Designing a Cloud

Strategy Document
Example Template
Attachment to G00376856

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Cloud Computing Strategy Template

This template should be customized based on your organization's business objectives and
requirements. The guidelines in this template include common and representative items identified in
a cloud strategy document for many organizations.

June 2019
Unless otherwise marked for external use, the items in this Gartner tool are for internal,
noncommercial use by the licensed Gartner client. The materials contained in this tool may not be
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information provided herein.
The instructions, intent and objective of this template are contained in the source document.
Please refer back to that document for details.

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Cloud Computing Strategy Document

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Cloud Computing
Strategy
Document Cloud Strategy Document Library

Library Cloud Strategy Document

Executive Summary

• Vision • Risks • Skills • Decision

• Objectives • Assessments • Organization • Governance
• Goals • Mitigation • Structure • Framework

Follow Up

Implementation Plan Policy Documents

Source: Gartner
ID: 376856

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 [ Insert a summary of all the important aspects that are expanded throughout the remainder of the cloud strategy
document. This is the section to share with the executive team and that captures the essence of your cloud strategy.

Executive Summary
The provided text is just an example, and it must be customized based on your business objectives and
requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on the scope of this section. ]

 This is our organization’s cloud strategy, which presents high-level approaches and methodologies that are agreed upon by stakeholders
 Our vision is to conduct the majority of our business via digital means by 2025, which requires a global, highly scalable, innovative and
elastic infrastructure and technology platform
 We believe cloud computing services are uniquely positioned to support our strategic technology requirements in future

Business Objectives Organizational Impact

 Adopt cloud services with a cloud-first approach for both new and  Need to acquire new skills
existing workloads
 Establish a cloud center of excellence led by a cloud architect to:
 Accelerate the decommissioning of existing data centers
 Become more agile and responsive to business demands by – Execute on this cloud strategy
lowering the time to market for new projects and prototypes – Establish governance policies and principles
 Enhance our ability to react to scalability requirements
 Establish a global technology footprint with lower needs for capital Decision Governance
investment  Existing application migration priority (risk, benefit, effort and
feasibility)
Risks
 Loss of control  Existing application migration strategy (rehost, revise, rearchitect,
rebuild or replace)
 Provider lock-in
 Inconsistent performance  Workload placement between public cloud providers and
remaining data centers
 Data loss
 We provide three mitigation strategies for each identified risk

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 [ Insert the information required to remind stakeholders why the business organization stands behind the
adoption of cloud services. In this section, you must outline the vision, the goals and the benefits sought
from the adoption of cloud technologies. The provided text is just an example, and it must be customized
based on your business objectives and requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on
the scope of this section. ]

Business Objectives

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Vision
 We will conduct more than 60% of our business via digital means by 2025 (up from 10% of today).

 To support this vision, our organization will require a global, highly scalable, innovative and elastic
infrastructure and technology platform.
 Our current IT cannot currently meet the agility and scalability that we expect to require in the near future.

 Adapting our current IT to support our future digital business needs has been vetted as anti-economical,
and it would require intense capital investments in a nonstrategic assets such as data centers.
 Conversely, we believe that public cloud computing services are uniquely positioned to support our future
strategic technology requirements. By nature, cloud computing services are global, scalable,
programmable and available on-demand, with no need to undertake long-term capital investments.

As a consequence, to support the business vision, our organization will adopt cloud computing
services according to the strategy outlined in this document.

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Goals and Benefits
 Increased ability to serve bursts in demand, even when
these exceed our provisioned capacity.
 Faster reactivity to the changes that occur within the
market and are outside our control.
 Faster time to market for new projects and prototypes.
 Improved customer satisfaction thanks to the
increased proximity to our clients and the ability to
conduct customer behavior analytics.
 Increased productivity by shifting our IT personnel
away from managing the data center toward higher-
value tasks.
 Ability to inspire and support new business initiatives
that would be impossible outside of the cloud model
(such as AI/ML, IoT and data analytics).
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 Ease of opening new presence in new regions of the
world with no need for capex, by leveraging the regional
investments made by cloud providers.
 Ability to achieve cost savings on infrastructure.
 Increased transparency on the costs of IT, projects and
applications and the ability to relate those to the
generated business value.
 Ability to profit from new technologies as they get
released from cloud providers, without having to wait for
the next release cycle.
 Improved availability for our applications, thanks to the
more reliable and secure architectures of cloud
providers.
 Enhanced ability to react to scalability requirements
without having to manage and forecast our capacity
requirements.
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Gartner Survey 2018: Reported Successful Outcomes of
Cloud
Sum

