AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) – Leveraging the Cloud for Digital Transformation
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF)
As discussed in the previous section, you overserved some key pitfalls in cloud adoption. The organization started well with the pilot unable to move it further, or tech leadership is not aligned to focus on cloud modernization. In some cases, even if the organization migrates cloud, it cannot realize full value as replicating the on-premise model to the cloud, which failed to reduce cost or increase flexibility. To help customers overcome these pitfalls, AWS designed Cloud Adoption Framework by applying their learning across thousands of customers who completed their cloud migration to AWS.The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a mechanism for establishing a shared mental model for cloud transformation. Leverages AWS experience and best practices to enable customers to identify and prioritize transformation opportunities, evaluate and improve cloud readiness, and iteratively evolve transformation roadmaps. Key business outcomes include reduced business risk, improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, and increased revenue and operational efficiency. The following diagram provides a full view of the AWS CAF framework to address your organization’s digital transformational needs.
As shown in the preceding diagram, AWS CAF recommends four iterative and incremental phases for organizations to succeed in their digital transformation journey:
- Envision – Identify and prioritize transformation opportunities in line with your strategic objectives. Associating your transformation initiatives with senior executives capable of influencing and driving change. The measurable business outcomes will help you demonstrate value as you progress through your transformation journey.
- Align – Identify capability gaps and cross-organizational dependencies. It will help you create strategies for improving your cloud readiness, ensure stakeholder alignment, and facilitate relevant organizational change management activities.
- Launch – Deliver pilots in production and demonstrate incremental business value. Pilots should be highly impactful, and when successful, they will influence future direction. Learning from pilots will help you adjust your approach before scaling to full production.
- Scale – Expand pilots and business value to the desired scale and ensure that the business benefits associated with your cloud investments are realized and sustained.
Further, The AWS CAF identified four Transformation Domains that help customers accelerate their business outcomes. The followings are the digital transformation opportunities:
- Technology transformation focuses on leveraging the cloud to migrate and modernize legacy infrastructure, applications, and data and analytics platforms. Cloud Value Benchmarking shows the value of migrating from on-premises to AWS in terms of reduction in cost per user, VMs managed per administrator, decrease in downtime, and a decrease in security events.
- Process transformation may include leveraging new data and analytics platforms to create actionable insights or using machine learning (ML) to improve customer service experience, employee productivity, decision-making, business forecasting, fraud detection and prevention, industrial operations, etc. Doing so may help organizations improve operational efficiency while lowering operating costs and improving employee and customer experience.
- Organizational transformation focuses on reimagining the operating model; how business and technology teams orchestrate their efforts to create customer value and meet organizational strategic intent. Organizing teams around products and value streams while leveraging agile methods to iterate and evolve rapidly may help organizations become more responsive and customer-centric.
- Product transformation focuses on reimagining the business model by creating new value propositions (products, services) and revenue models. Doing so may help organizations reach new customers and enter new market segments. Cloud Value Benchmarking shows that adopting AWS reduces time-to-market for new features and applications, increases code deployment frequency, and decreases the time to deploy new code.
