The Cloud Maturity Model and Its Role in Strategic IT Development

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by William Dupley

In this blog, part of our Hybrid IT Hacks series, we’re diving deeper into cloud maturity models. Over this blog and the next, we’ll take a special look at how the Open Data Center Alliance’s cloud maturity model can help businesses and organizations identify what transformations are needed most in their IT departments. As we discussed in our last blog, changes to your IT’s capacity and function should always be guided by business objectives. This ensures that your new IT is solving real problems for your business, giving you the best return on investment. Many IT departments still operate in silos, lacking the understanding that IT is a participating branch within a broader strategic plan.

It’s helpful to begin with a definition of a cloud maturity model, which we define at ODCA as an IT model that helps organizations answer the question “what does our journey to cloud and hybrid IT look like?” An effective model will encourage businesses to not only analyze their current technological landscape, but to also plan how to implement new technologies.

Ultimately, the most important thing for IT decision-makers in businesses to understand is that transforming your technology, especially to a hybrid IT operating model, will have far-reaching impacts, right down to the very foundation of your business model.  Because of this, IT professionals must be on the lookout for IT models that have become out of date. No matter what kind of maturity model your organization is relying on, your team must ensure that the metrics and models you use reflect the needs, timelines, and objectives of your organization.

 

Cloud Maturity Model: the Implementation View

In our September blog, we established that IT transformation can be examined from four perspectives, as seen in the graphic above: a business, functional, technical, or implementation view. A cloud maturity model comes into play in the implementation view, and many organizations encounter problems and roadblocks when they begin using one. 

The problems many organizations run into when using a cloud maturity model usually fall into one of the following categories:

  1. Enterprises often overestimate the maturity of their IT departments and the models they use.
  2. Enterprises often overestimate the technological capabilities they need, setting extremely high goals for cloud adoption that aren’t necessarily based on solving business challenges.
  3. Existing maturity models are often too narrow, focusing on a specific category of technology rather than taking a holistic view of the entire IT operating model.

At the ODCA, we endeavoured to eliminate these problems as we developed a new version of the cloud maturity model. In our next blog, we’ll analyze our fixes to develop a clearer picture of what a functional cloud maturity model looks like, and how it can be used! Stay tuned for more insights on the most effective ways to adopt new technologies and cloud capabilities that make sense for your business. 

Download a copy of the ODCA cloud maturity model usage manual today to review the analysis tools. It will provide you with provide a detailed description of how to use the ODCA Cloud Maturity Model assessment tool to conduct your Hybrid IT maturity assessment! 

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About the Author

Bill Dupley is a Digital Strategist at FoxNet. He has led IT transformation and strategic planning teams for over 50 companies and governments worldwide and bring extensive experience in IT & Business Strategic Planning, IT process design, and enterprise architecture. Bill has held several positions over his career including the Cloud Chief Technologist for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Canada and Director of Strategy and Business Development for HPE Canada Consulting.

He is a graduate of Ryerson University, a former member of the HPE IT Global SWAT Team, and a member of the Open Data Center Alliance Cloud Maturity Model authorship team. He is dedicated to helping customers equip themselves rapidly for our ever-changing technological world.