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During the process of learning a new skill, you typically progress through four stages. Initially, you are unconsciously incompetent, meaning you don’t yet realize the need for the skill. The second stage is awareness. Once you recognize the need, you start learning and become consciously incompetent. In the third step, you seek guidance or take courses to improve. Finally, you reach the stage of conscious competence, where you still require instructions, may make mistakes, and need focus to apply what you’ve learned. In this article, we’ll discuss how this process relates to cloud-enabled business and IT transformation.

Embracing a major shift, like moving from on-premises infrastructure to a hybrid cloud-based platform, is a lot like learning a new skill. At first, you might not even realize the potential benefits of a completely new IT platform. But eventually, the decision to kickstart such a transformation will be made, and you’ll begin seeking guidance on how to get started.

The Cloud Center of Excellence

During the execution phase, we recommend establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). This dedicated focus will help you navigate the process successfully and ensure you’re prepared to learn from any mistakes along the way. By investing time, effort, and maintaining a positive outlook, your organization can successfully manage the transition and seize the potential benefits that come with it.

At 45 Degrees, we’ve assisted customers in establishing and operating a Cloud Center of Excellence. Through multiple iterations, we’ve refined our framework by drawing on industry best practices, real-life experiences, and the ever-evolving world of technology. Many customers have come to refer to our framework as “the house.”

This framework serves as a comprehensive menu of essential capabilities that each customer will eventually need to address. These capabilities aren’t vastly different from those required by any IT organization, but they have cloud-specific content tailored for a cloud environment. Additionally, these capabilities help define accountabilities among various teams.

Keep in mind, though, that setting up a CCoE isn’t only about the framework; it’s mainly about maintaining a focused approach to the transformation. This involves bringing together a team of dedicated people who will assume particular roles. Just like learning a new skill requires focus, a CCoE helps your organization reach a stage of conscious competence, where you’re aware of your capabilities and prepared to expand them. 

Introducing IT as a Service 

As the CCoE matures, things get interesting. At this point, you might wonder if a dedicated focus is still necessary. In large enterprises, we rarely see a cloud-only platform resulting from the transformation. There’s often an on-premises component that persists due to technical or financial reasons, or because the migration is a gradual, long-term process spanning 5-10 years.

In these scenarios, IT organizations must evolve to an integrated-hybrid operating model and structure. Here, the concept of IT as a Service comes into play. Historically, IT was often viewed as a cost center, handling technical support, infrastructure, software, application management, data backup, security, and a touch of governance and compliance.

Today, a modern IT organization embraces a customer-centric approach focused on delivering business value with agility, flexibility, and cost-efficiency while encouraging innovation and continuous improvement. This transformation impacts not only the IT organization but also the overall business setup.

We observe organizations adopting a topology with a central IT division and decentralized business IT divisions, bringing IT closer to the business and allowing an agreed level of autonomy. This accountability model is crucial for an efficient IT team that catalyzes business change.

From CCoE to IaaS 

Building upon our successful CCoE framework, we’ve developed an IT as a Service framework. While the core components remain largely the same, the content within each capability has evolved to better suit the changing needs of IT organizations.

We didn’t start from scratch. Instead, we leveraged our years of experience with the CCoE approach, morphing it into an IT as a Service framework. The familiar “house” structure may have been left behind, but the major domains—Strategy, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations—remain. Within these domains, some capabilities have been finetuned, and their content has grown to reflect current industry demands.

This evolution from a Cloud Center of Excellence to an IT as a Service framework underscores the significance of maintaining a dedicated focus and embracing continuous adaptation in IT transformation. By doing so, IT can become a business-centric, agile, and innovative force that drives continuous improvement and fuels success.

If you’re interested in learning more about the 45 Degrees approach to IT as a Service, don’t hesitate to reach out!

45° IT as a Service