Updated on 2025-05-07 GMT+08:00

Overall Framework

Huawei Cloud CAF provides comprehensive and systematic cloud transformation methodologies and best practices, covering the entire cloud transformation journey and the perspectives of all stakeholders involved in cloud transformation. The following figure shows the overall framework of CAF.

Figure 1 Overall framework of CAF

The cloud transformation journey consists of the following six phases in chronological order.

  1. Strategy formulation: Formulate a cloud transformation strategy that aligns with the organization's business and technology strategies. In this phase, you need to analyze stakeholder interests, identify key drivers for cloud transformation, assess cloud maturity, set cloud transformation objectives, evaluate potential benefits, and develop a cloud transformation strategy that aligns with the organization's business strategy.
  2. Top-level planning: Cloud transformation is a systematic project. It is not simply migrating application systems to the cloud. It necessitates a top-level framework for organizational structures, processes, and technologies. At the organizational level, you need to set up a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to lead, coordinate, and promote the cloud transformation project. At the technical level, you need to design the landing zone, security architecture, and platform engineering based on the Well-Architected Framework (WAF). At the process level, you need to design an optimized cloud operating model tailored to the organization's IT operations framework. Additionally, you need to formulate an application lifecycle management process aligned with the cloud operating model to fully realize the business value of cloud computing.
  3. Survey and evaluation: Conduct a survey on the organization's IT infrastructure, application systems, and big data platforms, analyze static configurations and dynamic runtime data, and evaluate the current statuses to select appropriate cloud services and provide actionable insights for the subsequent solution design.
  4. Solution design: In the top-level design framework of cloud transformation, design the cloud technical architecture, cloud application architecture, and cloud data architecture in detail based on the survey and evaluation results, the business architecture of the organization, and the WAF framework. Ensure the security, reliability, and high performance of cloud infrastructure and application systems through WAF design. In this phase, you need to formulate POC and batch migration plans for application systems based on their importance, select appropriate migration policies based on their characteristics, formulate a cloud cost budget plan, and finally output the low-level design.
  5. Adoption and implementation: Set up a landing zone based on the low-level design, deploy a scalable network infrastructure, and configure security and O&M baselines. Then, migrate application systems and big data platforms to or deploy them on the cloud, modernize applications on the cloud platform, or innovate applications and services on the cloud based on its innovative technologies.
  6. O&M governance: After application systems are migrated to or deployed on the cloud, the O&M governance phase begins. During this phase, lean governance, deterministic O&M, security operations, and cost operations are essential for cloud infrastructure, application systems, and big data platforms. Continuous optimization is performed following the WAF framework.

Cloud transformation projects involve many departments and stakeholders in the organization. These stakeholders participate in the decision-making of cloud transformation projects or influence each phase of the cloud transformation journey. As shown in Table 1, different stakeholders have different concerns and different business or technical perspectives.

Huawei Cloud CAF provides appropriate suggestions across all perspectives. These suggestions serve as a foundation for decision-making and actions, enabling your organization to develop target strategies tailored to your business characteristics and preferences.

Table 1 Cloud transformation perspectives

Category

Perspective

Focuses

Stakeholders

Business

Strategy

  • Support the business strategy and digital strategy of the organization, and fully leverage the advantages of cloud computing to build the core competitiveness of the organization.

Senior management personnel (CXOs)

Business

Services

  • Improve business continuity and support sustainable development.
  • Accelerate the launch of new services to quickly meet changing market requirements.
  • Innovate businesses, products, or models based on innovative technologies on the cloud to bring incremental benefits to the organization.

Business directors and CIO

Business

Finance

  • Compare and analyze the TCO before and after cloud adoption and reduce the IT TCO.
  • Continuously optimize the performance efficiency and cost-effectiveness of cloud resources.
  • Bring new revenue through user experience improvement and business innovation.

CFO and financial experts

Business

Organization

  • Build the organizational structure for cloud transformation and define the roles and responsibilities of cloud transformation talents.
  • Develop cloud transformation performance appraisal indicators for selecting, using, cultivating, and retaining cloud transformation talents.

CIO and HR experts

Business

Processes

  • Optimize IT service processes and O&M processes based on the characteristics of the cloud platform and cloud services to support the fast iteration and secure and stable running of upper-layer application systems.

CIO and IT directors

Technology

Platforms

  • Build enterprise-level, highly secure, reliable, high-performance, and easy-to-expand IT infrastructure or technical platforms based on the cloud platform and its cloud services to provide compute, storage, network, security, database, and middleware services for upper-layer application systems. This helps application teams quickly develop, test, deploy, and efficiently operate application systems to support the secure and stable running of application systems.

CIO, CTO, IT directors, IT O&M experts, application development and test experts, and application O&M experts

Technology

Architectures

  • Build a highly secure, reliable, high-performance, and easy-to-expand technical architecture, application architecture, and data architecture based on the cloud platform and its cloud services.

CTO and cloud architects

Technology

O&M

  • Build a comprehensive cloud-based IT O&M system based on the characteristics of the cloud platform and its cloud services to monitor, generate alarms for, and locate and rectify faults for IT infrastructure and application systems, ensuring the long-term stable running of IT infrastructure and application systems.

CTO, IT O&M experts, and application O&M experts

Technology

Security

  • Build a comprehensive security protection system and continuous security operations mechanism based on the characteristics of the cloud platform and its cloud services to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of IT infrastructure and application systems.

CISO and security experts

Technology

Governance

  • Build a comprehensive IT governance system based on the characteristics of the cloud platform and its cloud services to enable centralized and lean governance of personnel, finances, resources, permissions, and compliance on the cloud. By doing so, organizations can effectively mitigate cloud transformation risks, optimize business value, and ensure sustained growth and success.

CIO and IT governance experts

The cloud transformation journey is a long, multi-faceted process involving a large number of personnel and tasks. To ensure success, enterprises should assign dedicated project managers to oversee the entire project. Employing scientific project management methods and actionable plans is crucial for enhancing the efficiency and quality of cloud transformation and ultimately driving the achievement of strategic transformation goals.

The directory structure of Huawei Cloud CAF aligns with the six phases of the cloud transformation journey. Each section outlines focus areas and practical suggestions from both business and technology perspectives, providing comprehensive guidance for cloud transformation.