DevOps, SRE, and Cloud Center of Excellence

DevOps, SRE, and Cloud Center of Excellence: Building a Framework for Successful Cloud Adoption

Cloud adoption is no longer just a technology initiative—it’s a strategic business imperative. Organizations moving to the cloud often face challenges in governance, operational efficiency, and cultural alignment. To overcome these hurdles and ensure long-term success, building a Cloud Center of Excellence (Cloud COE) is critical. But where do you start?
In this presentation, Michael Agarwal, Director and Global Practice Leader – Cloud Databases, SRE, NoSQL at Datavail, shares actionable insights on creating a Cloud COE that drives innovation, accelerates adoption, and delivers measurable business value. You’ll learn how DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices integrate into this framework to enable automation, scalability, and resilience.
Key Highlights:


What is a Cloud COE?
Understand its role in defining cloud strategy, governance, and best practices across the enterprise.


DevOps and SRE in Cloud COE
Learn how these methodologies complement each other to streamline deployments, improve reliability, and reduce operational overhead.


Best Practices for DevOps and SRE
Explore proven techniques for automation, monitoring, and continuous improvement in cloud environments.


Strategies for Successful Implementation
Discover how to structure your Cloud COE, assign roles, and establish KPIs for success.


What Success Looks Like
Gain insights into real-world examples of organizations that have leveraged Cloud COE to achieve faster time-to-market, improved security, and cost optimization.


Why It Matters
As enterprises scale their cloud footprint, fragmented approaches can lead to inefficiencies and compliance risks. A well-designed Cloud COE ensures alignment between business and technology, enabling teams to adopt cloud services confidently and securely.
Learning Objectives:

Understand the fundamentals of Cloud COE and its importance in cloud transformation.
Learn how DevOps and SRE practices integrate into cloud governance.
Explore strategies for building a scalable, resilient, and efficient cloud operating model.
Identify success metrics and governance frameworks for long-term cloud maturity.

Whether you’re an IT leader, cloud architect, or operations manager, this session provides the blueprint for building a Cloud COE that empowers your organization to innovate and thrive in the digital era.

👉 Download the full presentation and learn more here:
https://www.datavail.com/resources/devops-sre-cloud-center-excellence/

1. DevOps, SRE, and
Cloud Center of
Excellence

2. www.datavail.com 2
25 years in IT
Past: Software Developer, DBA, TPM, Cloud
Architect
Currently Global Practice Leader at Datavail
(Lead Database Migration & Modernizations,
Site Reliability Engineering, and NoSQL
practices)
8 years of experience with AWS
M
Michael
Agarwal
Director & Global
Cloud Databases
Practice Leader,
Datavail
Connect or follow me on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/
MichaelAgarwal/

3. www.datavail.com 3
Datavail at
a Glance
Delivering a superior
approach to leveraging
data through application of
a tech-enabled global
delivery model & deep
specialization in databases,
data management, and
application services.
$25
M
Invested
in IP that improves the
service experience and
drives efficiency
15
+
Years
building and operating
mission critical data and
application systems
1,000
+
Employees
www.datavail.com 3

4. www.datavail.com 4
Datavail Cloud Provider Partnerships
Advanced Tier Partner
11+ years experience
100+ AWS Certified Consultants
250+ AWS Migrations, Modernizations
Windows (Microsoft) Workload Competency,
One of top 5 Windows partners
Oracle Services Competency, 1 of top 10
Oracle App partners
1 of top 10 Database Specialist Partners
(Open Source / NoSQL)
1 of 3 partners selected to deliver Aurora
Optimizations
Service Delivery Partner –Amazon EC2, RDS,
Aurora
Launch partner for Babelfish(SQL Server
to Aurora)
1 of top 50 Analytic partners
Azure Partner
19+ years of experience
Data + AI Solution Partner
Digital and App Innovation Solution
Partner
550+ Microsoft Consultant
Certifications
Recognized in 2017 by Microsoft as
Cloud for Global Good Partner
of the Year
1 of 5 partners for Oracle App
Workloads to Azure Program
Selected as a go to partner for
NoSQL databases
Strong expertise in cloud analytics and
data management
Strong expertise in app modernization
Oracle Application partner for Fusion
Apps (ERP, SCM, HCM, CSX, EPM)
Legacy Application partner for EBS,
Hyperion, JDE, PeopleSoft, Essbase,
Weblogic
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Partner
17+ years of experience
18 –Specializations
MySQL Expertise Badge
300+ Oracle Certifications
Certified Cloud Excellence Implementor
for EPM
Regularly selected by Oracle to present at
Industry Conferences
Selected by Telecom Eq Manufacture for
one of the largest Oracle Cloud
implementations for ERP, EPM, SCM, HCM

