Landing Zone or Cloud Landing Zone: Introduction
Earlier, having a single gigantic cloud account, storing the
entire data of an organization was a regular practice. The
emerging technologies and modern infrastructures have changed
the scenario. Presently, multiple individual cloud accounts are
used by companies, making it complex for engineers to manage.
Companies should maintain bare minimum auditing, security
baseline, networking centralized log management, and governance
setup as every account is an element of cloud presence.
As organizations move towards cloud migration and managing
multiple cloud accounts, creating an effective infrastructure is
necessary. When it comes to creating this infrastructure, then
the foremost step in the process is having the
Landing Zone or Cloud Landing Zone.
What is a Landing Zone in the Cloud?
In order to create a secure cloud environment, creating
essential infrastructure beforehand is necessary. A landing zone
acts as a blueprint or a plan that is used to ensure that the
infrastructure grows and develops as planned and in an organized
manner. With this blueprint, adding new services and sections in
the cloud can be made efficient and effective. Moreover, it
makes the setup with the existing data uncomplicated.
By creating a landing zone, companies can efficiently make the
most out of the account structure, allowing them to have
exponential growth through the help of automation. With that in
mind, creating the landing zone is among the foremost things
that companies perform while planning cloud migration.
Deployment of the landing zone will have access management,
desired security, and operational instrumentation, dependable
connectivity, and automation of operations to create a secure
and efficient cloud environment.
Why have a Cloud Landing Zone?
Having an efficient cloud environment is necessary for an
organization, and landing zones help in achieving that goal. Not
only that, but here are the perks that the landing zone
provides.
-
Cost Management:
Undeniably, having and maintaining a cloud requires expenses.
However, taking the right time to create a landing zone in the
cloud initially allows the organization to have transparency
on the cloud spending as well as better control over it. As
the money is spent correctly, the probability of unnecessary
spending is minimal.
-
Enhanced Consistency:
When it comes to using the cloud, then having the utmost
consistency is necessary. A landing zone in the cloud offers a
starting position of the cloud environment, giving the
organization consistency and confidence in the deployment of
the cloud workload.
-
Transparent Audits:
A cloud landing zone makes sure that the business actions are
traceable and auditable, allowing you to have a safe and
secure environment.
-
Huge Scale:
The foremost reason why a landing zone is necessary is due to
cloud migration and the transition of companies towards a
cloud environment. In the majority of the cases, the action
will be done on a large scale. Before the deployment of the
critical workload, the setup of a landing zone offers the
environment with the scalability to fulfill organizational
needs rapidly.
Fundamentals of Landing Zone in Cloud:
The landing zone allows rapid expansion via automation. However,
organizations have to keep in mind certain considerations while
designing and implementing. As every business is unique, using a
pre-made template is not the action for the long run. Instead,
designing an exclusive landing zone for cloud migration is an
appropriate act.
-
Security:The centralized Identity and Access
Management (IAM) solution is the building block for compliance
and the same is provided by a landing zone. It allows the
users to be stored in a single managed area. In addition to
that, it offers password rotation schedules, easily adding or
removing users or conducting audits. One major fundamental
security part of landing zones is the ability to define roles
for engineers and admins to handle the platform. By defining
the roles, it showcases the organization’s engineering
structure. SecurityRole, AuditRole, DeveloperRole, and
OperatorRole are some of the roles that can be defined with
the help of the landing zone in the cloud. Each of the
professional's roles will be assigned and the permissions are
given accordingly so that they can perform effectively.
-
Shared Services: Deployment of several tools
that are used across the entire organization can be done with
the help of the shared services account. Microsoft Active
Directory is one of the most commonly used Shared Services
using a landing zone.
-
Automation: If there is any foundation that
keeps on evolving with passing time, then it is probably
automation. A few of the landing zone areas can improve
reliability, scalability, and productivity, resulting in
enhanced efficiency. Moreover, automation allows the
organization’s infrastructure to remain optimized to make sure
that it evolves as the demand increases. However, upcoming
deployments can be hindered if the initial cloud landing zone
witnesses a lack of automation.
-
Network Connectivity: Every landing zone
should offer a basic networking layout that can establish a
connection within cloud organizations and individual systems.
The networking design can also have VPN/DirectConnect
attachments, VPC peerings, and many other things. Plenty of
landing zones define topology for the cloud network as it is
essential for a hybrid multi-cloud strategy. However, its
final inclusions depend on the specific requirements and goals
of the business. Appropriate planning of the organization’s
network saves from a lot of issues in the future caused by
improperly created networking services.
Foundation Elements of Landing Zone:
Creating a landing zone is itself the beginning of implementing
cloud transformation. However, there are certain foundation
elements of the landing zone that allows a smooth transition and
lay the groundwork effectively.
-
Hybrid Identities:
Creating identity management controls is daunting and
time-consuming. Landing zones should be made in such a way
that they make the most out of the existing identity
management capabilities instead of building a fresh one. The
identity depository should be duplicated to the cloud
environment so that the prevailing identity management
controls can be expanded to the cloud environment. The key
objective of this is to adapt federated authentication and
identity duplication from the traditional environment.
-
Cloud Subscription Management: Creating a
centralized approach to handle user and application access
consistently is necessary. And, that is done through the
landing zone as it provides an efficient approach to managing
tenancy or multiple cloud subscriptions and the main access
management while using these constructs. In order words, the
landing zone ensures streamlined governance according to the
set enterprise standards. The primary motive of this action is
to create management groups, deploy a multi-subscription
environment for shared services, and implement Role-based
Access Control.
