Setting Cloud Transformation Objectives

Cloud transformation objectives must align with the business strategy and objectives of your organization. The objectives must comply with the SMART principle, that is, they must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, if your organization experiences revenue loss and brand damage due to service system interruptions, you can set a specific objective such as improving the availability of service systems from 99% to 99.9% within the next year. When setting cloud transformation objectives, you need to fully consider the current resources and capabilities of your organization to ensure that the objectives are achievable. Through the cloud maturity assessment, you can learn the current capabilities and gaps of your organization and set cloud transformation objectives accordingly to avoid excessively high or low objectives.

To set measurable cloud transformation objectives, you need to design reasonable quantitative metrics based on the cloud transformation drivers, so that the management of your organization can track and evaluate the actual effects of cloud transformation. The following table lists the quantitative metrics designed based on the cloud transformation drivers:

**Table 1** Metrics for cloud transformation drivers
Category	Driver	Metric
Business drivers	Enhancing service agility	TTM of new products (new service systems), including the design, development, testing, and market launch Iteration time of new versions or features of existing products (existing service systems), including the design, development, testing, and market launch
	Accelerating service innovation	Number of new users brought by new products, new services, and new business models Revenue brought by new products, new services, and new business models
	Ensuring service continuity	Availability SLO of service systems Economic loss caused by service interruptions
	Expanding market reach	Number of new users brought by entering new markets Revenue brought by entering new markets
	Ensuring regulatory compliance	Economic loss caused by non-compliance, including compensation and fines
	Fostering sustainability	Reduction in carbon emissions
Technical drivers	Improving resource elasticity	Resource utilization Resource expansion and deployment speed
	Improving system resilience	RPO and RTO Number of P1, P2, P3, and P4 incidents
	Improving scalability	System expansion speed
	Improving security	Number of security incidents Economic loss caused by security incidents, including compensation and fines
	Improving O&M efficiency	O&M time required by a unit of resources Number of resources (such as VMs and storage) that can be maintained by each O&M engineer Mean time to repair (MTTR)
	Improving performance	Throughput metrics such as TPS and QPS System response time Concurrent users Resource utilization
Financial drivers	Pay-per-use	Capital expenditure on IT infrastructure
	Improving cost-effectiveness	Business unit cost, such as the cost of each order and each user TCO of IT infrastructure
	Increasing revenue	Revenue brought by business innovation and market expansion

As it is time-consuming to track, evaluate, and manage all of the above metrics, you are advised to select some of them to evaluate the effects of cloud transformation. Some metrics overlap with each other. For example, the availability SLO of the service system encompasses metrics such as RPO, RTO, and MTTR. The ultimate goal of cloud transformation is to maximize business benefits, not technical benefits. Therefore, you are advised to categorize and sort these metrics based on the business objectives and priorities of your organization. Choose metrics first based on your business and financial drivers, and then based on your technical drivers. The following metrics are recommended for determining cloud transformation objectives:

**Table 2** Cloud transformation metrics and objectives
Metric	Objective
Availability SLO of the service system	Increase the annual availability SLO of the service system from 99% to 99.95%.
TTM of new products or versions	Shorten the TTM of new products from six months to three months, and shorten the iteration time of existing products from three months to one month.
Economic loss caused by non-compliance and security incidents	Reduce the number of non-compliance and security incidents by 75% and reduce the economic loss by 75%.
TCO of IT infrastructure	Reduce the TCO of IT infrastructure by 15%.
Revenue brought by business innovation and market expansion	Innovate cloud business and expand the global market, bringing X0 thousand active users and revenue of USDY00 million within the next three years.
Carbon emission reduction	Reduce carbon emissions by 50% following cloud transformation.
Number of resources that can be maintained by each O&M engineer	Double the number of servers that can be managed by each O&M engineer from 100 to 200.