Establishing a Solution Design Team

An efficient and professional solution design team is the key to ensuring the success of a cloud migration project. The team is tasked with developing a feasible cloud migration solution that encompasses the design of technology architectures, optimization of service frameworks, thorough cost-benefit analysis, and stringent adherence to security protocols. Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) can help enterprises establish such a team. Necessary team members are as follows:

1. Cloud architect: Experts from the IT architecture department or experts with profound cloud technology background are responsible for designing the cloud technology architecture, including selecting appropriate cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), designing the target cloud architecture based on the four architectures and six elements, ensuring technology rationality, optimizing resource configurations, and providing consultation for each technical decision.
2. Data architect: Experts from the big data team are assigned by the IT department director. They are responsible for designing the cloud data architecture, including data storage, processing, integration, and management.
3. Application architect: An application team designated by the business department director is responsible for designing and managing the cloud application architecture of the business system, for example, application architecture mode, technology selection, and deployment mode, to ensure the performance, scalability, security, and reliability of applications.
4. Business expert: Business experts are assigned by the business department director. They need to have an in-depth understanding of the current business process, ensure that the solution can meet actual business requirements, promote realization of business value, and improve operations efficiency and user experience.
5. Financial expert: Financial experts are assigned by the financial department director. They need to comprehensively evaluate the cost structure of the cloud migration solution, for example, the initial investment, operations cost, potential savings, and long-term benefit forecast. Quantitative analysis can provide key financial metrics such as cost-effectiveness ratio and ROI for decision-making.
6. Cloud security expert: Experts from the information security department or professionals with security compliance certification are responsible for evaluating the security compliance of cloud service providers, designing data protection policies, ensuring that cloud migration solutions comply with industry security standards and legal requirements, and effectively preventing risks.
7. Project manager: A project manager comes from the project management office (PMO) or has rich project management experience. The manager is responsible for planning, executing, monitoring, and closing the entire cloud migration solution design project. The manager needs to ensure that the project is completed on time, with high quality, and within budget, coordinate resources across departments, and promote team collaboration and communication.
8. Cloud service provider consultant: The consultant is selected from a cloud service provider or professional service company. The consultant provides cloud migration solution suggestions based on best practices and assists enterprises in customizing cloud migration solutions, including technical implementation details and best practice sharing.

The solution design team can be set up in two modes. If an enterprise independently designs the cloud migration solution, the above roles are mainly played by internal personnel of the enterprise, and the cloud service provider provides consulting and technical support. If the enterprise purchases third-party professional services for cloud migration solution design, the third-party team takes the lead. The enterprise provides necessary business requirements and technical information. The enterprise team needs to closely cooperate with the third-party team to ensure that the solution design meets the enterprise's business requirements. The two parties work closely together to promote the solution design.