Cloud Landing Zone (Microsoft Azure)
Initial situation:
Our customer had been using the Microsoft Azure Cloud intensively since 2015. Like many companies, our customer didn't know much about the cloud at the time - and basically "reinvented" the existing data center in the cloud. As a result, various PaaS services could not be used (and if they were allowed, there was no connection to the internal resources). In order to take full advantage of the cloud, including secure and efficient management, the entire set-up of the landing zones had to be rethought and rebuilt.
As soon as the new landing zone was set up, all applications should be moved/migrated from the old landing zone to the new one.
Our approach:
For budget reasons, qedcon only provided two employees for this project, one of whom acted as product owner, project manager and SCRUM master and one as rollout manager (responsible for migrating the applications to the new landing zone). Thanks to our dedicated efforts, we were able to successfully implement the project with just two employees.
Right from the start, we made sure to involve all relevant stakeholders, application architects and IT security in the project (instead of just asking for the requirements) and to report to the management via the steering committee. The entire IT organization was also kept up to date with monthly updates. Overall, we worked with the greatest possible transparency in order not to operate in secret, but to involve all cloud enthusiasts and ensure maximum support and acceptance for the project.
Challenges and dependencies:
Various global teams had already tried to set up a "new" cloud landing zone several times in the past, but failed for various reasons. They all had one thing in common: a lack of communication with management, a lack of stakeholder support and a clear explanation of objectives and functions to key users and IT architects. For a global company, certain things need to be centralized in the cloud (especially in a regulated environment such as the financial industry in which our client operates), which regularly led to a lack of understanding, discussions and often rejection of these functions.
Implementation:
As with many of our projects, we were able to successfully manage this one using the SCRUM methodology and increase the team's performance. Once the landing zone was in a state that allowed the migration of applications from the legacy landing zone, our proven rollout framework helped to execute the migrations and complete them on time. We used Azure DevOps to manage, track and report (via PowerBi) on the status of the migrations and ensure that all stakeholders involved were adequately informed.
Conclusion:
Cloud projects are a challenge, especially because there are significantly more stakeholders to consider compared to on-prem infrastructure projects, which requires sophisticated stakeholder management combined with in-depth technical understanding and knowledge in order to coordinate, convince and ultimately succeed. Our experience in the areas of rollout, transformation, project and infrastructure management were decisive success factors for this challenging project.