Improved efficiency 32%

10%
Increased data security 31% 11%
IT modernization 30% 11%
Cost savings 29% 11%
Improved productivity 28% 10%
Cost optimization 22%
7%
Increased agility and innovation 21% 8%
Enabled digital business strategy 20% 7%
Application and workload modernization 5% 19%
Data center consolidation 18%
6%
Grew the business 17% 6%
Business transformation elasticity 15%
5%
Increased transparency across the organization 3% 13%
None of the above 1%1%
0% 20% 40%
Percentage of Respondents

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Success Metrics
Goal Metric Success Value Completion Date

Ability to serve bursts in demand Bursting Hours per Month 100 Jun 2023

Faster reactivity Average Application Releases per Month 2 Dec 2022

Faster time to market Average Months from Idea to Working Prototype 4 Dec 2023

Improved customer satisfaction Customer Satisfaction Index >7.5 Sep 2022

Increased productivity Committed Lines of Code per Month >200,000 Dec 2024

New business initiatives Number of New Business Initiatives 3 Dec 2025

Presence in new regions Launched Points of Presence in New Countries 5 Dec 2025

Infrastructure cost savings USD 22% Dec 2025

Cost transparency Number of Workloads with Effective Cost Tracking 20 Jun 2023

Access to new technologies Number of New Technologies 10 Dec 2024

Improved application availability % of Annual Availability 1% Jun 2023

Time to Obtain New Infrastructure Capacity From the

Enhanced scalability 1 hour Jan 2024
Demand Trigger

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 [ Insert the list of risks, concerns and objections identified by stakeholders as you collaborate on this
strategy document. Explicitly acknowledge all risks and list multiple potential mitigation strategies for each
of them. The provided text is just an example, and it must be customized based on your business
objectives and requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on the scope of this
section . ]

Risk Assessment

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The Many Faces of Cloud Risk
The Many Faces of Cloud Risk

Performance

Availability Security

Trust Integration

Source: Gartner
ID: 376856

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Risk Assessment and Mitigation
Perceived Risk
Internal resistance to cloud adoption
Don’t possess the required skills
Don’t trust the cloud provider
Cloud providers may have outages that
we don’t control
Cloud providers may go out of
business or raise prices
We may not be able to guarantee
performance
We may experience data loss as we
don’t control our perimeter
We may overspend in the cloud as we
don’t have an upper capacity limit
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Mitigation Strategies
Seek executive sponsorship
Build training program to develop the
required skill set
Scrutinize compliance reports from
third-party auditors
Build decision frameworks to select the
cloud layer that gives you the required
level of control
Develop an exit strategy
Develop a hybrid IT strategy
Implement cloud security best practices Develop cloud data protection strategy
(such as microsegmentation and
security posture management)
Develop financial management
processes for public clouds
Trigger compelling event (such as
deadline for data center exit)
Seek the guiding hand of an
MSP/professional services organization
Build decision frameworks to select
trustworthy cloud provider
Design for failure: Implement IaaS high-
availability architectural best practices
that allow control of the application
failover
Develop a multicloud strategy
Purchase the appropriate configuration
option and service level
(such as encryption and anonymization)
Assign and enforce budget limits on a
per-workload basis
Manage cloud community program to
influence behavior and transform
internal culture
Seek research and advisory services
Check past provider performance and
availability metrics
Stipulate a cyberinsurance contract
Design for portability
Design for scalability
Build decision framework to select
cloud provider with an appropriate
data protection policy
Use cloud provider quotas to limit the
number of resources we can provision
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Cloud Service Risk Assessment Framework
Structure Develop and
Monitor for

