What is Cloud Maturity Model (CMM) and How it Helps Improve Cloud Capability?

Cloud Computing has always been at the forefront of the ever changing IT industry. As the globe increasingly relies on IT solutions, cloud adoption has ramped up. This increased appetite has encouraged enterprises to initiate cloud transformation of their infrastructure.

Given its outstanding business benefits, every organization, regardless of size and revenue, somehow leverages the cloud computing maturity model strategy.

According to Forrester research, the cloud maturity model industry is experiencing remarkable growth, with the global market projected to reach USD 1.8 billion by 2027, up from USD 780 million in 2023.

Gartner reports that over 60 % of organizations have implemented cloud maturity models, driving improved cloud adoption, cost efficiencies, and greater agility.

RightScale’s 2025 State of the Cloud Report found that 92 % of IT decision makers consider cloud maturity assessment essential to their organization’s success.

Flexera’s 2025 State of Cloud Computing maturity model report highlights that 78% of enterprises utilize maturity models to accelerate their digital transformation.

Cloudability’s 2025 Cloud Migration Report reveals that 65 % of organizations use these models to enhance security, while 58 % optimize cloud costs, underscoring their growing strategic relevance.

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Although businesses worldwide are already quite advanced in utilizing cloud it solutions, many are ultimately failing to realize the full value of their cloud transformation. Many organizations perceive cloud assessment as just another technology project. They neglect to address the critical changes required to imbibe the right organizational mindset, behavior, and culture.

At this juncture, the Cloud Computing Maturity Model (CCMM) is an advantage, as cloud based infrastructure is the need of the hour.

Key Executive Takeaways:

• For CEOs: Leverage the cloud maturity model as a strategic compass to align cloud initiatives with corporate vision. Regular cloud maturity assessments ensure investments deliver maximum ROI and market differentiation, reinforcing the cloud computing maturity model as a board level performance metric.
• For CIOs: Employ cloud maturity assessment insights from the cloud computing maturity model to prioritize technology roadmaps, optimize platform architectures, and institute governance frameworks that balance innovation with risk management. These ongoing cloud maturity assessments drive continuous improvement.
• For CFOs: Translate cloud maturity model stage insights into financial forecasts, cost optimization plans, and investment justifications. By integrating cloud maturity assessments into budgeting processes, cloud spend becomes predictable, controllable, and value generating, validating the cloud computing maturity model in fiscal planning.
• For CTOs: Use the cloud computing maturity model to benchmark engineering capabilities, accelerate DevOps and automation adoption, and embed scalability and resilience into product roadmaps. Continuous cloud maturity assessments identify gaps, ensuring the cloud maturity model delivers tactical and strategic benefits.
• For All Top Executives: Cultivate a shared performance dashboard that links cloud maturity assessment metrics from the cloud computing maturity model to business outcomes. This transforms cloud maturity from a technical checkbox into a driver of organizational agility, cultural change, and sustainable growth, powered by repeatable cloud maturity model cycles.

Useful Link: Hybrid Cloud Vs Multi Cloud: What’s the Difference!

Defining Cloud Maturity Model (CMM)

The Open Alliance for Cloud Adoption (OACA) defines CMM as:

A framework for identifying specific solutions to enterprise cloud adoption stages. The cloud maturity model (CMM) thereby seeds a cloud transformation roadmap to cloud adoption, pointing to potential gaps and possible frameworks and solutions to consider and identifying capabilities required to achieve specific maturity levels and address targeted use cases.

It describes the cloud maturity model as an effective means of analyzing an organization’s current cloud state and planning the implementation of cloud technologies, from initial hybrid cloud maturity through advanced cloud operational maturity.

With business objectives in mind, a cloud maturity model precisely defines the target state and provides cloud transformation services to perform a gap analysis, enabling a comprehensive assessment of cloud maturity. However, it takes the services of a cloud infrastructure provider to model a practical cloud migration strategy that addresses cloud security maturity at every stage

Besides, it precisely answers ‘How should a journey to cloud assessment and hybrid IT look like’ for cloud security maturity model users of all levels, from beginners to mid level to experienced, and ensures coherence across cloud adoption stages, hybrid cloud maturity, and cloud operational maturity.

Useful Link: IAM Best Practices for Optimal Cloud Security

How the Cloud Maturity Model (CMM) Helps?

The Cloud Maturity Model (CMM) typically assists enterprises in multiple ways:

• The Cloud Maturity Model (CMM) typically assists enterprises in multiple ways:
• Understand the cloud maturity model from the consumer and service provider’s perspective.
• Define goals and develop a cloud assessment.
• Determine target maturity levels to enable use cases for the cloud security maturity model that is in line with business objectives.
• Develop straightforward roadmap projects that boost the maturity levels of all cloud optimization capabilities and domains, enabling the implementation of desired use cases.
• The plan focused on investment towards attaining maturity levels in cloud capabilities and cloud optimization.
• Manage priorities about cloud adoption and cloud computing infrastructure.
• Tap the potential to achieve the complete cloud benefits.

