Cloud Computing Recipe: 1 Part Tech, 9 Parts Process

Bob Deutsche joined Intel in 2004 and has more than 25 years of business and IT experience in positions that ranged from data center operations to software development to CIO. He can be found online at Bob Deutsche on the Intel Server Room.

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I recently participated in a meeting of Intel’s Enterprise Board of Advisors (EBOA) Data Center Working Group. During the call, one of the members—from a very large, multi-national company headquartered in Europe—mentioned that in their experience, cloud is more a change in process than a change in technology.

That made me think of our third fundamental truth of cloud computing strategy (and the one we’re discussing today):

Your cloud ecosystem is only as robust and adaptable as the sum of its parts.

If a stranger asked you to describe your business from end to end in 30 seconds, what would you say? You might describe it in terms of its enterprise architecture (EA), which can be a good way to understand your company as a series of connected parts.

According to Wikipedia, EA is “a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components, the externally visible properties of these components, and the relationships between them. This description is comprehensive, including enterprise goals, business processes, roles, organizational structures, and organizational behaviors.”

Although there are variations used to describe the components of EA, I prefer to use those included in a framework known as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), which includes four related but distinct architectural components. Here’s how we describe them at Intel:

The robustness of an EA framework— by default, any activity such as cloud that requires use of these architectural components — is determined by an organization’s ability to use it. The robustness of your EA is generally measured as a factor of maturity. In mature organizations (defined on a 0 to 5 scale), the EA framework is a key component of success that links the value of the IT organization to the objectives of the enterprise. In practice though, your EA maturity can (like the attractiveness of your own reflection in the mirror) be hard to measure objectively.

The Innovation Value Institute’s (IVI) IT-Capability Maturity Framework for Enterprise Architecture Management suggests that to build an effective EA, you must be able to measure the maturity of people, planning, and practices. Maturity is measured against things like framework, process, value, governance, planning, organizational structure, skill sets, and communications.

Success Depends on EA Maturity

So, in terms of expectations for cloud execution in your organization (and with the caution that I consider mission-critical applications when I say this), your success, and likely your return on investment (ROI), are very much linked to the maturity of your EA. If you’re a somewhat immature organization, your cloud framework will likely reflect elements of this immaturity.

This is a topic on which I’m very interested in getting some feedback. I’d specifically welcome any examples from your own company, or other companies you’ve worked with that can either support or crush my ideas.

Finally, here’s our complete list of the inviolable, fundamental truths of corporate cloud strategy:

In the future, I’ll continue to detail these fundamental truths. As always, please join in the discussion on today’s topic or anything I’ve said in my previous posts.

For more information and any questions please feel free to contact me on LinkedIn.

For more background, see Bob's previous posts:

Fundamental Truths of Enterprise Cloud Strategy
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Pickett's Charge, Cloud Strategy and You

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