01Inventory the environment
List the cloud accounts, subscriptions, applications and business processes involved. Record the owner, billing contact, privileged access and important dependencies. A resource that nobody recognises can still be supporting a critical task, so discovery should precede cleanup or migration.
Separate business requirements from a provider preference. The appropriate environment depends on the application, information, location requirements and available operational skills. Supported services and the exact scope of management should be confirmed for the engagement.
02Establish access and change control
Use named access and defined roles rather than unmanaged shared administrator accounts. Record how new access is approved, reviewed and removed. Changes should have a responsible owner, an appropriate test and a way to reverse the change if the expected result is not achieved.
Cloud services use shared-responsibility models. The provider’s platform protections do not remove the customer’s responsibilities for configuration, account access, applications and data. Check the model for the particular service instead of assuming the word cloud means fully managed.
03Connect monitoring with action
Choose alerts that someone can investigate and explain what happens when they trigger. Monitor the behaviour that affects the business, not only whether a resource responds. Agree who handles suspected compromise, availability issues and unexpected cost changes.
Review subscriptions, consumption and data-transfer charges against the workload. Cloud can improve flexibility, but it does not automatically lower every bill. Keep a baseline and document the effect of changes before claiming a saving.
