The sky is truly the limit when it comes to the benefits of working in the cloud. However, life in the cloud can also be complex. Achieving the agility, clarity, and alignment that successful cloud environments can provide takes continual management, innovation, and verification. 

We want to help teams and leaders make the most of their cloud environment. The Lucid Visual Collaboration Platform delivers capabilities that enable teams to plan and design a successful cloud migration strategy that meets goals and objectives as they grow and evolve.

Bring clarity to complex infrastructure

Do you have accurate documentation of your current IT architecture? Whether you’re heading for your first cloud migration or making an update to existing infrastructure, it’s important to have a clear understanding (and record) of what your system looks like today. 

Lucid helps teams document their on-prem infrastructure, cloud, or hybrid environment by combining Lucidscale and Lucidchart. Lucidscale automatically visualizes AWS, Azure, or GCP cloud architecture, allowing teams to quickly filter views and focus on the aspects and resources that are most critical to their efforts. Lucidchart can be used to complement Lucidscale models by manually adding information that may lie outside of your cloud environments. These two efforts combine to give teams an accurate and complete visualization of their infrastructure and a more clear path forward for migration.

During this process, collaborators can tag each other, leave comments, and highlight points of interest for stakeholders across departments. Lucidscale models can be filtered for specific resources, and Lucidchart contributors can point out opportunities for improvement while tagging the appropriate teams or specialists. Communication that takes place within the diagrams carries a level of clarity that can’t be matched by an email or text conversation alone.

Using Lucid’s universal canvas, you can start a brainstorm for this entire process in Lucidspark and easily convert to Lucidchart all on the same canvas—no need for multiple documents or duplicate work. This additional feature can help expedite the process, helping you reach a point of clarity much faster.

Gaining clarity in your cloud or hybrid environment helps teams successfully onboard new members, pass audits, maintain compliance certifications, and innovate confidently because they understand their current state. 

Turn ideas into actions

Cloud migration and management span teams and specialties, so communication is critical. It’s important to capture ideas from all contributors so that inputs can be prioritized and turned into action plans. With Lucidspark, teams can quickly record, sort, and vote on ideas as they collaborate from anywhere. The best ideas can be turned into actionable plans and assigned to team members so that work is completed efficiently. 

Bringing teams together on a virtual whiteboard like Lucidspark creates a central location for notes, ideas, market data, research findings, and major objectives to be shared across teams and stakeholders. This allows teams to see the big picture of their cloud migration, define scope, and quickly identify how individual parts of the project contribute to the larger goal. From there, you can transform your Lucidspark board into a Lucidchart document using universal canvas and get that much closer to executing. 

Plans can also be conceptualized by combining Lucidscale models in Lucidchart to visualize a future state. Innovations and improvements can be detailed so that everyone understands the goals and objectives around the next cloud iteration. Lucidchart includes official AWS, Azure, and GCP shapes so you can easily envision your future state. 

Cloud migration implementation can be planned in Lucidchart with supporting documents like org charts, timelines, and system architectures. Deliverables can be assigned to individuals and teams, dependencies are clear, and each item is clearly defined for all stakeholders to see. Sprint planning is collaborative, impactful, and automatically documented. Everyone knows what their responsibilities are when their actions are due, and how they contribute to the final product. 

Create and share a single source of truth

Cloud diagrams are complex, which makes creating and maintaining accurate documentation challenging, time-consuming, and prone to human error when done manually. Lucidscale updates cloud diagrams with one click, so teams can validate successful cloud migrations and deployments while also maintaining accurate records. 

Users can quickly generate accurate cloud models, data flow maps, ERDs, and UML diagrams that are not only accurate but they’re also easily accessed and understood. With conditional formatting, annotations, filters, and comments, it’s easy to make sure that team members can see the elements most important to their areas of responsibility. 

Having accurate documentation also helps with activities like onboarding, troubleshooting, and validating security and compliance. Filters can be applied to help identify orphaned elements, unnecessary resource use, and so much more to optimize your cloud usage.

Lucidscale models can also be compared to future state designs in Lucidchart to validate that the deployment was successful. Diagrams may also be shared with stakeholders, including via platforms like Confluence, to provide a single source of truth that teams can rely on for accuracy and validation. 

See and build your future state

Making your cloud environment clear is a continual effort of validation, documentation, brainstorming, planning, and implementation. Cloud architecture documents are the ideal reference for future improvements and migrations. By having an accurate starting point, teams work more efficiently as they brainstorm their next move in the cloud. You can carry your cloud models through every element of your project planning, keeping the conversations focused, relevant, and aligned. 

Whatever point you’re at for your cloud migration—brainstorming, diagramming, or auto-generating cloud models—Lucid helps teams efficiently and collaboratively optimize their cloud architecture. By working in Lucidspark, Lucidchart, and Lucidscale, you can ideate, design, create, and validate an improved cloud environment. 

Whether you need to brainstorm cloud improvements for the upcoming quarter, map out a proposed plan for the next cloud migration, or generate a dynamic cloud diagram to document your current state, Lucid allows teams to work together from anywhere to achieve their goals.