In today’s digital landscape, businesses of all sizes are increasingly leveraging the public cloud to drive innovation, scale operations, and reduce costs. However, simply migrating to the cloud isn’t enough to unlock its full potential. To truly harness the transformative power of the cloud, organizations must adopt an effective cloud operating model. This framework defines how cloud resources are managed, consumed, and optimized across the organization.
A lot of my work the past year has been in support of improving our organization’s cloud operating model. We’ve redefined processes. We’ve introduced new tools. We’ve upskilled our resources. We’ve made a lot of progress, and there’s still a lot more work to be done to this end.
Here’s why the cloud operating model is one of the most important components for a well-run operation utilizing the public cloud.
Alignment with Business Objectives
An effective cloud operating model ensures that cloud initiatives align with broader business goals. Without this alignment, organizations risk deploying cloud solutions that don’t deliver measurable value. By defining governance, roles, and responsibilities within the operating model, businesses can prioritize projects that drive growth, improve customer experiences, and support strategic objectives.
For example, a retailer leveraging the public cloud for e-commerce scalability needs to ensure that its cloud strategy prioritizes uptime, performance, and security. The operating model serves as a blueprint to align cloud capabilities with these business-critical priorities.
In our own operation, we’ve started to implement more rigor around understanding the objectives of an initiative before starting work. This has helped to avoid POC’s that tie up resources with no clear end goals.
Operational Efficiency
The cloud introduces complexities that traditional IT models are not equipped to handle. These include managing distributed architectures, dynamic scaling, and consumption-based billing. A cloud operating model provides a structured approach to address these challenges, enabling organizations to:
- Automate routine tasks such as provisioning and monitoring.
- Standardize processes for deploying and managing workloads.
- Optimize resource utilization to avoid overprovisioning and unnecessary costs.
By focusing on efficiency, organizations can reduce operational overhead and free up resources for strategic initiatives.
We’ve recently stood up Terraform Enterprise, a robust Infrastructure as Code (IaC) platform, that enables our application teams to develop, deploy and support their own infrastructure. By reducing their reliance on our centralized Cloud Engineering team, both groups will be able to operate more efficiently.
Enhanced Security and Compliance
Public cloud environments are often subject to strict regulatory and security requirements. A robust cloud operating model incorporates best practices for identity and access management, data protection, and compliance monitoring. It defines policies and tools that ensure security is built into every layer of the cloud infrastructure.
For instance, organizations can use the operating model to implement a “secure-by-design” approach, where security controls are integrated into the development and deployment pipelines. This proactive stance not only reduces the risk of breaches but also streamlines compliance with industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or ISO 27001.
We’ve implemented policy as code and other security guardrails at multiple layers in our public cloud. This includes integration in our previously mentioned Terraform platform, as well as in code pipelines and even built into our Kubernetes platform (EKS). By building this into the processes, security standards are configured automatically into the deployment.
Agility and Innovation
One of the most compelling advantages of the cloud is its ability to enable rapid innovation. An effective operating model facilitates this by:
- Encouraging the adoption of agile development practices.
- Providing frameworks for experimenting with new technologies and services.
- Reducing the time to market for new products and features.
For example, a financial services company might use its cloud operating model to streamline the deployment of AI-driven analytics tools, enabling faster insights and improved decision-making. By fostering an environment of agility, the cloud operating model helps organizations stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
Cost Optimization
The pay-as-you-go nature of the public cloud can lead to cost overruns if not managed properly. A well-defined operating model provides mechanisms for continuous cost monitoring and optimization. Key practices include:
- Implementing tagging strategies to track resource usage.
- Establishing budgets and alerts for cloud spending.
- Leveraging reserved instances or savings plans for predictable workloads.
By embedding cost management into the operating model, organizations can maximize the financial benefits of the cloud while minimizing waste.
Scalability and Resilience
As businesses grow, their cloud infrastructure must scale seamlessly to meet increasing demands. At the same time, resilience against failures and disruptions is crucial. The cloud operating model addresses these needs by defining strategies for:
- Auto-scaling resources based on workload demands.
- Implementing disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
- Ensuring high availability through multi-region deployments.
These capabilities allow organizations to maintain performance and reliability, even during periods of rapid growth or unexpected challenges.
One of the biggest advantages of public cloud platforms like AWS and Azure are their multi-availability zone and multi-regional capabilities. Applications should utilize these capabilities to reduce RTO in disaster recovery, and to increase their high availability.
Cultural Transformation
This is probably the hardest part of any cloud operating model development. The shift to the cloud is not just a technological change; it’s a cultural one. It involves changing people’s mindsets about who is responsible for the underlying infrastructure, and what the shared responsibility model is.
Developing and further enhancing an organization’s cloud operating model requires a vision. It requires leadership. It needs to have people in place that can help drive change.
A successful cloud operating model fosters a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and accountability. It encourages cross-functional teams to work together, breaking down silos between development, operations, and security teams.
For example, adopting DevOps practices as part of the operating model can accelerate software delivery while improving quality. Similarly, promoting a culture of shared responsibility for security ensures that every team member contributes to maintaining a secure cloud environment.
Governance and Accountability
Effective governance is critical to maintaining control over cloud environments. The cloud operating model defines the frameworks and policies needed to:
- Enforce consistent standards across teams and projects.
- Monitor and report on compliance with internal and external requirements.
- Assign accountability for managing and securing cloud resources.
For example, establishing a cloud center of excellence (CCoE) within the operating model can provide centralized oversight while empowering teams to innovate within defined boundaries.
One thing that’s important to share here is that organizations need to make sure that their governance and accountability doesn’t become an impediment to efficient development. They should be the guardrails that allow teams to move quicker on the track, not speed bumps that slow everything down..
It’s All About Continuous Improvement
The cloud landscape evolves rapidly, with new services, features, and best practices emerging regularly. A dynamic operating model incorporates mechanisms for continuous improvement, ensuring that organizations remain at the forefront of innovation.
The public cloud offers unparalleled opportunities for businesses to innovate, scale, and optimize operations. However, these benefits can only be realized with a well-defined cloud operating model.By embracing continuous improvement, organizations can adapt to changing conditions and maintain a competitive edge.
Organizations that invest in developing and refining their cloud operating models position themselves for long-term success. They not only maximize the value of their cloud investments but also build the resilience and agility needed to thrive in an increasingly digital world.