Proposed Roadmap for Cloud Adoption

1. Chapter 8: Case Study based on the roadmap

1.1. Introduction

This chapter focuses on the case study done by a privately owned company based in India. They were willing to adopt cloud for their IT Department. The proposed roadmap is being tested for the process they followed for the cloud adoption. This was done to know the significance of the proposed steps to be followed using the existing SDLC in chapter 6.The feedback is given by the team who worked on the proposed roadmap. The names have been kept anonymous for the confidentiality issues.

1.2. Project background

The company who agreed to test the proposed system is a privately owned company with employee strength of 200-250 employees. The company deals in health care industry. The company is in a process of reshaping IT infrastructure and on its way of developing a cloud solution for the same.

The reason for adopting cloud is the benefit it gives. It includes performance appraisal, resource utilization and scalable processes. The company wants to utilize the existing employee IT skills and resources. The company intends to do it by collaborating with the cloud service provider and customizing the cloud solution. It also intends to follow the different steps of the process to make sure that the requirement is met.

1.3. Framework walkthrough

The roadmap is designed keeping in mind the challenges and best practices that are used while the cloud adoption of the project. It is believed that any project undertaking this roadmap with the highest score is more likely to succeed.

The efficiency of the roadmap is tested based on a questionnaire designed for the different levels of process. The company will follow the steps of SDLC designed and customized especially for cloud adoption process given in Chapter 6. The five individual steps will have different set of questions.

The IT manager will mark the question based on the importance of outcome by following the particular step in the entire process. Table 8.1 to 8.5 will represent the question for each stage. It will also contain the marks for each question. Table 8.6 will have the have the total marks for every stage based on the marking in table 8.1 to 8.5.

Each phase has certain question that needs to be marked on a scale of 1-5 where 1 is least favorable and 5 a strongly favorable response. Each question is given weights (0.0-1) that are basically decided by the project team based on the nature of the project.

The score for each question is then multiplied by weight given to it. The total of all the questions individual to each phase is done and then overall score adding the score of all the phases are done. The adding up of all the score adheres to the overall score of the project. The overall score represented how well the project adhered to the framework.

Table 8.2: The questionnaire for the analysis phase

Observation and comments for analysis phase:

• The successful implementation of the cloud adoption has made it a mandate step to do an intensive analysis and requirement gathering documentation. It is made a very necessary step as the process of cloud adoption is all in its early birth stages.
• The analysis phase requires the organization to closely analyze the future impact of cloud adoption on culture, politics, finances, procurement and in line work processes.

Table 8.2: The questionnaire for the planning phase

Observation and comments for planning phase:

• The use of standard tools and techniques based on organization’s standardizing tools for the planning phase was important. This helped to plan the right use of existing systems for the migration to cloud.
• The organizations benchmarks also helped to plan the performance standards for the systems that were moving on cloud. Based on the right planning it is also easy to chose appropriate cloud service provider.

Table 8.3: The questionnaire for the design phase

Observation and comments for design phase:

• This phase is majorly important in negotiating on the terms and conditions on the issues that were identified in the previous two phases that is analysis and planning. It is also realized that successes of design phase in entirely dependent on how efficiently the previous two phases are done.
• In other words design is basically a result of proper planning and analysis.

Table 8.4: The questionnaire for the implementation phase

Observation and comments for implementation phase:

• This is the phase where the actual movement of the application takes place to the cloud. This phase also deals with the end user participation and also the critical evaluation of the data involved.
• It was also found that the participation of the end users helps to address all the issues related to the new changes in the system. It helps to address the socio technical changes in the organization.

Table 8.5: The questionnaire for the maintenance phase

Observation and comments for maintenance phase:

• The phase basically makes sure the after implementation support that serves as a very critical indicator towards the success of cloud adoption.
• This phase is also important as this phase requires the team to address the best practices and also to document the lesson learned during the entire system development life cycle. This documentation serves as a building block for the future assignments.

Table 8.6: Project phase totals

It was observes that the analysis phase is the backbone of the entire project. It also serves as the building block of trust and understanding between the customer and the cloud vendor. The use of analysis phase as a part of SDLC was a positive point as the SDLC tool is familiar with mostly all the business managers. It also helps in selecting the appropriate infrastructure needed and the provider to provide them. The planning was observed as the most important and embarking step for the entire project. This is perceived as the most crucial step as this step interprets the result of analysis phase into the plan needed for design and then implementation phase. The design phase is successful only when the analysis and planning phase is done correctly. It is basically act as a result of the two previous phases. The implementation phase is the stage where all the issues are addressed related to social technical changes, resistance to change that occurs due to the result of the entire cloud adoption. The last step of the maintenance acts as an additional advantage as this step provides the user support and monitoring control. This also serves as the important indicator towards the take off of the project. It also helps to improve for next coming projects as these steps requires the team to do the lesson learnt documentation and revive of all the best practices that were followed.

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1.4. Conclusion

A walkthrough of a case study is presented in this chapter. It was basically an illustration of how the proposed roadmap can be used in a cloud adoption project. It illustrates that how this proposed framework that can be used for a project. The each phase had questions to be answered by the project team using the framework. The individual phase had total score and that adds to the overall score to the project. The overall score represented how well the project adhered to the framework.