Establish the relationship with your cloud services provider

When starting your cloud journey, you need to establish a commercial relationship with your cloud services provider. You will complete relevant customer agreements and set up preferences for communication and how you will pay for cloud services consumed. For larger organizations, you will need to confirm which parts of your organization are responsible for these functions.

When selecting your cloud provider, ensure that you decide on your cloud strategy. A cloud first strategy will allow you to bring new workloads, projects, and experiments to your cloud environment. Freeing up the load from your on-premises resources, if you have any. When new workloads are designed for the cloud, this allows you to realize the cloud benefits faster.

When you select your cloud provider, you can conduct risk and compliance assessments. Each cloud provider has different tools you can leverage to obtain those reports. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal at no cost where you can get AWS compliance reports.

When establishing a relationship with a cloud provider, you can benefit from procurement agreements. Ensure that you review and accept the terms included in these agreements, and if needed, consult with your legal team.