In traditional environments, organizations should plan a cohesive, practical cloud migration plan and cloud strategy to reap the financial and organizational benefits of the cloud maturity model.

Here are some specific examples of how the cloud maturity model can have a positive impact on the cloud and the way we behave and interact with one another:

1) Improved Communication and Collaboration: The cloud computing maturity model facilitates seamless collaboration on projects, regardless of geographic location, simplifying teamwork for dispersed teams. For instance, teams can utilize cloud based project management tools to share files, track progress, and communicate with one another, which can enhance productivity and efficiency.

2) Increased Innovation: Cloud computing provides businesses with extensive resources and tools, enabling them to foster innovation and create novel products and services. For example, companies can leverage cloud-based machine learning and artificial intelligence services to craft customized offerings that resonate more effectively with their customer base.

3) Improved Customer Service: Utilizing cloud computing, businesses can enhance their customer service capabilities by equipping themselves with the necessary tools to gain deeper insights into and address their customers’ requirements. For instance, companies can leverage cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software to monitor customer engagements and deliver tailored assistance.

Cloud Adoption Strategy: Navigating the Challenges and Finding the Way Forward

Enterprises often find themselves at a crossroads when effectively managing their cloud adoption strategy. The urgency brought about by the pandemic has led to hurried decisions, such as opting for quick lift-and-shift approaches that may not yield the desired outcomes.

In this context, lift and shift refers to moving applications to the cloud without addressing the broader transformation needs of the organization’s culture and processes—a critical misstep in any Cloud transformation roadmap.

Some enterprises make ambitious promises but underestimate the effort required to achieve them. Upon realizing the magnitude of the task, they hit roadblocks, and their migration efforts stalled before they could fully unlock the cloud’s true potential. Consequently, they expose themselves to significant operational and financial risks.

While this situation is not uncommon, it raises a crucial question: How can enterprises avoid losing their way in their cloud adoption journey? The solution lies in embracing a comprehensive and structured migration model.

Useful Link: Best Practices that Lead to Good Cloud Governance

Achieving Cloud Maturity: 4 Stages of Transformation

The Cloud Maturity Model (CMM) helps build a clear, comprehensive Cloud transformation roadmap by analyzing maturity in terms of both technical and non technical capabilities, ensuring organizations progress through each of the Cloud adoption stages.

While the technical perspective measures cloud maturity assessment in terms of cloud and ICT, the non technical perspective does so by cloud business applications, such as cloud service and deployment models, laying the foundation for Hybrid cloud maturity.

The cloud transformation security maturity model lays down the path for an effective strategy to successful cloud adoption. Built on four stages. The Project, Foundation, Migration, and Optimization (PFMO) cloud maturity model defines characteristics in each stage of the cloud migration plan, followed by transformation and outcomes at the end of every stage, ensuring true cloud operational maturity.

This structured approach to cloud security maturity and Hybrid cloud maturity transforms organizational ambition into practical, measurable progress across all Cloud adoption stages.

Maturity Stage 1: Project

Maturity Stage 2: Foundation

Maturity Stage 3: Migration

Maturity Stage 4: Optimization

These four cloud maturity models promise analysis, capability and efficiency gains, velocity and quality, and proactiveness.

Beginning with an analysis of the existing environment, the cloud maturity model involves:

• Finding opportunities specific to the cloud based infrastructure.
• Introducing relevant tooling.
• Measurable controls to manage cloud strategy.
• Effective cloud optimization.

Useful Link: 7 Most-Productive Google Cloud Tools One Must Have!

Key Business Benefits of the Cloud Maturity Model

1) Enhanced Strategic Planning

• Assessing your current maturity level using a relevant CMM can help you gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your cloud adoption.
• This assessment helps prioritize areas with the potential for the most significant impact on your organization’s cloud strategy.
• Consequently, your cloud strategy becomes more focused and efficient, avoiding investments in low-value objectives that might waste time and resources.

2) Improved Cross-Team Communication

• A CMM provides a structured framework for teams to communicate their cloud strategy, goals, and progress to various stakeholders.
• With a shared understanding of the organization’s position regarding cloud maturity, teams can work together more effectively and ensure alignment with overall business objectives.
• This unified vision fosters better collaboration and minimizes misunderstandings among teams and stakeholders.

3) Enhanced Application Performance

• As organizations progress through the stages of a CMM, they often focus on optimizing the performance of cloud-based applications.
• This optimization involves identifying and eliminating bottlenecks, reducing latency, and ensuring high availability and reliability.
• The result is improved application performance, which leads to better user experiences, increased productivity, and potentially higher customer satisfaction.

