Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Ang Troy, senior director analyst at Gartner.
Most IT organizations have cloud services in place or have made conscious decisions regarding its adoption. Such decisions may include adopting the cloud quickly and wholly, to proceed methodically with cloud services or to delay for a period of time.
In any of these strategies, IT organizations face major obstacles building, deploying, consuming, managing, securing and integrating cloud services.
The adoption of cloud computing is multidimensional, and it must be run like a multiyear program, not a fixed-duration project. As a result, the complexity of cloud adoption requires at least one accountable architectural leader to guide the organization through the transformation. This is the task of a role that many IT organizations are now finding to be mandatory: the enterprise cloud architect.
Many organizations can clearly point to their lead enterprise cloud architect, but others have yet to formally name this individual or have piled the cloud responsibilities onto an already overburdened enterprise architect. Organizations that are the most successful have formally assigned cloud architecture responsibilities to ensure that a single, accountable architect is in charge.
What is an enterprise cloud architect?
An enterprise cloud architect is responsible for the cloud computing initiatives in an organization and for directing the architectural aspects of the cloud team across all aspects of IT and the business.
The lead enterprise cloud architect should be the foundation of a cloud center of excellence, or what will become the CCOE — the enterprise architecture function that governs the organization’s approach to the cloud.
Common alternative names for a CCOE include: the cloud business office, the cloud transformation office, the cloud brokerage team and the cloud enablement team.
The lead enterprise cloud architect is usually a senior individual contributor who serves as the leader of the CCOE — or, if there is no cloud EA function, then as the leader of cloud initiatives.
Often, the role of the enterprise cloud architect is largely self-directed, and day-to-day responsibilities are usually fluid. The specific tasks vary, depending on the level of the organization’s cloud maturity and the maturity of its CCOE.
Enterprise cloud architects are typically not “hands-on.” They will make decisions, but hand off responsibility for their technical implementation to a cloud engineering function. Cloud technical architects may be hands-on, but they are associated with the cloud engineering function, not the CCOE.
Where cloud sits in the organization
The lead enterprise cloud architect is the foundation of the CCOE, and may be the only member of this hub in some organizations.
Companies may not have a structured center of excellence in name, and may rely on the enterprise cloud architect to effectively assume the role of this center. This is a common and acceptable practice, though Gartner recommends building out the CCOE with additional members.
Regardless of the organizational design, the enterprise cloud architect has six key relationships:
- Advisory-level access to senior IT leaders, either directly or through the EA team
- Direct and collaborative access to senior EA teams
- Direct and collaborative access to domain architecture teams
- Collaborative access to technical architects and teams
- Collaborative access to central function architects and teams
- Collaborative access to business unit representatives to discern business needs for specific solutions
Skill sets of enterprise cloud architects
Due to the broad applicability of cloud computing in an organization, it’s unlikely that any individual will possess all the skills that the enterprise cloud architect role demands. However, the enterprise cloud architect should possess as many of the desired skills as possible.
Where a specific skill is lacking, the enterprise cloud architect should be able to collaborate or engage the relevant, resident experts in the organization. For example, if the enterprise cloud architect does not have a skill or strength in IT service management (ITSM), that individual needs to build a strong relationship with an ITSM expert to drive objectives to completion.
At the core, enterprise cloud architects are enterprise architects. Therefore, they need to have the competencies of good enterprise architects in order to drive business outcomes, empower business partners and develop and build effective architecture disciplines
Cloud computing is not a matter of “if”; it’s a matter of “how.” Adopting cloud services is similar to a complex IT program that has no clear end in sight. Guiding cloud adoption requires strong leadership, not just at an executive level, but also at an architectural level.
Enterprise cloud architects are paramount to the eventual success of cloud adoption. Organizations should not delay placing the right individual into this crucial IT role.
