Operating model refers to the process that an organization and its business teams use cloud computing platforms to support their businesses, based on business needs, enterprise architecture, organizational culture, existing technical capabilities, and tools. Each organization's operating model is unique. This article introduces four common operating models for reference. The purpose of building operating models is to achieve more efficient and flexible management and operations based on cloud computing platforms. The specific purposes of building operating models include:
Achieving rapid deployment and scaling: By building standardized release processes through cloud computing platforms, organizations can achieve rapid deployment and scaling, improving service response time and flexibility.
Enhancing decision-making effectiveness: By building observable systems, feedback from the digitalized operation of the business can be used to create decision cycles, improving organizational decision-making.
Optimizing resource allocation and utilization efficiency: By real-time monitoring various resources (such as computing, storage, network, etc.) in the cloud computing platform and implementing optimization measures, resource utilization efficiency can be improved, and the cost of cloud services can be reduced.
Improving business stability and reliability: Based on the monitoring and professional technical capabilities provided by the cloud platform, enterprises can improve fault response speed, shorten fault diagnosis time, and improve business stability and reliability.
Operating Model Definitions
Decentralized Operating Model
Application is a unit that can independently deliver services to external parties. It is the smallest logical unit for development, deployment, release, and operation. In the development stage, it usually corresponds to one or more functional modules and is associated with one or more code repositories. In the running state, it usually corresponds to one or more services. The development here refers to the development and testing of applications and infrastructure, and operations refer to the deployment, update, and continuous support of applications and infrastructure. In a decentralized operating model, different personnel are driven by different objectives:
Development is driven by functional requirements (usually directly related to business requirements).
Testing is driven by bug-related requirements (finding functional defects).
Operations are driven by non-functional requirements related to reliability (such as availability, stability, performance, etc.).
In a decentralized operating model, activities in each quadrant are performed by separate teams. Each team has clear responsibilities, which enables faster response to customer needs and better decision-making and action-taking. When each team is given more autonomy and responsibility, employees can innovate and make decisions better within their scope of responsibility. However, in a decentralized operating model, the complexity of communication and coordination between teams will reduce the overall efficiency of the organization. If teams are narrowly specialized, physically or logically isolated, it may hinder communication and collaboration among teams.
Decentralized + Managed Services Operating Model
In a decentralized operating model organization, if the organization needs more professional teams to support the operation of cloud computing platform services or wants to outsource part of the daily infrastructure operation-related work to professional service providers, it can consider using Alibaba Cloud's managed services. Alibaba Cloud's managed services provide professional cloud environment support and meet security and compliance requirements, supporting security and regulatory goals of the organization.
Decentralized + ISV Operating Model
In a decentralized operating model organization, if the organization needs to develop software in specific fields or industries, it can either build its own application engineering team or consider choosing ISVs to provide such services. ISVs usually complement the organization's other products, providing better solutions to help the company better meet customer needs. Alibaba Cloud service partners can provide application development, testing, deployment, and management services to help organizations develop and deploy their applications more easily.
Centralized Operating Model
The infrastructure engineering team provides standardized platform services (such as infrastructure automation, configuration management, application deployment) to the application teams. These services help application teams develop and operate their applications more efficiently and provide high-quality services to meet customer needs. The application engineering team is responsible for application automation development, testing, and operation through the standardized platform, making application development, testing, and release faster, more frequent, and more reliable, thus shortening the application development cycle and providing high-quality continuous delivery.
In a centralized operating model, centralized teams can bring higher stability, better operational performance, and lower costs to the organization through professional knowledge and standardization. By unifying the management of the production environment, the infrastructure engineering team reduces the need for other teams to obtain elevated permissions, which helps to limit the number of privileged users and reduce non-compliant behaviors. However, in the process of digital transformation, the operation of the cloud platform may become the main operation platform of the organization in the future, and the existing platforms and teams established for the IDC may not be suitable for the operation of the cloud platform. In addition, teams other than the infrastructure engineering team have limited access permissions to the environment, which is not conducive to experimentation and innovation.
