5 ways to build secure and scalable cloud landing zones: Best practices for agile enterprises

In today’s digital landscape, cloud computing has become an essential component for enterprises across industries. Just last year, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached US$ 225 billion.

The ability to harness the power of the cloud effectively offers organizations flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency. However, to fully realize its potential, enterprises must establish a solid foundation—secure and scalable cloud landing zones.

These cloud landing zones are pre-configured environment or framework that serves as a starting point for their cloud journeys. Secure and scalable cloud landing zones enable organizations to establish a strong foundation for their cloud deployments making them critical cogs to their transformation success.

In this blog, we will delve into the best practices for building robust cloud landing zones that prioritize security measures, scalability, architecture design patterns, and governance frameworks.
Navigating cloud landing zones
As the foundation for an enterprise’s cloud infrastructure, cloud landing zones outline the cloud architecture, security measures, governance policies, and operational procedures required to support your cloud ecosystem.

Thus, cloud landing zones give you a leg up by establishing a variety of benchmarks or ‘guardrails’ that guide how applications and data are used in your cloud landscape. They grant greater flexibility and autonomy to enterprises to unlock the full potential of their cloud.

Here are 5 essential facets of strong cloud landing zones:

1. Establishing a Cloud Security Framework

Security is a top priority when designing a cloud landing zone. Implementing a comprehensive cloud security framework is crucial to safeguard sensitive data and protect against potential cyber threats.

Findings indicate that the top security concerns in the cloud are loss of data with data leaks (69%), data privacy failures (66%), and accidental exposure of credentials (44%).

Cloud landing zones give organizations better guardrails to maintain robust access controls, implement encryption mechanisms, and enhance network security measures including identity and access management (IAM) protocols – while also ensuring continuous monitoring and threat detection capabilities.

2. Enabling Scalability and Elasticity

One of the key advantages of the cloud is its ability to scale resources on demand. A well-designed cloud landing zone can accommodate the dynamic needs of the enterprise, allowing for seamless scalability and elasticity.

Implementing auto-scaling capabilities, load-balancing mechanisms, and efficient resource allocation strategies will ensure that your cloud infrastructure can handle fluctuations in workload and provide optimal performance without unnecessary costs.

3. Leveraging Architecture Design Patterns

Architectural design patterns provide proven and reusable solutions to common challenges in cloud infrastructure design–like a blueprint.

By leveraging these patterns, enterprises can benefit from established best practices and avoid reinventing the wheel. For instance, our cloud landing zones are designed to offer a comprehensive architecture, reference implementations, and code samples to augment your initial cloud environment.

This environment is the foundation to scale other adoption efforts–by consistently applying a set of common design scopes, which, in turn, represent how your operating model will be supported in the cloud.

4. Implementing Governance Frameworks

A robust governance framework is essential to managing and controlling the cloud environment effectively. Implementing a cloud governance framework enables enterprises to maintain visibility, track resource utilization, enforce security controls, and optimize cloud spending.

With cloud landing zones, enterprises have the freedom to innovate without worrying about security risks. Configuring the landing zone with your industry-specific and business requirements along with your cloud partner’s security principles ensures better governance and proactive safeguarding.

5. Embracing a predefined Cloud Adoption Framework

Adopting a well-defined cloud adoption framework can significantly streamline the process of building a cloud landing zone.

Cloud Adoption Frameworks provide a structured approach, guiding enterprises through the various stages of cloud adoption–initial adoption, foundation, migration, and modernization.

Getting your head in the clouds

Landing zones are vital for enterprises seeking to leverage the full potential of their cloud ecosystem–regardless of the stage of their cloud journey. With a well-designed cloud landing zone in place, organizations can drive innovation, achieve operational excellence, and accelerate their digital transformation journey in the cloud.

Also, this is especially important for organizations that value speed and agility; or firms recording 37% faster revenue growth than others. For them, cloud landing zones streamline cloud migration, enable quicker implementation of new applications and optimization of DevOps processes, and ensure seamless connectivity irrespective of the scale of the project/enterprise. And here, our landing zones, with infrastructure-as-code, are equipped to ensure speedy, yet reliable delivery–making it easier to be cloud-ready!