AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is designed to help AWS customers build and execute a comprehensive plan for their digital transformation. And recently, the company announced the availability of version 3.0 of their CAF.
The new version includes what the company has learned since they released version 2.0, focusing on digital transformation and emphasizing data and analytics. It now identifies six groups of foundational perspectives (Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations), totaling 47 discrete capabilities, up from 31 in the previous version. And from there, it identifies four transformation domains (Technology, Process, Organization, and Product) that must participate in a successful digital transformation.
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloud-adoption-framework-caf-3-0-is-now-available/
The AWS CAF recommends a set of four iterative and incremental cloud transformation phases based on the transformation domains and foundational capabilities. These phases are:
- Envision phase provided through an interactive workshop led by a facilitator that will assist an organization in identifying transformation possibilities and laying the groundwork for their digital transformation.
- Align phase, which again is provided through a facilitator-led workshop to identify capability gaps across the foundational capabilities resulting in an action plan.
- Launch phase leading to the creation and delivery of production-ready pilot programs showing incremental business benefits.
- Scale phase to extend pilot projects to the desired scale while achieving the expected and desired business outcomes.
In an AWS CAF 101 blog post, Piyush Jalan, senior cloud consultant, concluded:
The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework demonstrates how businesses may learn to match their cloud strategies and goals with their business plans and goals. It assists companies in identifying gaps in their present organizational capabilities and developing work streams to fill those gaps.
Every significant public cloud provider offers a framework for adopting their respective platforms. AWS competitor Microsoft offers a cloud adoption framework for Azure, and also Google provides one. All these frameworks offer a way to align business and technology agendas with simplifying choices to move forward, indicate, and minimize risks before, during, and after deployment or migration to the cloud.
Charles Collier, director, Transformation & Strategy at Lucernys, stated in a tweet:
Moving to the #cloud is more and more common. However, it requires the right framework.
In addition, David das Neves, director at MediaMarktSaturn, tweeted referring to the three largest cloud providers and their cloud adoption frameworks:
IMHO, you need to pick the best out of them which matches YOUR, company, YOUR culture & YOUR strategy.
Lastly, more details on CAF are available on the landing page.
