Peeling the Onion

Post date: Jun 25, 2017 7:7:16 PM

As I eluded to in my earlier post “Teaching an old dog new tricks,” developing a cloud strategy for an existing enterprise is a bit like peeling an onion. There are many layers to work through, each getting progressively more complex (sophisticated) as you work toward the center.

Crawford is a well-oiled machine after 76 years in business. They are a truly global enterprise with operations on nearly every continent (no Antarctica yet). For an organization like this, starting the journey can be a daunting task. Where to begin? I am not sure there is a “right” answer. Let me share a high level view of how I am approaching it - for the sake of clarity, much of this is running in parallel:

• Gather Data (see Teaching an old dog new tricks)

• Analysis / Assessment

  • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

    • Inventory

    • Economics

    • Non-economic value factors

  • Business Case

• Tactics

  • Identify POC’s

  • Experiment

• People plan

  • Cloud evangelism

  • Skills assessment

  • Education

    • Leadership

    • Engineers

  • Strategy

  • Guiding principles

  • Top down vs bottom up

  • Partner strategy

• Implement

• Review, adjust, repeat

To mix metaphors for a moment – while its helpful to have a global vision, you don’t need to boil the oceans and solve for every eventuality all at once. The reason I mentioned peeling an onion is that I believe this process will be iterative and many steps will continue to repeat as our journey progresses from one layer to the next. A cloud strategy should be a living plan that evolves with the business needs, and incorporates new technology and capabilities where appropriate. Don’t expect a great epiphany where it all becomes clear. The most important step on your journey is the first one. Start where you can and go from there.

In the coming weeks I hope to visit each of the bulleted items outlined above in more detail. Please stay tuned and as always – please provide feedback or ask questions.