Episode 7 - Success Cloud Adoption Framework with Morten Knudsen

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to my community insight podcast, where we share insights and stories from community experts to stay up to date with Azure. My name is Nicholas and I'll be your host today. In this podcast. We will dive into cloud adoption framework, but before we get started, I want to remind you to subscribe to our podcast on social media so you never miss an episode and help us reach more amazing people like yourself. Today we have a special guest called Morten Godson. Sorry if I pronounced it wrong. Can you speak for yourself please?

Speaker 2: 0:45

You really, you get points for trying Very good, yeah, it's quite long.

Speaker 1: 0:49

How are they?

Speaker 2: 0:52

So thank you very much for inviting me, nicholas. I really appreciate that. So the way that we pronounce it I would say is Morten or Morten, and then the last name is Knudson or Knudson. So, but the K can be a little hard to pronounce that, so Morten is fine.

Speaker 1: 1:18

All right, so can you just introduce yourself, morten? Yes, I can do that.

Speaker 2: 1:23

So yeah, as I said, my name is Morten and I'm from Denmark, based in the city called Kalling, about an hour's drive north of Germany. I'm a Microsoft MVP in security and I'm also an Azure hybrid MVP, and I've been a consultant for about 34 years right now and have done a lot of work. But I would say my focus is Microsoft, in particular, with the infrastructure side of it. So, and I'm doing a lot of work in Azure, but again focusing on the infrastructure the security aspect of it. So, but I know my way around and a lot of services out there and, in particular, I would say that I do a lot around logging. That's my little thing that I do and I like enjoy a lot, but I help the customers doing cloud, enabling cloud adoptions from various sizes, like enterprise customers, medium-sized customers, how my day-to-day work.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Brilliant so has. Today theme is cloud adoption framework. Can you tell us more about what it is?

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yes, I can do that. So, as I said, I use cloud adoption framework when I'm talking with customers and for me, a cloud adoption framework, I think of it as a template. That's probably the easiest way to think of it. So it is kind of bringing in all the experiences from thousands of deployments worldwide where Microsoft and partners have contributed with their learnings over the years about best practice around cloud adoption, with focus on Azure. So when I say that it's a kind of a template, it's for me it's kind of a checklist. It's like a lot of lessons learned, best practices where I can accelerate the adoption with respect of the customer's maturity. So it kind of can take a customer through all the different phases from you know what is this, how do I address this, what is my business strategy? How do I plan this correctly? How do I prepare my organization? What team should be in place, how do I deploy landing zones, how do I manage it? How do I implement government? So it kind of takes through all the life cycle of this.

Speaker 1: 4:20

So would you think that it's things? Cloud adoption framework is shortening of CAF. How does CAF guide organization to the cloud strategy Like?

Speaker 2: 4:33

I was saying I think it kind of you can align your business, business strategy against the cloud adoption framework. So I think it's very important that you always keep in mind that when you do Azure and cloud, you want to do it so that it aligns with the business strategy and your organization and the maturity, in particular, that your organization is, and so what I've learned is that it changes. So once you become more and more mature, then things are changing along the way, so you might start up having one design, but things are changing, so it's always in motion. Think of it as versions, where you are implementing new versions of your cloud adoption framework along the way.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Okay, cool. So what are some of the key principles for successful cloud adoption for businesses that you will recommend?

Speaker 2: 5:46

So I think one thing to keep in mind is, of course, that you need to align to your enabling things setting up security and stuff like that. That runs in the technology aspect of it, where you implement all these different tools and CAF enables you to do that very fast, using templates to set that up very fast. And then you have a process track where you are working around the processes that needs to be in place with the customer's environment. And then, lastly, you have an organization track, and typically people are struggling with the last two tracks because that is where the hard stuff is. It's pretty easy to enable all the technology aspects of this, but it is harder to make sure that the processes and the people are aligned to this, and this is where the maturity comes into place. So, for example, it's say you have an immature organization or a less mature organization. They maybe think of security as something that is kind of a set and forget. So they enable their set, some settings, and they don't think about having to go back to that place again.

