Laying the Groundwork
Ensure upfront cloud decisions support longer term goals
Building the Foundations for Highly Regulated Industries on Google Cloud Platform
Today, cloud computing is a proven technology delivering several benefits to large enterprises in terms of flexibility, velocity, and the ability to rapidly innovate. At Sourced, we believe that to realise the full benefits of cloud computing, organisations should adopt a measured cloud-at-scale approach.
This whitepaper provides a descriptive method for highly regulated enterprises to gain delivery velocity in the cloud while incorporating the broader organisation. The benefits of scalability, efficiency, and availability can be achieved by any organisation regardless of regulatory requirements. The common misstep of seeking rapid single-workload migrations can lead to technical debt and minimal re-usability, causing a diversion from the organisation’s cloud strategy and objectives. Long-term success for the whole of business change requires a thoughtful and measured approach in the early stages, leading to cloud maturity and on to Cloud at Scale™.
Download our whitepaper here.
Download high-res resources from the whitepaper below:
Figure 1. Workload or platform approach
Figure 3. Opinionated pipeline concept
Figure 4. Control methods over time
MEET THE AUTHOR
Neil Brown
Neil Brown is a Senior Consultant with Sourced Group and is currently based in Sydney, Australia. He works with regulated enterprises to deliver cloud-led business and technology transformation.
Benefits
Over the last decade, Sourced has had the privilege of working with a broad set of highly regulated enterprises, during varying stages of their cloud journey. Consolidating this experience, Sourced has refined an approach to Google Cloud adoption that focuses on building a robust foundational capability that can centralise compliance while allowing application teams to self-service their cloud infrastructure within appropriate guardrails.
Operations
Minimises operational irregularities and manual work through a consistent and automated approach to cloud
Security
Ensures an enterprise security posture is applied holistically across the cloud environment
Control Pane
Measures against regulatory obligations using a single, auditable view of controls
Scale
Provides a method to scale cloud deployments from one team to any number of teams without a linear increase in operational cost
Maturity
Provides a secure, consistent, and controlled deployment methodology allowing teams to gain significant maturity in public cloud within the enterprise’s approved guardrails
Velocity
Provides consistency in outcomes through automation, hence reducing the number of unique assessments, reviews and political debate required to deliver value add
Achieving Success with Google Cloud Platform
A Large Australian Investment Bank
Our client needed to mitigate a vendor management risk of having a single public cloud provider, increase resilience, and leverage niche capabilities for specific use cases.
Using our proven Google foundations framework, Sourced ran workshops to devise a technical strategy focused on designing a robust and scalable foundations platform. From the information gathered, our experienced consultants provided a migration roadmap that leveraged Google native services, ensuring an exceptional developer experience through advanced detective and corrective controls.
During the foundation platform build, Sourced helped document a comprehensive catalogue of controls in line with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) regulatory guidance.
Sourced delivered on a full Google Cloud Platform build-out. Working with key stakeholders, Sourced was able to maximise the realisation of the following benefits:
- Enablement of native Google Cloud data and machine learning services
- Enablement of a new cloud consumption model with a focus on detective controls supported by core preventative controls
With the foundational elements in place, Sourced has migrated several critical and transactional banking microservices onto the Google platform, leveraging Google’s Kubernetes Engine.
A Top Five Canadian Bank
Our client sought a cloud-native container solution for their evolving banking microservices platform, and to leverage Google’s market-leading machine learning and data analytics capabilities. The client enlisted Sourced’s expertise due to our deep understanding of their organisational structures and experience with Google Cloud implementations.
Sourced devised a scalable technical strategy based on interviews with the client, which built a full view of their core business objectives and workloads targeted for migration to Google Cloud. Using our cloud foundations philosophy and strategic roadmap, our consultants set out to deliver the core architecture and supported the client through a regulatory audit to ensure governance adherence on the public cloud platform.
Sourced delivered on a full Google Cloud Platform build-out, with a detective controls framework and security log management system, providing in-time alerts and auto-generated testing events. In addition to the core platform, Sourced migrated grid workloads to Google Cloud and the client’s online banking system to Google Kubernetes Engine, allowing our client to scale and quickly implement innovative solutions.