Building a Cloud Center of Excellence within your organization
Amazon Web Services (contributors)
November 2023 (document history)
The goal of this guide is to help you build an effective Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) unit within your organization and implement governance within this CCoE. The guide also covers example key performance indicators (KPIs) and structures within a CCoE. This guide is intended for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers who are migrating to the AWS Cloud. This guide is also for AWS customers and AWS Partners who are consulting for other organizations that are moving to the AWS Cloud.
Understanding the CCoE
A CCoE is a group or team that leads other employees and the organization as a whole in cloud adoption, migration, and operation. The CCoE provides guidance on best practices and governance policies within an organization. Many organizations use different terms for the CCoE, such as Cloud Competency Center or Cloud Capability Center.
By centralizing knowledge and expertise from those involved within the CCoE, your organization can improve efficiency, enhance security and compliance practices, and drive innovation. This can help your organization better serve your end customers and stay ahead of market trends.
The CCoE typically has a wide range of responsibilities, including but not limited to the following:
-
Defining and implementing the organization's cloud strategy
-
Developing and enforcing cloud governance policies
-
Providing training and support to cloud users
-
Measuring and optimizing cloud costs
-
Driving innovation and continuous improvement in the organization's cloud usage
The CCoE also plays a pivotal role in driving and sustaining cultural change within an organization. The CCoE team works with senior leadership to define a clear, compelling vision for the culture that your organization wants to create. The CCoE team creates a comprehensive change plan that should include specific initiatives, timelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress. A CCoE does the following:
-
Develops communication strategies to ensure that employees understand the reasons behind the culture change and how it aligns with the organization's mission and values.
-
Creates programs to involve employees in the change process, gather their input, and make them feel like active participants in the cloud-adoption journey.
-
Identifies and trains the culture champions within the organization. These individuals help drive cultural change within their teams and act as ambassadors for the new culture.
Within the central CCoE there can be separate workstreams, or AWS practices. An AWS practice is usually focused on a specific technology or industry area, and it can apply to one or multiple geographical areas.
In summary, a Cloud Center of Excellence can be also viewed as Culture Center of Excellence driving and sustaining culture transformation within an organization. It's important to recognize that culture transformation is an ongoing process. The CCoE should continuously monitor and evaluate the culture, making adjustments as necessary to ensure that the changes you want are sustained.
