Professional Services

Cloud Readiness Assessment

The Cloud Readiness Assessment is part of our Planning Phase of our Service Methodology. It is based on the information discovered in our Cloud Opportunity Assessment or similar information obtained by another means. The primary function of the Cloud Readiness Assessment is to match determine exactly what needs to be done to move the selected workloads to the Cloud and develop a detailed project plan to accomplish that. The Cloud Readiness assessment provides a thorough review of your existing IT environment as it pertains to the desired Cloud service model (i.e., IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) in order to produce a prioritized future state roadmap. Within the context of the roadmap, detailed plans are produced for each identified service to be implemented.

The exact length of a particular Cloud Readiness Assessment depends on the complexity of the environment and the information available from an Opportunity Assessment or other sources. Typically a Cloud Readiness Assessment requires two or three weeks on site plus time spent remotely analyzing the results and preparing the final report.

Objectives

The Cloud Readiness Assessment is a consulting engagement that assists you in examining probable workloads that are candidates for deployment as Cloud services and provides specific planning to facilitate the transformation to the Cloud during the implementation phase.

The objectives of the Cloud Readiness Assessment consulting project are:

• Incorporate existing IT management policies/procedures, security policies and disaster recovery, archive and backup requirements into your implementation.
• Prioritize the implementation of the selected workloads and map workload-specific requirements to potential Cloud Service Provider offerings.
• Identify the impact on existing IT services.
• Map new Cloud services within the context of a future state model based on best practices and analysis of your selected workloads aligned with your business strategy.
• Identify/review Cloud Service Providers to satisfy service requirements.
• Conduct a financial review of comparable IT services.
• Create project-specific plans for approved workloads and Cloud services. These plans include:
• Transition into the Cloud without interruption to your business.
• Matching security requirements.
• Matching performance and uptime SLAs.
• Transition back from the Cloud.

Pre-visit Items

Prior to the actual on-site visit, Purposeful Clouds collects any existing information. This could be the Cloud Opportunity Assessment Report from a Cloud Opportunity Assessment, or equivalent information collected by other means. If this information is not already available, that will significantly impact the required length of the Readiness Assessment engagement.

We also hold a Kick-off Call to establish the roles and responsibilities, logistics, schedules and high-level goals for the on-stie visit.

During the on-site visit

The on-site session usually starts with:

• A short presentation of your major goals and issues, and your criteria for calling a Cloud engagement a success.
• A review of the initial workloads currently targeted to move to the Cloud first, concentrating on the requirements for security, performance and availability for each workload.
• A short explanation of how we intend to proceed with the data collection.
• A scheduling conversation to get the information necessary to satisfy the Objectives listed above based on availability of your personnel.

The majority of the on-site visit is spent in small groups capturing the required information. Each mid-afternoon we have a quick review of what has been covered, what needs to be covered, and list any data collection issues so they can get addressed.

Post-visit

After the on-site visit, we analyze the information provided and prepare the deliverables. We may have a few specific questions which we will ask via a scheduled conference call.

Deliverables

Cloud Readiness Assessment Executive Summary

This brief executive-level report covers the scope, approach, high-level findings and recommendations identified during the Assessment Service for the benefit of your senior management.

Cloud Readiness Assessment Report

This comprehensive report has detail from the Assessment Service including:

• Summary of key findings and strategic approach to the Cloud
• Future state architecture
• Short-term Cloud implementation priorities and dependencies
• Detailed project plans for each identified workload to be implemented
• Implementation schedule and dependencies
• Financial analysis of identified workloads
• A maintenance and support strategy
• Cloud adoption and operational impact
• Rollout strategy
• Rollback strategy in case it is necessary at some point to move off of the selected Cloud Service Provider(s)

Summary Presentation

We deliver a summary presentation highlighting the findings of the Assessment Service in a 1-2 hour on-line meeting usually about two weeks after the on-site visit.

Next Steps

An essential and usual next step after a Cloud Readiness Assessment is to actually implement the Cloud migration according to the project plan. We can yelp with Cloud Implementation Services as necessary to supplement your own staff. If appropriate, we may additionally recommend a training program tailored to your specific needs from the Purposeful Clouds Academy.

Downloads

• Sample Cloud Readiness Assessment Report
• Cloud Readiness Assessment Service Data Sheet