Steps
Identify Business and Implement a
and Address
and Risk Context Perform the Mitigation
Change
Assessment Plan

 Conduct a  Leverage  Identify  Align Business

Enterprise Focus Business Impact Third-Party Gaps and Risks Needs and Use
Analysis Certifications/  Develop a  Support
 Identify Services
Mitigation Plan Mandated
Compliance  Conduct a
 Ensure Mitigation Requirements
Mandates Baseline
Execution  Track the Threat
 Align Existing IT Assessment Landscape
Expectations  Perform
Deep-Dive
Assessments

 Classify the Cloud  Identify Business  Mitigate Business  Track Evolving

Cloud Focus

Provider by and Cloud and Cloud Cloud Provider

Maturity Provider Provider Risks Capabilities
Responsibilities

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 [ Insert information on the impact of cloud services adoption on your organization. Acknowledge your
organization’s readiness state and outline your high-level plan on the organizational changes that will be
required to support the cloud strategy. The provided text is just an example and it must be customized
based on your business objectives and requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on
the scope of this section. ]

Organizational
Impact

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Gartner Survey 2018: Lack of Skills and Organizational Readiness
Among the Top Challenges of Cloud
Lack of Skills and Organizational Readiness Among the Top
Challenges of Cloud
Percentage of Respondents
Sum 3 top challenges of cloud 1st choice 3 top skill-related challenges of cloud

Risk that data will be lost/compromised 14% 36%

Regulatory compliance concerns 10% 28%

Lack of staff skills or training 7% 25%

Complexity 7% 21%

Setting up the cloud network 8% 20%

Lack of cloud migration tools and processes 6% 19%

Technology “learning curve” is too steep 6% 18%

Resistance from internal stakeholders/users 7% 18%

“Shadow” or “rogue” IT 5% 17%

More expensive than noncloud environments 5% 17%

Application rationalization 6% 16%

Understanding what cloud networking is 4% 14%

Wi-Fi/internet requirements too high 5% 14%

Poor governance 4% 13%

Lack of buy-in from C-level 5%

11%

None of the above 3% 3%

0% 20% 40%

Source: Gartner
ID: 376856
Organizational Transformation Plan
 Our organization must transform. Our current skill set, roles and organizational structures are not fit-for-
purpose for the cloud computing model
 Cloud services require a higher level of autonomy and self-service for end users than what we provide
today in our highly-centralized IT model
 Cloud services require the governance of a number of configuration options that is at least two order of
magnitude larger than what we are governing today including the choice of deployment environment

Structure and Roles Changes Main Processes Changes

 Appoint a cloud architect  Procurement
 Establish a cloud center of excellence (CCoE)
 Operations
 Shift from domain-focused to cloud engineers
 Resource provisioning
 Transform IT into a broker of cloud services
 Budgeting and forecasting
 Prepare to scale our DevOps practice
 [ Insert additional organizational changes to  [ Insert additional organizational changes to existing
structures or roles. ] processes. ]

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Cloud Adoption Organizational Structure

IT Broker Function

Service Director Governance

Business
Portal/
User Relationship
Manager Service Offering Expense Service Desk
Owner(s) Management

Security Finance/ Provider/

Internal IT Procurement
Business Relationships Liaison
Risk Legal Sourcing
Compliance Functions Relationships

Technical
Cross-Silo Cross-Silo Automation
Architecture Engineer DevOps

Cloud
Architect

Cloud Cloud Cloud

Network Identity Security

Cloud Cloud Cloud

Database Storage Migration

Cloud Center of Excellence

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Cloud Provider Certifications
Number of Certified
Cloud Provider Certification Program
Professionals
Amazon Web Services Cloud Practitioner 40
Amazon Web Services Developer 15
Amazon Web Services Solution Architect 7
Amazon Web Services SysOps Administrator 5
Amazon Web Services DevOps Engineer 5
Amazon Web Services Security 3
Amazon Web Services Advanced Networking 2
Microsoft Microsoft Certified Solution Associate: Office 365 5
Microsoft Azure Azure Administrator Associate 5
Microsoft Azure Security Administrator Associate 3
Microsoft Azure Azure Solution Architect Expert 7
Microsoft Azure Azure Developer Associate 15
Salesforce Administrator 5
Salesforce Advanced Administrator 2

