for XaaS contracts and pricing models
The CCoE helps to determine suitable pricing models for XaaS offerings and to create contract models for these services. This is also done on the basis of templates and best practices.
Security and compliance governance
The CCoE sets central requirements for security and compliance and monitors their implementation. In addition, it advises on these topics and thus supports both the implementation of the central requirements and the fulfillment of industry-specific and customer-specific requirements that deviate from them. The CCoE is also responsible for evaluating cloud certifications and providing support in acquiring them.
Reporting
The CCoE centrally prepares the relevant cloud key figures for the entire group of companies and reports them in consolidated form to the executive board. The data for this are supplied by the individual business units. The CCoE's bundled reporting can ensure a holistic view of the status of the cloud transformation. The resulting transparency also creates a leverage effect in order to be able to constantly drive forward further necessary steps.
The CCoE manages the partnerships with hyperscalers and other strategic cloud partners. It coordinates the common strategy of the cooperation partners and promotes cooperation on projects.
It also monitors compliance with the agreed cooperation goals in order to achieve or maintain partner status.
However, even for a CCoE, nothing is as certain as change. Thus, the exemplary CCoE work area described, which is applied in the msg group, will also continue to develop in order to ultimately also support all msg market units in accompanying our customers in their cloud transformation in the best possible way.