Cloud primer

An introduction to public cloud services for business audiences.

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Existing model

The roles and skills to manage an on-premises estate have not changed significantly in recent years. The roles have been set for some time, with the introduction of virtualisation technologies (virtual servers) being the last major disruptor.

For most organisations, managing their existing services and infrastructure requires a combination of the roles outlined below.

Role
Engineers (infrastructure, network, security)
Architect (technical, security, solution, data)
Project / Programme Manager
Developer
Change Manager
Database Manager / DBA

For specialist skills that fall outside these common roles, organisations partner with consultancies to implement requirements and perform knowledge transfer to internal team(s).

Cloud service model

Designing, building and operating cloud services changes the skills requirement for your organisation. These changes, by role, are outlined below.

Role Change
Engineers Focus shifts from infrastructure configuration and management to management of IaaS offerings and Infrastructure-as-Code. Also participates in new DevOps practice
Architect Focus of architecture skills to remain the same, but with a requirement to develop expertise in cloud technologies
Project / Programme Manager Focus of project / programme manager to remain the same, but with a requirement to understand the implications of cloud service delivery. Agile methodology adopted to complement service agility
Developer Focus of developer remains the same, but with a requirement to embrace new development practices (DevOps, pipelines, PaaS, Serverless, etc.)
Change Manager Focus of change manager remains the same, but with a requirement to ensure change control practices effectively support an agile approach to service change
DBA / Data Analyst  Focus shifts from database management and performance to data services and insight

Developing services to take full advantage of the cloud requires your organisation to adopt new development practices and operating models. Your existing applications and services – especially legacy deployments – must be modernised, or re-architected to run efficiently using public cloud services. It is likely that these skills don’t currently exist at scale within your organisation.

The roles of your internal teams are likely to change over time as your organisation progressively migrates services to the cloud and your deployment of services on-premises is reduced. Despite this progressive change, most organisations will continue delivering services on-premises for some time to come, which will require the continuation of existing processes, on a smaller scale, for the foreseeable future.

Contact

Email: Cloud1st@gov.scot

Telephone: 0300 244 4000

Post:

Cloud First
Cloud and Digital Services Division
Area 1H South
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ

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