4) Enhanced Security and Governance

• CMMs typically include best practices and guidelines for cloud security and governance.
• By following these practices, organizations can strengthen their security posture in the cloud environment.
• This approach includes better access control, data encryption, compliance adherence, and regular security assessments.
• It also enhances the ability to identify vulnerabilities and potential exploits in the cloud infrastructure, reducing security risks.

5) Accelerated Time-to-Market

• Advanced stages of a CMM encourage organizations to use cloud-based resources more efficiently.

• This efficiency translates into faster development and deployment of applications and services.

• Companies can respond more quickly to market demands, roll out new features, and adapt to changing business requirements, accelerating their time-to-market.

6) Industry Benchmarking

• CMMs often provide industry-specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks.
• These metrics allow organizations to measure their cloud maturity progress compared to peers and competitors in the same industry.
• Benchmarking helps organizations gain valuable insights into where they stand relative to industry standards and where improvements are needed.

7) Cost Savings

• Advancing through the stages of a CMM encourages organizations to focus on efficiency and automation.
• This emphasis on optimization reduces day-to-day operational expenses associated with cloud usage.
• It also helps prevent costly cloud sprawl, where unused or underutilized resources lead to unnecessary expenses.

A CMM provides a structured approach to improving cloud adoption. It addresses various aspects of strategy, communication, performance, security maturity model, efficiency, industry alignment, and cost management, each contributing to an organization’s more mature and effective cloud environment.

Cloud Maturity Model Best Practices

1) Executive Alignment and Vision

• Best Practice: Embed cloud maturity objectives directly into corporate strategic plans to ensure strategic alignment across all initiatives.
• Why It Matters: Drives competitive advantage, fuels digital transformation, and accelerates business agility by clarifying how cloud investments translate into market leadership.
• Action: Host quarterly “Cloud Strategy Board” meetings where the CEO convenes business unit leaders to review CMM metrics, validate strategic alignment, and recalibrate investments for maximum return on investment (ROI).

2) Governance and Risk Management

• Best Practice: Establish a tiered governance framework that scales with maturity stages, striking a balance between speed and control.
• Why It Matters: Safeguards operational efficiency, enforces cost optimization, and prevents shadow IT, while preserving the business agility needed for rapid innovation.
• Action: Define clear policies and decision rights for each maturity level, from “Pilot and Learn” to “Optimized and Automated,” and embed these into enterprise risk registers and compliance audits to drive operational efficiency.

3) Financial Discipline and Value Realization

• Best Practice: Link CMM progress to financial KPIs and funding mechanisms, anchoring cloud spend to return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) targets.
• Why It Matters: Transforms cloud spending from a variable cost center into a predictable, ROI driven investment portfolio, while continually reinforcing cost optimization.
• Action: Implement “Cloud Chargeback and Showback” at each maturity stage, and require each project to submit a 3 year TCO/ROI projection before budget approval, ensuring every dollar advances digital transformation.

4) Technology Architecture and Automation

• Best Practice: Align platform evolution with maturity milestones, prioritizing scalability, flexibility, and automation.
• Why It Matters: Unlocks operational efficiency, reduces manual toil, and enhances productivity improvement as the organization moves through maturity stages.
• Action: Create a “Cloud Architecture Sprint” cadence where the CTO’s team iterates infrastructure as code, automated testing, and self healing patterns, in sync with CMM assessments to guarantee scalability and flexibility.

5) Cultural Enablement and Change Leadership

• Best Practice: Cultivate a cloud first mindset through cross functional training and incentives that reinforce business agility and competitive advantage.
• Why It Matters: True maturity requires behavioral shifts, empowering employees to innovate, experiment, and deliver productivity improvement at scale.
• Action: Roll out a “Cloud Champions” program where hand picked advocates receive executive sponsorship, recognition, and budget to pilot new cloud use cases, fueling ongoing digital transformation and solidifying operational efficiency.

By weaving these best practices into your cloud maturity model journey, CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, CTOs, and all top executives can drive strategic alignment, business agility, and competitive advantage, while optimizing cost, maximizing ROI, and ensuring scalability and flexibility across the enterprise.

Conclusion

The first step in harnessing the benefits of the cloud maturity model is educating the people working on the organization’s cloud security maturity model transformation about the cloud maturity levels and their components. Once you get a clear picture of your company’s cloud capabilities and the targeted cloud maturity levels, it will be easier to seek more information and support to reach your goal. If you are unsure where to start, please get in touch with us.

Veritis, the Stevie and Globee Business Awards winner, can help you better understand the cloud maturity model and how technology, processes, and people relate to various aspects of cloud maturity assessment. Our cloud experts help you with our effective cloud migration plan so that cloud migration is on par with the business objectives. Partner with Veritis and make the most of your cloud transformation.

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Additional Resources:

• AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP – The Cloud Platform of Your Choice?
• Best Practices that Lead to Good Cloud Governance
• Cloud Adoption in Government Sector: What’s the Trend?
• Cloud Cost Optimization and Management
• What is Cloud Computing?