Roadmap for Cloud Optimization

In the last decade, the Information Technology industry witnessed one of the biggest paradigm shift in the form of Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing is what it enables or should be considered a key ingredient in the process of digital transformation for any company. However, the operational costs of Cloud Computing maybe surprisingly high, if Cloud Optimization is not approached correctly, in a carefully planned way. Therefore, before approaching the challenge of controlling the operational costs in the cloud journey, there is a need to develop a clear roadmap for optimization in Cloud Computing. Solving this problem became the objective for this Thesis. The study follows the multiple case study approach. In this study, three case projects were chosen to be investigated. The thesis researcher has worked in every case project analysed in this thesis as a developer and as an architect, which was one of the criteria when choosing the case projects. To develop the roadmap, the existing migration paths to cloud, best practices and governance strategies were explored, the current problems faced in cloud were analyzed, and data was collected from different organizations through interviews, questionnaire and their own publications. The analysis results provided an understanding of the current problems faced in cloud optimization, their impact and, backed up with the review of available best practice, has led to developing own proposal of the governance roadmap for cloud optimization. By adopting the proposed roadmap for cloud optimization via governance, the case company, as well as wider professional community when applying it in similar projects, will benefit from having a greater visibility of the resources and the actual usage, reduce unnecessary cloud costs, boosts cloud utilization, drives innovation and efficiency. Optimization is all about saving costs, gaining more visibility and efficient management of resources. Also, automation of provisioning, monitoring and governance of resources will add to greater savings of development and operational costs. These actions combined, it would have large impact on the effective management of expenditure, security, and innovation in cloud. The outcome of this study is currently being implemented in multiple phases in several projects in the case company