For most companies, the Azure public cloud is a multi-vendor environment. While IT typically maintains the core parts of Azure (and some key business-supporting services), there is often a partner in the environment providing, for example, Data Warehouse solutions and another handling the integration platform—not to mention a third! All of this needs to be kept under control, ensuring that partners have the necessary resources. Service continuity should also be ensured, while understanding how to manage cost structures and security effectively. A well-designed Azure Governance Model assists IT in this.
Responsibility on the Listener?
Azure, like all public cloud services, consists of resources billed based on usage. Since your IT department owns the Azure subscriptions where services and resources are deployed, you are ultimately responsible for the security of the resources in the Azure environment—and most importantly, you receive all the bills for approval. However, since you are not alone in managing the resources, an important question quickly arises: who is responsible at any given moment?
One of the most important aspects of the governance model is to define responsibilities and describe collaboration processes in the public cloud domain.
The role of IT is to provide partners with frameworks and guidelines within which they should primarily operate. At the same time, partners should be challenged to engage in dialogue to enable sensible collaboration within the defined frameworks. If the dialogue does not work, a partner may establish resources according to their own views—which may lead to unreasonable costs. Security or continuity might not even be considered, despite your IT department’s guidelines. Responsibility and discussion are needed. IT should support partners by wisely guiding their actions. The Azure Governance Model serves as a playbook to ensure that all stakeholders can operate correctly in the same environment. The governance model acts as a guideline when a new application provider begins to implement their application as a service supporting your business.
What is defined in the governance model?
Defining a common playbook, guidelines, and responsibilities is important. However, the Azure Governance Model, familiarly known as the “Governance Model,” is above all a technical description within which the Azure environment is managed. It defines, among other things,
- The hierarchical architecture and network technology solutions within which operations are conducted.
- The desired application architecture and framework, as well as decisions regarding potential version control tools that are hoped to be utilized—in terms of application development, this can be one of the most significant decisions for the further development of the environment.
- Replicability, such as how to quickly create a platform with standard settings for new services using standard practices.
- Management Scopes and access rights management standardized within the hierarchical architecture
- Technical policies that guide resource usage and security in Azure subscriptions
- Common practices for naming and tagging resources, for example, to facilitate cost tracking
- Maintenance and continuity, i.e., how to ensure the care of services and their continuity
- Security, i.e., how the company’s security strategy is technically integrated into operations conducted under Azure subscriptions through guidelines.
Why should all of this preferably be planned when adopting the Azure environment?
Because by the time you have been operating in the Azure environment for years, it may already be difficult to start making technical changes. Often even basic things like resources and resource groups, as well as their naming, can quickly start to proliferate. As people change, it may soon become difficult to keep track of which resource was related to which service and who was responsible for which costs. And when everything is intertwined with your own business, who in your IT department dares to make difficult decisions about the fate of resources at that point?
What kind of project to start with?
As I wrote in last month’s blog about the Azure cloud, exploring the possibilities of the Azure cloud is a journey for IT. It is worth spending some time planning the governance model to ensure that your Azure environment does not become a labyrinth over time. We can all surely agree on this by now.
But is it a costly and lengthy project with a jargon-speaking consultant? Too often, we see Azure governance models implemented somewhat heavily in different organizations, which no one bothers to read or maintain anymore. Does a 50-page Word document full of technical jargon serve anyone, and does anyone bother to maintain it continuously and purposefully?
A concise and clear description of the governance model is a good starting point now and will serve in the future as well. You can start with the basics of your own governance model and develop it and the Azure cloud as your needs continue to evolve, as long as the basic elements are thoughtfully considered from the beginning.
Azure Governance Model as a Service
As a provider of managed cloud services, we have designed and continuously develop our own Azure Governance Model to best support our customers in the Azure cloud domain. We offer this standardized, continuously evolving governance model to our customers as part of our service, included in our
Our standardized governance model ensures that our customer’s IT department stays on top of Azure costs, as well as security and continuity. So what are you waiting for? With us, you can easily get started with the Azure cloud!
As your IT department’s trusted advisor, our task is to ensure the environment functions according to your and your partners’ needs. By working together, Azure remains cost-effective and operational.