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 [ Insert information on the initial core decisions that will set a direction to your overall cloud journey. List
five to 10 key decisions and the high-level principles that will regulate them as you move to the
implementation. The provided text is just an example, and it must be customized based on your business
objectives and requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on the scope of this section. ]

Decision Governance

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Key Cloud Adoption Decisions
Area Decision Question

Cloud-first Will we adopt a cloud-first policy?

Application assessment How do we assess our existing applications against cloud migration?

Application migration strategy Which migration strategy will we adopt?

Cloud tiers How do we decide between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS?

Cloud providers How do we select a cloud provider?

Multicloud Will we pursue a multicloud strategy from the start?

Hybrid IT How do we integrate our on-premises data center?

Workload placement How do we select the best environment for net new workloads?

[ Insert Decision Topic ] [ Insert Additional Decision Question ]

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Cloud Migration Strategies for Applications

Rebuild

Rearchitect
Effort

Revise
Replace

Rehost

Benefits from Cloud-Native Principles

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Levels of Integration
Levels of Integration

Cost Monitoring/ Intelligent Security Capacity

Management
Control Reporting Placement Governance Management

Applications API, Application Stretched Data

and Data Service Bus Integration Database Integration

Cloud/ Cross-Silo VM Container Workload

Virtualization Orchestration Mobility Mobility Bursting

Network Identity/ Backup and Storage Colocated

Infrastructure
Connectivity Access DR Gateways Storage

Source: Gartner
ID: 376856

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Workload Placement Decision Framework

All Application Info.

Application Enumeration and Prioritization

Go
SaaS

PaaS
No Risk/Business
Retire? Impact Go/No Go?
Assessment
IaaS

Yes
Hosting
(Incl. Private Cloud)

No Go
Yes

Colocation

Stay No
Stop Stop Cost Analysis
On-Prem.

Migrate

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 [ Insert information on the activities that will follow the approval of the cloud strategy document.
Specifically, list the additional documents that you intend to draft and briefly summarize their scope. The
provided text is just an example, and it must be customized based on your business objectives and
requirements. Refer to the source document for more details on the scope of this section. ]

Follow-Up

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Solution Path for Implementing a Public Cloud Adoption
Framework

3. Architect 5. Achieve
1. Develop 2. Build Cloud 4. Enable
and Mitigate Operational
Strategy Foundations Governance
Risks Excellence

Develop Cloud Select Cloud Design for Develop Automate and

Skill Sets Providers Multicloud Governance Orchestrate
Methodologies Workloads

Create Adopt Architect for Develop Monitor and

Application Native Availability Self-Service Optimize
Assessment Tooling and Strategy Consumption
Methodology Performance

Develop Integrate Core Architect Create Implement

Business Case, Infrastructure Security Financial Multicloud
and Document Best Management Management
Strategy Practices Processes Tools

Source: Gartner
ID: 376856

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 Appendix

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 [ Insert definitions of the key terms used throughout the cloud strategy document. Make sure to provide
definition at least for major cloud-related terms. You can use the Gartner-provided text but do not hesitate
to customize it and contextualize the definitions to your specific organization. The purpose is not to create
a perfect academic set of definitions but to achieve internal alignment on what cloud computing and
related terms mean within your organization. ]

