Developing a Public Cloud Infrastructure Plan
This interactive guide translates complex cloud strategy reports into an actionable, explorable journey. Navigate through the key pillars of cloud planning, from initial strategy and architecture to security, compliance, and cost optimization. Start your journey to build a resilient, secure, and cost-effective cloud foundation.
Scalable & Resilient
Design infrastructure that grows with your business and recovers gracefully from failures.
Secure & Compliant
Understand the shared responsibility model and meet key regulatory standards like GDPR & HIPAA.
Cost Optimized
Implement FinOps practices to manage cloud spend and maximize ROI.
1. Strategy & Planning
The cornerstone of any successful cloud initiative is a clearly articulated mission. This initial phase transforms cloud adoption from a reactive IT project into a strategic business enabler.
Define Objectives
Clearly define business goals. Why are you moving to the cloud? What are the expected outcomes? This prevents "cloud sprawl" and ensures every investment has a purpose.
Assess Current State
Audit your existing infrastructure, application dependencies, and security requirements. Understanding your "as-is" state is critical for a realistic migration strategy.
Plan Proactively
Proactive planning allows for scalable infrastructure, predictive resource management, and robust security, mitigating risks like budget overruns and compliance failures.
2. Architecture & Models
Selecting the right deployment model and core components is a foundational architectural decision that impacts cost, control, and complexity.
Cloud Deployment Models: Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud
Multi-Cloud
Integration of multiple public clouds from different providers (e.g., AWS + Azure).
- ✓Avoids vendor lock-in.
- ✓Access to "best-of-breed" services from each provider.
- ✓High reliability and redundancy (e.g., cloud bursting).
- ✗Increased management complexity.
Hybrid Cloud
Combination of public cloud with a private cloud or on-premise infrastructure.
- ✓Greater control over sensitive data and compliance.
- ✓Leverages existing on-premise investments.
- ✓Allows for gradual, phased migration to the cloud.
- ✗Complex integration between environments.
Explore Core Infrastructure Services
Cloud providers offer a vast portfolio of services. Understanding these building blocks is key to designing the right architecture. Click the tabs to explore the core components.
3. Frameworks & Operations
Adopt modern frameworks and principles like IaC and DevOps to automate, accelerate, and improve the reliability of your cloud operations.
Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
CAFs provide a structured journey for cloud adoption, covering business, people, and governance, not just technology. This ensures a holistic and successful transformation.
Define Why
Align Goals
Prepare Env
Migrate
Continuously
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Define infrastructure in machine-readable files instead of manual configuration. This automates provisioning, reduces errors, and ensures consistency. Can reduce operational overhead by up to 40%.
DevOps & CI/CD
A cultural shift integrating development and operations. CI/CD automates code building, testing, and deployment, accelerating delivery and improving reliability through collaboration and feedback loops.
4. Security & Compliance
Cloud security is a shared responsibility. Understand your role and implement robust controls to protect data and meet key regulatory standards.
Shared Responsibility Model
Cloud Provider's Responsibility
(Security OF the Cloud)
The provider secures the underlying infrastructure: physical data centers, hardware, networking, and virtualization layer (hypervisor).
Customer's Responsibility
(Security IN the Cloud)
You are responsible for securing your data, applications, identity & access management, OS, and network configurations.
Key Compliance Frameworks
Navigating compliance is non-negotiable. Click on a standard to understand its scope and key requirements for your cloud environment.
5. Cost Optimization (FinOps)
FinOps is a cultural practice that brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud, enabling teams to make trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality.
Key FinOps Practices
- Visibility: Use tagging to track spend in real-time.
- Rightsizing: Match instance size to actual workload needs.
- Scheduling: Shut down non-prod environments off-hours.
- Commitments: Use Reserved Instances/Savings Plans for predictable workloads.
- Automation: Leverage tools to identify and eliminate waste.
Potential Cost Savings by Strategy
6. Reference Architectures & Patterns
Apply proven design patterns to solve common architectural challenges related to reliability, performance, and cost in distributed cloud systems.