In this episode of The Lighthouse, we're having a chat with York Van den Heuvel, Tribe Lead of our cloud architects. He tells you all about Azure Governance: What is it exactly? Why is it so important? And how do you get started with it?
Fri, 16 July 2021
Governance is a set of guidelines to ensure that your operations in Microsoft Azure run as smoothly, securely and cost-effectively as possible. After all, there's a lot that can go wrong: click next a few times and suddenly you're deploying your virtual machine(s) in some exotic location. Or you're installing features that are way too complex (and expensive). Governance is meant to protect your business from all of that.
But what does it entail exactly? Security is obviously an important aspect of it, but it is much more than just that. It goes from ISO compliance and Identity and Access Management (IAM) to cost management (FinOps), automation, license management and much more. You can think of governance as the guardrails for your organization, making it easier to stay on the highway and to develop and innovate faster.
Microsoft has created its own guidelines to ensure success in the cloud. York and his team use
Everything happens on the initial landing zone, where all your applications or virtual machines start pitching in. You can actually compare it to a city: it makes sure all the necessary resources are there, such as gas, electricity and water, in order for houses to be built. In Microsoft Azure, those resources are security, network infrastructure, and so on. And once that foundation is effectively in place, you can start moving faster in the cloud.
Having a strong governance strategy will not only be beneficial during your organization's migration to the cloud, but also afterwards. It ensures that you can keep working in your Azure environment in a consistent way, according to the same rules and principles. That way, your business can grow, innovate and develop in the cloud in a more structured way.
And what about automation? For that, you need to start considering your infrastructure as a code (IaC). With it, you can further improve the consistency of your cloud operations by (nearly) eliminating the possibility of human error.
It's best to start your governance strategy as early as possible. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to get everything back within the predetermined guardrails. And we also recommend revisiting your governance guidelines regularly to re-evaluate them. Because, just like your organization itself, governance is constantly evolving. Think, for example, of new ISO standards or other requirements you have to meet. It may take quite some time now, but it really does pay off tremendously in the long run.
