Cloud governance guides
The guides in this section illustrate the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) model's incremental approach, based on the Govern methodology previously described. You can establish an agile approach to cloud governance that will grow to meet the needs of any cloud governance scenario.
Review and adopt cloud governance best practices
Choose a governance guide below to begin your cloud adoption journey. Each guide outlines a set of best practices based on a set of fictional customer experiences.
Note
If you are unsure which guide you should follow, continue on to the next section of this article. It compares the differences between the two guides, and its examples will help you determine which guide fits your scenario.
- Standard governance guide: A guide based on the recommended two-subscription model, designed for deployments in multiple regions but not spanning public and sovereign/government clouds. The standard governance guide is appropriate for most organizations.
- Governance guide for complex enterprises: A guide for enterprises that are managed by multiple independent IT business units or span public and sovereign/government clouds.
Choose a governance guide
The cloud governance guides demonstrate how to implement a governance MVP. From there, each guide shows how the cloud governance team can partner with the cloud adoption teams to accelerate adoption efforts. The CAF governance model guides the application of governance from foundation through subsequent improvements and evolutions.
To begin a governance journey, choose between the two scenarios in the tables. These tables outline the differences between the standard organization scenario and the complex enterprise scenario. The option titles indicate the complexity of the enterprise. The option descriptions are based on synthesized customer experiences.
Warning
If your decision is more complex, a more robust governance starting point might be required. In such cases, consider the CAF enterprise-scale landing zone. This approach focuses on adoption teams who have a mid-term objective (within 24 months) to host more than 1,000 assets (infrastructure, apps, or data) in the cloud. The CAF enterprise-scale landing zone is the typical choice for complex governance scenarios in large cloud adoption efforts.
Note
It's unlikely that either guide will align entirely with your situation. Choose whichever guide is closest and use it as a starting point. Throughout the guide, you'll find additional information to help you customize decisions to meet specific criteria.
Business characteristics
| Characteristic | Standard organization | Complex enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Geography (country or geopolitical region) | The staff or customers reside largely in one geography. | The staff or customers reside in multiple geographies or require sovereign clouds. |
| Business units affected | Business units that share a common IT infrastructure | Multiple business units that don't share a common IT infrastructure. |
| IT budget | Single IT budget | Budget allocated across business units and currencies. |
| IT investments | Capital expense-driven investments are planned yearly and usually cover only basic maintenance. | Capital expense-driven investments are planned yearly and often include maintenance and a refresh cycle of three to five years. |
Current state before adopting cloud governance
| State | Standard enterprise | Complex enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Datacenter or third-party hosting providers | Fewer than five datacenters | More than five datacenters |
| Networking | No WAN, or 1 – 2 WAN providers | Complex network or global WAN |
| Identity | Single forest, single domain. | Complex, multiple forests, multiple domains. |
Desired future state after incremental improvement of cloud governance
| State | Standard organization | Complex enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Cost Management: cloud accounting | Showback model. Billing is centralized through IT. | Chargeback model. Billing could be distributed through IT procurement. |
| Security Baseline: protected data | Company financial data and IP. Limited customer data. No third-party compliance requirements. | Multiple collections of customers' financial and personal data. Might need to consider third-party compliance. |
CAF enterprise-scale landing zone
The CAF enterprise-scale landing zone approach makes the most of the Azure cloud platform's capabilities while respecting each enterprise's security and governance requirements.
The Azure cloud platform gives workload development teams and their business sponsors increased deployment agility over on-premises environments. As your cloud adoption efforts expand to include mission-critical data and workloads, this agility can conflict with corporate security and policy compliance requirements established by your IT teams. This is especially true for large enterprises that have sophisticated governance and regulatory requirements.
CAF enterprise-scale landing zone architecture aims to address these concerns early in the adoption lifecycle. Architectures, implementations, and guidance to achieve balance between cloud adoption team requirements and central IT team requirements are provided during enterprise cloud adoption efforts. Central to this approach are shared service architecture and well-managed landing zones.
The CAF enterprise-scale landing zone deploys your own isolated cloud environment within the Azure platform. This integrates management processes, regulatory requirements, and security processes required by your governance policies. Within this virtual boundary, the CAF enterprise-scale landing zone offers example models for deploying workloads while ensuring consistent compliance, and provides basic guidance on implementing an organization's separation of roles and responsibilities in the cloud.
CAF enterprise-scale landing zone qualifications
Smaller teams can also benefit from the architecture and recommendations the CAF enterprise-scale landing zone provides. Our objective is to continue streamlining the CAF enterprise-scale landing zone implementations to make them more friendly for smaller teams. Currently, this approach is designed to guide central IT teams managing large cloud environments.
The CAF enterprise-scale landing zone approach focuses on adoption teams who have a mid-term objective (within 24 months) to host more than 1,000 assets (applications, infrastructure, or data assets) in the cloud.
Consider starting with the CAF enterprise-scale landing zone if your organization meets the following criteria:
- Your enterprise is subject to regulatory compliance requirements that require centralized monitoring and audit capabilities.
- You need to maintain common policy and governance compliance and centralized IT control over core services.
- Your industry depends on a complex platform that requires complex controls and deep domain expertise to govern the platform. This is most common in large enterprises within the finance, manufacturing, and oil and gas industries.
- Your existing IT governance policies require tighter parity with existing features, even during early stage adoption.
Next steps
Choose one of these guides:
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