5. www.datavail.com 5
Fill out the
evaluation form
For a chance to win a
Conference Recovery Kit.

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Inputs:
Best
Practices
and Lessons
Learned
Industry
Analysts
Leading
Cloud
Providers
Datavail’s
500+
Customers
A unique
perspective on
cloud best
practices!

7. www.datavail.com 7
DevOpsis a combination of
software development (dev)
and operations (ops). It is
defined as a software
engineering methodology that
aims to integrate the work of
development teams and
operations teams by facilitating
a culture of collaboration and
shared responsibility.
(Source: Gitlab.com)
What is DevOps? And Why Use DevOps?

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DevOps is more than just CI / CD
Code Build Integrate Test Release Deploy Operate
Agile Development
Continuous Integration
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Deployment
DevOps

9. www.datavail.com 9
What tools are used in DevOps?
Source: kovair.com

10. www.datavail.com 10
DevOps on AWS
CI/CD Services
CodePipeline
Builds, tests, and deploys code change based on
release process models defined.
CodeBuild
Fully managed build service that compiles source code,
runs tests, and produces packages ready to deploy.
CodeDeploy
Automates code deployments to any instance
including EC2 and on-premises.
CodeStar
Provides a unified interface to manage software
delivery from a single place.
Infrastructure as a Code
CloudFormation
Provides an easy way to create and manage
collection of AWS resources.
OpsWorks
Configuration management service that uses Chef, an
automation platform that treats server configs as code.
Systems Manager
Management service that helps to collect software
inventory, apply OS patches, create system images.
Config
Provides AWS resource inventory, configuration history,
configuration change notifications to enable security,
governance.

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DevOps on Azure
Azure Boards
Deliver value to your users faster using
proven agile tools to plan, track, and
discuss work across your teams.
Azure Pipelines
Build, test, and deploy with CI/CD that
works with any language, platform, and
cloud. Connect to GitHub or any other Git
provider and deploy continuously.
Azure Repos
Get unlimited, cloud-hosted private Git
repos and collaborate to build better code
with pull requests and advanced file
management.
Azure Test Plans
Test and ship with confidence using manual
and exploratory testing tools.
Azure Artifacts
Create, host, and share packages with your
team, and add artifacts to your CI/CD
pipelines with a single click.

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Developer’s
View
QA Stage
Push Code
Backlog &
Work Items
Azure Build
Pipeline (CI)
Azure Release
Pipeline (CD)
Trigger Build
Publish
Artifacts
Azure
Artifacts
Pull
Artifacts
Trigger Release
Build Job
Get Source
Install Tools
Build Solution
Run Tests
Package Artifacts
Publish Artifacts
Deploy to Dev
Deploy to QA
Prod Stage
Deploy to
Staging Slot
Swap Staging
and Prod Slots
Approvals &
Gates
Approvals &
Gates
Azure Boards
Azure Repos
(Git)
Dev Stage
Developer
Visual
Studio
Visual Studio
Code
App Service
Prod Staging Slot
Production Slot
Dev
QA
Web App
Web App
Web App
Web App

13. www.datavail.com 13
What is SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)?
STEP 1
Monitor–keep a tab on key
functionalities w.r.t to reliability
and scalability
STEP 2
Visualize–represent findings
graphically and identify bottlenecks
STEP 3
Remediate–find solutions and
execute effectively
STEP 4
Improve–be vigilant and uphold the
principal of zero downtime
Why do you need SRE?
Term originated at Google and is
now used everywhere
Wikipedia Definition:
Site reliability engineering (SRE)
is a set of principles and
practices that incorporates
aspects of software engineering
and applies them to
infrastructure and operations
problems. The main goals are to
create scalable and highly
reliable software systems.

