The Challenge

A major financial services firm with a federated technology delivery organization embarked on a strategic effort to reduce the variability and complexity of their technology ecosystem. Part of the Simplify to Accelerate program was accelerating their ‘Journey to the Cloud’ for the remainder of their on-premise systems (i.e., approximately 50% of their application portfolio).

Project Description

In addition to defining and activating their overall IT Strategy, Further Advisory established the structure of the Simplify to Accelerate program and led the mobilization, planning, and detailed analysis for the multi year Journey to the Cloud effort. This included the business case, executive and board alignment, and funding mechanisms to account for foundational investments.

Outcomes Delivered

• Board alignment on foundational efforts required to scale the clients’ cloud ecosystem: Moving from 30% to 80% of systems in the cloud required foundational improvements to the cloud ecosystems which included Cloud Operating Improvements (e.g., FinOps, Cyber, Automation), Cloud Operational Data Hardening, and Identity Mgmt / Entitlement solutions
• Business aligned Cloud Journey: Developed the journey roadmap to eliminate negative business tradeoffs. Developed and executed a business centric strategy that accounted for business priorities and investments, strategic value of related assets, technology end of life drivers, and technology strategic initiatives (e.g., standardized cloud delivery pipelines)
• Improved Application Lifecycle Management:. As part of detailing the business aligned cloud journeys Further improved the robustness and accuracy of application information to improve precision and accuracy of cloud operational costs (i.e., asset tagging) and FinOps
• Cloud FinOps 2.0: Improved Cloud FinOps practices to transform from reactive, limited enforcement, to proactive ‘policy as code’ (e.g., automated enforcement). Further aligned multiple strategic efforts (e.g., standardized delivery pipelines), revised the engineering / FinOps operating model, and established the governance processes and controls to achieve results