We often hear from organizations that are trying to mature their cloud practice and are wondering if a cloud center of excellence (CCoE) is necessary. This is not a straight-forward yes-or-no question. In very general terms, yes – a CCoE can help your business in several ways by:

• Aligning your cloud strategy with your business goals and objectives,
• Establishing best practices and standards for the use of cloud services within your organization,
• Educating and training your employees on the use of cloud technologies and services,
• Facilitating the adoption of cloud technologies and services throughout your organization,
• Monitoring and optimizing the use of cloud resources to ensure cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency.

However, whether or not to implement a CCoE is a decision that depends on a number of factors, including the size of your organization, the complexity of your organization, and where your organization is in its cloud journey.

We advise our clients to begin their evaluation by considering the following factors:

• Cloud adoption: Organizations that have already migrated to the cloud or are planning to migrate to the cloud in the near future may find that a CCoE accelerates their journey and maturity, helping to ensure that their cloud initiatives and efforts support the achievement of target business outcomes.
• Complexity: Organizations with complex cloud environments, such as those with multiple teams and stakeholders using different cloud technologies and services, will find that a CCoE can help ensure enterprise-wide alignment and coordination.
• Size: For organizations with a large and significant number of employees using cloud technologies and services, a CCoE can help ensure that cloud use is consistent with organization policies and procedures.
• Expertise: Organizations that lack expertise in cloud technologies and services can leverage a CCoE to build expertise and provide guidance and support to employees using cloud technologies and services.

Ultimately, the decision to implement a CCoE should be based on the specific needs and goals of your organization. If your organization is looking for opportunity to improve alignment, efficiency and effectiveness of cloud initiatives, then a CCoE is worth considering.

It can also help to have an expert like VIAcode assist you in this process. We have partnered with businesses around the world to help them assess their needs and, as we’ll cover in another post, overcome the challenges of implementing a CCoE, in particular helping organizations address a lack of cloud expertise, bandwidth and tools.

In an upcoming post, we will address the challenges and best practices for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence. If you have already evaluated your own needs, and want some practical advice for implementing a CCoE, check out “A Practical Game Plan for Building An Azure Cloud Center of Excellence.“