Cloud Defined

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Cloud Computing Framework

Self-
Service

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Cloud Computing Definition
A style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as
a service using internet technologies.
1. Service-Based
Consumer concerns are abstracted from
provider concerns through service interfaces
that are well-defined. The interfaces hide the
implementation details and enable a
completely automated response by the
provider of the service to the consumer of the
service. In addition, the service could be
considered “ready-to-use” or “off the shelf”
because the service is designed to serve the
specific needs of a set of consumers, and the
technologies are tailored to that need rather
than the service being tailored to how the
technology works. The articulation of the
service feature is based on service levels and
IT outcomes (availability, response time,
performance versus price, and clear and
predefined operational processes), rather than
technology and its capabilities. In other words,
what the service needs to do is more important
than how the technologies are used to
implement the solution.
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2. Scalable and Elastic
The service can scale capacity up or down as
the consumer demands at the speed of full
automation (which may be seconds for some
services and hours for others). Elasticity is a
trait of shared pools of resources. Scalability is
a feature of the underlying infrastructure and
software platforms. Elasticity is associated with
not only scale but also an economic model that
enables scaling in both directions in an
automated fashion. This means that services
scale on-demand to add or remove resources
as needed.
3. Shared
Services share a pool of resources to build
economies of scale. IT resources are used
with maximum efficiency. The underlying
infrastructure, software or platforms are shared
among the consumers of the service (usually
unknown to the consumers). This enables
unused resources to serve multiple needs for
multiple consumers, all working at the same
time.
4. Uses Internet
Technologies
The service is delivered using Internet
identifiers, formats and protocols, such as
URLs, HTTP, IP and representational state
transfer web-oriented architecture.
5. Metered by Use
Services are tracked with usage metrics to
enable multiple payment models. The service
provider has a usage accounting model for
measuring the use of the services, which could
then be used to create different pricing plans
and models. These may include pay-as-you-go
plans, subscriptions, fixed plans and even free
plans. The implied payment plans will be
based on usage, not on the cost of the
equipment. These plans are based on the
amount of the service used by the consumers,
which may be in terms of hours, data transfers
or other use-based attributes delivered.
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Cloud Computing Tiers
Infrastructure as a Service
IaaS is a standardized, highly
automated offering in which computing
resources owned by a service provider,
complemented by storage and
networking capabilities, are offered to
customers on demand. Resources are
scalable and elastic in near real time
and metered by use. Self-service
interfaces, including an API and a
graphical user interface (GUI), are
exposed directly to customers.
Resources may be single-tenant or
multitenant, and are hosted by the
service provider or on-premises in a
customer’s data center. Examples of
IaaS offerings include Amazon Web
Services, Microsoft Azure and Google
Cloud Platform.
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Software as a Service
Software that is owned, delivered and
managed remotely by one or more
providers. The provider delivers
software based on one set of common
code and data definitions that is
consumed in a one-to-many model by
all contracted customers at any time
on a pay-for-use basis or as a
subscription based on use metrics.
Examples of SaaS offerings include
Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce and
Workday.
Platform as a Service
A PaaS, usually depicted in all-cloud
diagrams between the SaaS layer
above it and the IaaS layer below, is a
broad collection of application
infrastructure (middleware) services
(including application platform,
integration, business process
management and database services).
However, the hype surrounding the
PaaS concept is focused mainly on
application PaaS (aPaaS) as the
representative of the whole category.
In reality, there are 22 categories of
PaaS recognized by Gartner.
Examples of PaaS offerings include
Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Heroku,
OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
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Cloud Computing Deployment Models

Public Cloud Computing Private Cloud Computing

A style of computing where scalable and elastic Private cloud computing is a form of cloud computing that is used by
IT-enabled capabilities are provided as a service only one organization, or that ensures that an organization is
to external customers using internet completely isolated from others.
technologies. Public cloud computing uses cloud
computing technologies to support customers
that are external to the provider’s organization.
Hybrid Cloud Computing
Using public cloud services generates the types
Hybrid cloud computing refers to policy-based and coordinated
of economies of scale and sharing of resources
service provisioning, use and management across a mixture of
that can reduce costs and increase choices of
internal and external cloud services.
technologies. From a government organization’s
perspective, using public cloud services implies
that any organization (in any industry sector and Multicloud Computing
jurisdiction) can use the same services (e.g.,
infrastructure, platform or software), without Multicloud computing refers to the use of cloud services from multiple
guarantees about where data would be located public cloud providers for the same purpose. It is a special form of
and stored. hybrid cloud computing.

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Cloud Computing Strategy Document

— END OF DOCUMENT —

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