-
Ops Instrumentation:
Automating the implementation of governance, engineering ops,
and monitoring is done through the landing zone. Moreover,
addressing cloud-specific issues like template deployment,
reactive scalability, and cost management are also addressed
through the landing zone. Cutting it short, service catalog
blueprints, monitoring, ops automation, and central log
management are all part of Ops instrumentation in the landing
zone.
-
Hybrid Network:
Plenty of organizations use several cloud, data centers, and
environments. Moreover,they may have clients that work on
multiple cloud platforms which is why creating a uniform
virtual network topology on multiple platforms is necessary.
By creating a hybrid network, application deployment and
network isolation are made uncomplicated. Cutting it short,
creating a hybrid network in the landing zone ensures
connectivity across all sites and the implementation of an
access control list.
-
Data Retention:
Extending current policies and toolsets for data retention is
a positive move while adopting cloud technology. With that in
mind, the landing zone considers the arrangements necessary to
fulfill the policy requirements. Even though the actual design
may not make use of the exact toolset, but the motive of doing
so is to make sure that there is a common implementation,
fulfilling the data retention requirements.
-
Security Baseline:
While adapting to the new cloud, the most daunting task is to
get the most out of the cloud while having the utmost security
standards. With the implementation and enforcement controls in
the cloud environment, the landing zone build-out takes all
these standards into consideration. Moreover, it offers the
management of security controls on all the environments.
Threat Management, Transmission Security, Edge Security, and
Vulnerability Management, among others, are an integral part
of this process where consistent architecture is deployed.
Launching a Landing Zone in Cloud:
The aforementioned points were the fundamentals and foundation
elements of a landing zone in the cloud. However, the created
blueprint has to be brought to reality to make it perform. An
effective cloud landing zone is secure, reliable, and performs
excellently. Majorly, there are three platforms to create a
reliable landing zone; Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and
Google Cloud Platform. Here are the steps and factors that you
should take while launching a landing zone in any of the cloud
platforms.
Why was the landing zone built?
Before you launch the landing zone, having a clear idea of why
the landing zone is created should be the priority. With that in
mind, classify a project to test the created concept and
constantly monitor its progress.
How the Landing Zone will be used?
Ultimately, the landing zone is created to be used by services,
users, and applications. Considering that fact, going in-depth
about how the accounts created through the landing zone will be
consumed by the user. Setting appropriate security for every
account type, working with the business to analyze the usage,
and reviewing the modes should be done prior to writing the code
for the landing zone.
- Gather a Skilled Team:
Without a doubt, working on a landing zone in the cloud is a
team activity, especially when it is about creating and
launching it. Determining the appropriate skills and team
structure necessary beforehand helps in a long way and ensures
that the workflow remains flawless. Make sure to keep the
landing zone components and team structure hand to hand to
prevent silos.
- Attain support from key People:
Stakeholders and experts play a crucial role in every task,
including launching a landing zone. Rather than waiting for
their input, try to engage with the teams that handle the
crucial points to minimize delays and hindrances. As they are
directly related to the project, maintaining utmost
transparency with them during meetings and attaining their
feedback is beneficial.
- Adapt Cloud-native Approach:
Many organizations try to match their current infrastructure
on the cloud. However, this practice is not effective in
landing zones. Instead of doing so, adapting the cloud-native
approach including its tools and services is the most
effective way of reaching the goal. Using third-party tools
that have the functionality of automation is the correct
method of performing this action.
- Set Delivery Goals:
Cloud is among never-ending technologies, and there is always
some scope to perform more actions. Landing zone implementation
may also be never-ending unless the delivery objectives are not
defined. Consider monitoring the organization’s requirements for
landing zone features and be adamant about the core of the
landing zone to determine its delivery objective.
- Construct a Security model:
One of the key features of a reliable landing zone is its
extended security for creating accounts. Connecting with the
security teams to avoid blockers and implement industry
standards for enforcing security models.
- Test Landing Zone:
Akin to other critical IT components, landing zone
infrastructure should be tested to ensure its stability and
functionality. A successfully created landing zone should be
able to perform frequent build and destroy life cycles on the
test landing zones and create accounts that are illustrative of
the production landing zone.
-
Monitory security and compliance framework:
Successfully monitoring and reporting security and compliance
controls is a key functionality of a regulated business.
Tracking and constantly reviewing the tracking document should
be a professional’s priority. Moreover, the compliance documents
should be shared with the necessary teams to ensure extreme
transparency within the management regarding the security and
compliance framework.
- Frequentative Delivery:
Cloud is highly flexible and allows the professional to keep it
evolving and make the necessary corrections in the future.
Landing zones should be created in a way that they keep getting
better and should depict their value with time.
Conclusion
When it comes to migration to the cloud, then landing zones are
the foremost thing to consider. With automated environment
setup, excellent flexibility, extended security and compliance,
and shrinking operational costs are the reasons why landing
zones are beneficial for organizations considering adapting to
cloud technology. The goal of the landing zone should be quick
adoption, short-term operational superiority, and long-term
self-reliance. However, landing zones are necessary for every
organization to commence its cloud journey. The success of the
landing zone is judged by the time it takes for the organization
to become self-reliant in adopting cloud technologies.