Speaker 1: 7:14

But if you're working in.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Azure. When you know how often that new features are coming out. It's very important that you get some lifecycle around this so that you make sure that you have some cross-organization teams that are working together on making sure that the security settings are kept and are discussed on a frequent basis and then implemented. This is now where you're talking about that. You need to have a lifecycle around this. That can be hard for some customers that are used to coming from a world where they just deploy some policies and actually directory and then they don't come back to this again, but due to their high frequency in the Cloud, they're taking the innovation. We need to have these processes to run. There are a lot of different of these processes that needs to be in place, like governments, the cost, security, automation. This is where things can become a little harder to adapt.

Speaker 1: 8:32

From your experience. What are some of the challenges you have faced when implementing tasks in businesses?

Speaker 2: 8:38

Like I was saying before we said, and forget the way you want to implement some lifecycle around this. That can be a challenge. Another example can be simple as communication. Let's say that you have a big team. Maybe there are 50 people or 100 people that are doing work in Azure every single day and maybe you have a smaller group that are responsible for a naming convention. It's not enough just so that the smaller group agrees upon a naming convention. You also have to communicate out to the bigger group about what are the naming convention, where can they find them, where are the templates and so on. I think communication can be a struggle. A third thing can be the automation. A lot of times when you want to do things right, you want to have a CMDB where you have defined settings. If you don't have a CMDB, then how can you automate things? I think that's an example of where a less mature customer maybe start without a CMDB, but they want to do automation and then later on they start to get a CMDB.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Things are changing along the way. Automation can be a struggle sometimes if the environment that you want to automate is very fragmented because it is coming from an early aversion of the CAF environment.

Speaker 1: 10:24

I agree with both the points about communication automation as well. From your experience, can you share some of the success stories where you have implemented CAF and adopted to the 해?

Speaker 2: 10:40

I like I was saying that typically I come out to customers where they are maybe running a version one of their as an environment and maybe it kind of started in a way where maybe the data department started to adopt and using, for example, as a, and then later on the IT department wanted to grab this asher and get into place. So I think setting up and landing so way you can accelerate and building kind of a version two environment and be a very good experience for a lot of customers. So instead of you know trying to rework the existing, you're setting up in parallel version two environment and then you can re provision your services into this or you can move them over in a. So this is where a can come into play because you can easily and very fast deploy you know a landing so environment. You can set up hundreds of policies and enable the automation around this. So that's where I think is is great.

Speaker 2: 12:02

I also like the fact that the adoption in general with consultants are very high. So when you are out with a customer and they can tell maybe other consultants we are aligning to cuff them. People know the environment, they know the, the acronyms, they know how management group layout is they know the policies. So I think it kind of helps that they are lining to this.

Speaker 1: 12:34

That's great, so has. This episode is coming to an end. I just want to ask you are you going to any future events in the future?

Speaker 2: 12:43

Yes, I am, and I'm so happy that I can meet you next week when we're meeting at the summit. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, and besides that, I'm also next month going to China. Actually, I'm going to speak in Shanghai for the global day, so I will be going to Beijing and also Shanghai next month, so that I have a lot of trips coming up, but those are just a few of the future ones.

Speaker 1: 13:15

That's brilliant how can, how can people learn more about have been getting touch with yourself? What can, yeah?

Speaker 2: 13:24

so the just searching on the web around Microsoft cloud adoption framework would actually give you a great content around this, and it's structured very easily to it to adopt, so and you can find out easily where we're about information. About coming back to me, I also have a blog. It is more than that. I'm sure that you will Link to it in the in the low, but otherwise it's more than that, and my name so and also encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's a molten water can't send on LinkedIn and I can also share the link for that and please connect with me. I'm happy to discuss anything, any questions that comes up. Just Write me there or find me on Twitter. So a lot of chance there.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Okay, brilliant. Thanks for coming on this episode more time and in few weeks is going to be on that you too, sponsored by, and happy music, so say to bye, thank you.