Top 10 To-Do List for Azure Governance in 2018
Top 10 To-Do List for Azure Governance in 2018
I’ve been thinking a lot about Governance in Public Cloud lately and I am sure you are too if you are anything like most of our customers. With the sometimes frantic pace in digital transformation projects due to business imperatives or project timelines, Governance sometimes becomes an afternoon or just a checklist item – which raises concerns when a project is completed and perhaps things weren’t done as thoroughly as perhaps desired in the governance or management context. And who wants to be looking in the rear view mirror right?
Customers often hear me say we need to “Slow Down before we Speed Up” when doing digital transformation – that means let’s take a little extra time to cover off Governance and Best Practices so that we can move forward and truly accelerate without having to look over our shoulders because we didn’t take care of a few important things.
So in the spirit of the New Year and Resolutions for Digital Transformation in 2018, here are my personal top 10 Must Do items for customers embarking on new initiatives or who maybe need to go back and cover off some 2017 projects from a Governance perspective:
- GDPR is Coming – Make Sure You are Compliant by leveraging Microsoft’s Compliance Manager tool and validating your policies and settings in your Cloud Services.
- Cost Management - the first pillar of Governance for most organizations. With Azure Cost Management free for a limited time, there is no better opportunity to get your Azure Cost Management program underway.
- Resource Tagging – tagging your resources in Azure is critical for Cost Management but also general Governance and Operational Management.
- Naming Conventions – ensure you are using a standard naming convention that is based on best practices and follow it
- Security, Access and Identity – use rigorous security on all cloud resources, use the robust, granular access control available to you in Azure and implement a strong Identity management program across your cloud services – identity is the new security perimeter and needs a strong implementation with respect to policy, control, authorization and change management.
- Architecture First – get the architecture right first before you deploy production or active resources in Azure. Fundamentals like networking and security matter in terms of doing them right first to save yourself headaches later.
- Health Check – no better time than the new year for a health and optimization check on your cloud services. We can help!
- Networking Fundamentals – we believe that the network is a critical pillar in successful cloud adoption. That means everything from your vnets and IPAM to NSG’s/ASG’s, routing, VPN’s and ExpressRoute. Ensure your Enterprise network is ready and your cloud network is architected in the best way for your business.
- Management Visibility – Visibility is key to all aspects of Governance and Operational Management of your cloud services – dashboards, reporting, alerting, OMS, Security Center, Power BI and other tools should be implemented and adopted for proper cloud governance.
- Disaster Recovery/BCDR – the golden rule in IT is contingency planning and disaster recovery or site recovery solutions are critical to your contingency planning. Make sure you have a viable, orchestrated disaster recovery service for your on premise virtual machines as well as your cloud resources.
We are here to help – if you’d like expert, pragmatic, rapid execution assistance with any of the above or anything with respect to Azure please reach out – we’d love to help. You can reach us at 416-840-6060 or cloud@airgate.ca
Wishing you the very best for 2018
Nicole