Centralized + Managed Services Operating Model
In a centralized operating model organization, if the organization does not have the existing skills or teams to support cloud platform operations, or if it wants to have unique capabilities that differentiate it from other organizations, but still wants to outsource part of the daily infrastructure operation-related work to professional service providers, it can consider using Alibaba Cloud's managed services. Alibaba Cloud's managed services can provide professional cloud environment support and meet security and compliance requirements, supporting the organization's security and regulatory goals.
Centralized + ISV Operating Model
In a centralized operating model organization, if the organization needs to develop software in specific fields or industries, it can either build its own application engineering team or consider choosing ISVs to provide such services. ISVs usually complement the organization's other products, providing better solutions to help the company better meet customer needs. Alibaba Cloud's ecosystem partners can provide application development, testing, deployment, and management services to help organizations develop and deploy their applications more easily.
Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) Operating Model
Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) is the best practice for driving cloud transformation. Generally, an enterprise has at least one cloud management team, or the relevant responsible person establishes a CCoE to plan and coordinate the overall migration to the cloud, including confirming the overall plan and steps for migration at the organizational level, and gathering the specific needs of the organization.
The organization of a Cloud Center of Excellence usually includes:
Enterprise management: The enterprise management needs to define the strategic position of the cloud in the company and how each team should use the cloud.
Cloud Center of Excellence: This team can be a virtual organization responsible for designing the supply mode and management system of cloud services, and providing corresponding technical preparation. The team members include:
Architects and technical professionals responsible for cloud migration and architecture design;
Experts in security, compliance, and other fields, responsible for designing the enterprise's IT governance plan, identifying risks, and formulating governance rules;
Financial experts responsible for formulating financial management processes and cost allocation rules.
Cloud management team: After comprehensive migration of the business to the cloud, continuously optimize the cloud architecture and provide cloud environments for new businesses. Establish an enterprise cloud operation system, build an operation platform, and use automated operation and maintenance to continuously manage and govern the cloud environment. Allocate the required cloud resources and permissions based on the new business needs, and deliver the resources after initializing the configurations. Application teams only need to focus on their applications and do not need to pay attention to infrastructure setup.
Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) + Managed Services Operating Model
In the process of building a Cloud Center of Excellence, organizations can outsource part of the cloud platform operation-related work to professional service providers, based on their own advantages and characteristics. Alibaba Cloud's managed services can provide professional cloud environment support and meet security and compliance requirements, supporting the organization in achieving its own security and regulatory goals.
Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) + ISV Operating Model
In the process of building a Cloud Center of Excellence, organizations can outsource software development in specific fields or industries to ISVs based on their own advantages and characteristics. ISVs usually complement the organization's other products, providing better solutions to help the company better meet customer needs. Alibaba Cloud service partners can provide application development, testing, deployment, and management services to help organizations develop and deploy their applications more easily.
Choosing Different Operating Models
As organizations migrate from on-premises environments to the cloud, they need to determine which operating model to use based on their strategic planning and organizational culture. Decentralized, centralized, and CCoE models all have their suitable scenarios:
Decentralized: It is more suitable for IT environments composed of continuous innovation and high complexity, where different operational requirements of applications often need to be emphasized. Some organizations have development teams responsible for both application-related IT environments and operations.
Centralized: It is more suitable for strongly controlled IT environments composed of stable applications. Applications in this type of environment are usually stable, and there is no need to focus on operational requirements of individual applications. The focus of the organization is to manage the IT environment.
CCoE model: If the organization plans to achieve large-scale cloud migration or wants to use the cloud to drive innovative advantages related to the market, it can consider the CCoE model. In this model, by establishing an enterprise cloud operation system, building an operation platform, and using automated operation and maintenance, business development teams can make their own decisions while complying with a series of guidelines and established controllable measures, maintaining the agility and flexibility of the business development team.
Regardless of which operating model the organization currently adopts, it is adapted to its current business needs and strategic development plan. If the organization redefines the operating model based on future strategic planning and decides to transform the current operating model, there may be a situation where two models coexist for a long period of time. Any change is not achieved overnight. The organization needs to continuously plan, experiment, improve, and iterate to optimize and achieve its predetermined goals.
