The cloud is a vast set of resources that can be used to solve all kinds of business problems; however, it is also a complex set of technologies that requires not only skillful people to use it, but also a strict operating foundation to ensure it is being done securely and with cost and scale in mind. Even before a single workload is deployed to the cloud, it is important for a company to fully identify their expected foundational design. This would include everything from account structures, virtual network design, regional/geographic requirements, security structure in terms of areas such as identity and access management and compliance, or governance considerations with regards to specific services to be used for different types of workloads. Understanding how to leverage Infrastructure as Code, as pointed out in the axis automation earlier, is also a critical element that should be identified early.

Once all of the decisions are made and the cloud operating foundation is in place, that is the time for the initial projects to begin. Between the decision-making process and the first few projects being deployed, the DevOps teams will gain lots of experience with both the agile pace of working, the target cloud vendor platform, and the company's set of guidelines and approaches to their cloud native environment.