6 PART 4 IT governance In some ways,the shift to the cloud is a sea change much like the move to client-server computing was following the mainframe-centric days years ago. Without integrating cloud into IT governance processes,a company moving workloads to the cloud might see a decline in productivity and a rise in confusion among workers. Getting cloud-ready Management needs to ensure the organization’s IT governance processes are cloud-ready. That includes making sure all necessary provisions are in place for systems and data security, privacy, and reliability. While these areas have no doubt all been high priorities for on-premises IT, accounting for them in the public cloud is another matter — and expanding or amending the existing governance strategy is important. Who’s in charge? In some instances, IT governance processes that have been conducted a certain way for years or decades will need to be altered, and it requires strong leadership skills to make sure services are not interrupted or degraded during the transition. Companies need to determine who is responsible for managing the new environment, which might consist of multiple cloud services as well as on- premises IT. Because so many cloud initiatives are driven by the business side, line-of-business leaders will need to work closely with IT and operations executives to ensure a cohesive changeover to the new ways of doing things. Good management also means understanding who is responsible for what when it comes to different aspects of IT and the cloud. This can vary depending on the type of cloud service. Pro tip: The benefits for migrating workloads to cloud must outweigh the costs and risks of doing so. Organizations must always consider: How the choice affects their business, if the workload is ready for the cloud, and whether the business is ready to consume the workload in the cloud.