Optimize your organization’s cloud journey with a Cloud Center Of Excellence

The cloud has become a foundational part of the business and digital transformation journeys of many organizations. The Google Cloud Professional Services team has learned through working with our customers that a Cloud Center of Excellence (COE) is one of the ways that enterprises can get to the cloud faster and maintain stronger alignment between their business strategy and cloud investments.

A Cloud COE can help accelerate cloud adoption benefits in a number of ways including:

• Driving momentum across the organization
• Developing reusable frameworks for cloud governance
• Managing cloud knowledge sharing and learning initiatives
• Overseeing cloud usage and plans for scale
• Aligning cloud offerings to the larger organizational strategy

Further, we’ve observed that successful Cloud COE teams exhibit many of the following characteristics:

• Multidisciplinary: Members of the team reflect the diverse perspectives of the stakeholders in the organization.
• Empowered: Team members have decision-making authority without need for higher-level sign-off.
• Visionary: They take a multi-project viewpoint to understand repeatability and long-term benefits or goals for the organization.
• Agile: The team understands how to deliver short-term wins such as short development cycles and an iterative approach to building products.
• Technical: The Cloud COE should include experienced individuals with a history of architecting and building past solutions within the organization.
• Integrated: Individual members come from existing areas of the business to allow for easy integration into existing teams and organizational constructs.
• Hands-on: The group includes individuals who are able to do the hands-on work needed to build and test cloud solutions.

Google Cloud Professional Services is excited to release a new whitepaper that can help guide your organization through the process of building a Cloud COE to meet your needs both now and in the future. “Building a Cloud COE” is closely aligned with the Google Cloud Adoption Framework and is a practical guide for organizations looking to build or evolve their Cloud COE.

To learn about how to build a Cloud Center of Excellence, download the whitepaper for practical guidance and strategies.