14. www.datavail.com 14
Benefits of Site Reliability Engineering
Reduce product
and service
downtime
Bridges the gaps
between platform
design, development, &
operational execution
Increased security &
compliance
Automation for
human error
optimization
Understanding the
process end-to-end
emphasizing outcomes
Create
observability
into service
health

15. www.datavail.com 15
SRE Maturity Model
•Proactive Problem Management and Predictive Event Management
•Automated Repairs
•Environments on Demand
(Idempotent and Immutable)
•Provision for Newer Budgets (Error, Risk, and Toil)
•Impact assessment for changes
•Experiments with Production
•Canary Deployments
•Measure and Model Golden Signals (Error, Traffic, Latency, and Saturation)
•Measure and Model Metrics like MTTR, MTBF
•Single Pane of Glass, Logging Revamped
•5 Dashboards (Performance, Reliability, DevOps, Compliance, Experience)
Self Service
Self Healing
Automated Impact
Assessment
Chaos Engineering
Telemetry
Observability
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Fault, Config, Accounting, Performance and Security
01
02
03
04
05
06

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DevOps and SRE Recap
Observability Proactive remediationTouchless automationPlaybooks and runbooks
Incident management Fault tolerant designAI/ML –Assisted KPIs Knowledge repo
Standardization
Continuous
improvement
Blameless
postmortems
Error budgets,
SLA/SLO/SLI
Modular loosely-
coupled design
DevOps toolchain
Deployments and
rollbacks
Chaos engineeringSmart contracts CI/CD pipelines
SRE DevOps

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Cloud adoption enabler (and not “red tape”)
Business Transformation is aligned with
Technology Transformation
Standardization (e.g., tagging, regions, naming
conventions, etc.)
Architecture patterns references
Perform Self Well Architected Reviews
Cloud Maturity Model
Cost governance / optimization
Prescriptive guidance in place for DevOps,
SRE/DBA, Analytics, and Development teams
What is Cloud Center of Excellence?
COE
Leaders +
Architects
SRE / DBA
Software
Developer /
Data Engineer
DevOps
Engineer
Partnerships
Training
Certifications

18. www.datavail.com 18
COE is just not a document, but everyone is practicing & referring to it
•Right architecture patterns
•Cloud Maturity Model evaluation
CI/CD is reliable, and it just happens (and you have not seen your Maven scripts in a while)
Everyone speaks the same language, and all are on the same page
•Dev & Ops = DevOps
SLA, SLO, and better SLIs = SRE’s impact
•Serious about Toil management
•Everyone is passionate about zero downtime aka “zero downtime culture”
What Does Success Look Like?

19. www.datavail.com 19
Cloud Modernization = COE Leaders + DevOps +
SRE + DBAs+ Developers + Data Engineers +
Architects
•Development stack
•CI / CD
•Application logs /
tracing
•Microservices
adoption
•Serverless adoption
•New innovative app
•New competitive
app
•New data lake
•New data
warehouse
•AI / ML
•New ETL /
Dashboards
•RDBMS →NoSQL
•Licensed based →
Open-Source
•Purpose-built
databases
•Higher performance
•Virtualization (VM)
→Kubernetes
(Containers)
•Infrastructure-as-
code
•New cloud-native
infrastructure tools
•Cloud-native ways
for HA / DR
•Implement auto
remediation
•Implement
DevSecOps
•Cloud-native SIEM
tool
•Cloud-native KMS
•New cloud-native
firewall
•New cloud-native
WAF
•Drift detection &
auto remediation
Application
Modernization
Analytics
Modernization
Database
Modernization
Infrastructure
Modernization
Security
Modernization

20. www.datavail.com 20
Fill out the
evaluation form
For a chance to win a
Conference Recovery Kit.

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Thank You
866-811-6764
[email protected]
www.datavail.com