Supercharge your cloud journey. Secure success for customers, businesses, organisations, and technology. Regardless of company size. Unleash the game-changing powers of a Head of Cloud Success!

TL;DR: Cloud Success is Top Priority!

Cloud is hard, even harder for highly regulated businesses. It should come as no surprise that

1. Numerous cloud programmes are discreetly distressed.
2. Thought leaders secure success — for customers, businesses, organisations, technology, and their own tenure — with a Head of Cloud Success!
3. The example role description makes it easy to identify the right candidates.

Read on to find out more about these hard truths and the (not so) surprising solution inspired by thriving businesses. Oh, and if you need a Head of Cloud Success, feel free to reach out.

Dirty Little Cloud Secrets

Now, cloud is hard. Even harder for highly regulated businesses. Yet a common theme these days seems to be taken straight from a Cranberries album: “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?”

So, have things just become substantially easier over time? That’s certainly true to an extent, especially on a technical maturity and adoption level.

However, numerous cloud programmes are also quietly failing. Telltale signs are growing frustrations amongst customers, businesses, organisations, and technology.

This can quickly lead to a general perception of failure and unmet expectations. Take The Cloud Distress Test to quickly gauge if your cloud programme is distressed!

However, there’s a powerful and intriguing solution. Right in front of us.

The Head of Cloud Success

Thriving businesses and organisations know every well, that in order to succeed, they need to carefully manage Customer Success. No customers. No business. No good.

Cloud is no different. So, if

You don’t leave your Customer Success to chance. Why leave Cloud Success to chance?!

Now, as cloud touches almost every aspect of an organisation, Cloud Success is more than just Customer Success. It’s Business Success. It’s Organisational Success. It’s Technology Success. Thus,

Cloud Success	=	Customer Success
		+ Business Success
		+ Organisational Success
		+ Technology Success

Not explicitly listed, but no less crucial are successful perception and expectation management.

Spearheaded by The Head of Cloud Success, this success-focussed approach then allows to truly bring together all otherwise disbursed threads under a single roof, resolving fragmentation and proliferation.

Now, as success isn’t limited to a particular company size, this approach is also universally applicable. A natural home for the role is the Cloud Centre of Excellence (in short: CCoE), for organisations that have one. But this isn’t a strict requirement.

Below is a concise role description for a Head of Cloud Success. Feel free to use, adjust, or publish as you see fit. Finding the right person is all that really matters.

Example Role Description

We are looking for a Head of Cloud Success. This is a pivotal hire for our cloud. In essence, we expect that

The Head of Cloud Success is The Facilitator of the Cloud. The one-stop shop for cloud success.

This is at the same time both a deeply technical and non-technical role. It deliberately penetrates all verticals to break down silos and further strengthen collaborations.

This role will have you reach deep into your toolbox. It will leverage your entire repertoire of customer, business, organisation, and technology knowledge, as well as, experience.

Responsibilities

As the Head of Cloud Success, you are owning the success of the cloud. This means,

Ensuring that everyone is able to successfully leverage the cloud.

Amongst other things, this includes, but is by no means limited to,

• Being the intersection of customers, businesses, organisations, and technology, where all threads converge
• Leading your clients to success with actionable guidance and hands-on assistance, e.g., via embedded engagements
• Being the voice of those not present. Being the voice of reason that balances differing views, opinions, and interests and keeps the cloud on track by maintaining a holistic view
• De-siloing knowledge, bridging gaps, and expanding our knowledge base

Personality, Skills, and Experience Requirements

In order to make you successful, the following personality, skills, and experiences are essential. Note the dedicated sections below, addressing pivotal areas of cloud success.

Personality

We understand that technology is a people business. And that when problems arise, technology isn’t necessarily the root cause.

The cloud is an epic undertaking that will challenge us. Thus, we care even more deeply about hiring the right person who can “grease the wheels” and “get things done” by

• Being a hands-on self-starter with an approachable entrepreneurial mindset who is leading from the front
• Quickly gaining the trust of those around and being able to guide, influence, and nudge them towards success
• Taking pride in embracing challenges, as well as, being pragmatic and open minded — especially to opposing views
• Making everyone around better, educating, mentoring, and fostering a culture of collaboration
• Speaking the language of the target audience — ranging from engineers to customers and executives, as well as, from individuals to large audiences

General Skills and Experience

In general, you need to be “well versed”. Ideally, you have a background as a Public Cloud Architect, Enterprise Solution Architect, Enterprise Architect, Software Architect, and a Technical Lead.

While this might initially seem like a tall order, for you to be successful in this role, it is crucial that you have a solid and actionable understanding of

• System and solution architectures, their benefits, challenges, and shortcomings
• Ecosystems and corresponding integrations, e.g., SSO, IAM/PAM, observability, developer tooling, operations, support, cybersecurity, audit, etc.
• Software engineering and architecture, as well as, product based solution approaches
• Modern engineering, release, and operating principles, methodologies, and best practices
• At least one modern object-oriented programming language
• Balancing tactical decisions without compromising long term strategic success
• Managing risks, including, but not limited to, regulatory, business, financial, legal, operational, organisational, technical, etc.

Customer Success

We deeply care about our customers — “Successful Customers! Successful Company!”

In order to ultimately make your customers successful on their cloud journey and provide a superior customer experience, you need to

• Understand the status quo of customers, their intended outcomes, and motivations
• Consult hands-on on cloud migrations, app modernisations, and corresponding solution architectures that make the involved parties successful
• Ensure customer success by providing PoCs and readily usable code artefacts that seamlessly integrate into the corresponding ecosystems
• Build an inventory of standardised solution patterns that are readily available for implementation and scaling with minimum overhead

Business Success

At the end of the day, “It’s just business!”. In order to make the businesses successful, you need to

• Understand the business and regulatory landscape we operate in that shapes needs, motivations, priorities, and opportunities
• Drive the business case for cloud, as well as, individual use cases
• Keep everyone honest on the business we’re in - and the ones we’re not
• Champion the business proposition of cloud and how to effectively leverage economically viable solutions and opportunities

Organisational Success

Cloud touches almost every aspect and underpins large parts of our organisation — and we need everything to “hum as one”. In order to make the organisations successful, you need to

• Spearhead solutions that seamlessly integrate into the corresponding ecosystems
• Unify and standardise patterns for seamless integrations, building an inventory of readily available authoritative solutions
• Advance ecosystems to leverage the true potential
• Evangelise the use of cloud technology - and it’s avoidance when unsuitable!

Technical Success

Cloud is a non-trivial platform, a “value-added product”. In order to be successful, you need to have an intimate and hands-on actionable understanding of

• CSP and cloud-native technologies, principles, and concepts
• Higher-order cloud services, e.g., Serverless, big data solutions, and SaaS offerings
• Software engineering and product based approaches to creating and managing infrastructure at scale
• Available integration options into the corporate and third party ecosystems
• Frictionless developer experiences focussed on self-service and empowerment

So, How Do You Ensure Cloud Success?!

While the above Worx for Me!™ when it comes to ensuring Cloud Success™, you may have an alternative or better way.

Think this is all rubbish, massively overrated, or generally heading into the absolutely wrong direction?! Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and teach me something new!

As always, prove me wrong and I’ll buy you a pint!