HYBRID CLOUD
STRATEGIC PLAN
A secure, governed, and measurable modernization roadmap
Prepared for
NorthStar Services, Inc. [Replace with official scenario company]
Prepared by
[Your Name] | External IT/Cloud Consultant
Course
Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Orchestration - E028
Date
August 6, 2026
This model is based on the information supplied in the request, not the complete
SUBMISSION
WGU scenario or rubric. Replace every bracketed item and validate all assumptions
NOTE
before submission. Original analysis and personalization are required.
,WGU E028 | Hybrid Cloud Strategic Plan
Document Control and Planning Basis
Purpose. This strategic plan recommends a controlled transition from a capacity-constrained, legacy
on-premises data center to a Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) hybrid architecture integrated with Microsoft
Azure. It connects business outcomes to architecture, sequencing, governance, performance measures, and
decision gates.
Scope boundary. The plan defines strategy and target-state direction. It does not constitute a final bill of
materials, low-level design, production change record, regulatory opinion, or vendor contract. Those artifacts
follow discovery and architecture validation.
Planning assumptions
ID Assumption used in this model Required validation
A1 NorthStar operates one primary on-premises data center with aging Replace with exact asset inventory, hypervisor,
x86 servers, shared storage, and a virtualized application estate. age, utilization, warranties, and sites.
A2 Demand is variable and existing capacity procurement is too slow Insert scenario growth forecasts, utilization
for business growth. ceilings, and procurement lead time.
A3 Regulated or sensitive records require data-location, privacy, Name the exact laws, contracts, classifications,
retention, and access controls. and approved Azure regions.
A4 Existing workloads can run on Nutanix AHV or can be migrated after Confirm OS, application, database, license, and
compatibility testing. vendor support matrices.
A5 A 12-month program is feasible, with executive sponsorship and a Replace with the rubric timeline, budget, staffing,
cross-functional cloud adoption team. and dependencies.
A6 Targets below are proposed baselines and require approval after Recalculate KPI baselines using finance,
discovery. operations, and monitoring data.
Decision statement
Approve a discovery-and-pilot program for NC2 on Azure, governed through Azure Arc and Microsoft Entra ID,
with production expansion allowed only after security, resilience, cost, performance, and rollback criteria are
met.
NorthStar Services, Inc. | Planning assumptions require validation against the official scenario Page 2
, WGU E028 | Hybrid Cloud Strategic Plan
Executive Summary
NorthStar's legacy data center has become a constraint on growth. Capacity is purchased in large
increments, infrastructure refreshes consume capital, recovery depends on a limited physical footprint, and
fragmented administration makes consistent security and evidence collection difficult. Maintaining the status
quo increases the probability that demand will exceed capacity, aging equipment will fail, or recovery
objectives will not be met.
The recommended strategy is a deliberately hybrid operating model. Systems whose latency, data-residency,
dependency, or business requirements favor local execution remain in the private cloud. Elastic,
customer-facing, development/test, analytics, backup, and disaster-recovery workloads use Microsoft Azure.
NC2 on Azure supplies a consistent Nutanix infrastructure layer in both locations, reducing the amount of
replatforming required for initial migrations. Azure Arc provides a unified resource representation for eligible
non-Azure servers so policy, inventory, monitoring, and security controls can be applied centrally (Microsoft,
2026a; Nutanix, n.d.-a).
The plan is organized around four strategic pillars: secure-by-design governance; resilient and scalable
service delivery; financially accountable consumption; and workforce/operating-model readiness. Migration
occurs in five gated phases: discovery, foundation and pilot, noncritical workloads, production waves, and
validation/optimization. Each phase has entry criteria, technical actions, acceptance evidence, ownership,
and rollback provisions.
Within 12 months, the proposed outcomes are: migrate at least 60% of eligible development/test and low-risk
workloads; reduce avoidable infrastructure capital expenditure by 30% against the approved baseline;
sustain at least 99.95% availability for tier-1 services after stabilization; achieve recovery point and recovery
time objectives through tested failover; attain at least 95% policy compliance; and ensure 100% of in-scope
resources are tagged, inventoried, monitored, and assigned to accountable owners. These targets are
approved only after baseline validation.
The recommended immediate decision is to fund Phase 1 and Phase 2, appoint an executive sponsor and
cloud governance board, and authorize a limited pilot. Production migration remains contingent on signed
acceptance of architecture, security, performance, cost, and recoverability evidence.
Business outcomes and enabling capabilities
Business outcome Enabling capability Success evidence
Scale without long hardware lead Azure capacity plus NC2 workload mobility Approved scale test; time-to-provision
times reduced to <=4 hours
Protect sensitive data and Classification, Entra ID, RBAC, Policy, >=95% policy compliance; no critical
demonstrate control encryption, logging unresolved findings
Improve continuity Second-site cloud capacity, replication, Tier-1 failover test meets approved
immutable backup, runbooks RTO/RPO
Shift spending toward accountable Tagging, budgets, showback, reservations Unit-cost dashboard; variance <=10%
consumption after stabilization after month 3
Reduce operational fragmentation Nutanix Prism plus Azure Arc/Azure Monitor 100% in-scope inventory and telemetry
coverage
NorthStar Services, Inc. | Planning assumptions require validation against the official scenario Page 3
STRATEGIC PLAN
A secure, governed, and measurable modernization roadmap
Prepared for
NorthStar Services, Inc. [Replace with official scenario company]
Prepared by
[Your Name] | External IT/Cloud Consultant
Course
Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Orchestration - E028
Date
August 6, 2026
This model is based on the information supplied in the request, not the complete
SUBMISSION
WGU scenario or rubric. Replace every bracketed item and validate all assumptions
NOTE
before submission. Original analysis and personalization are required.
,WGU E028 | Hybrid Cloud Strategic Plan
Document Control and Planning Basis
Purpose. This strategic plan recommends a controlled transition from a capacity-constrained, legacy
on-premises data center to a Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) hybrid architecture integrated with Microsoft
Azure. It connects business outcomes to architecture, sequencing, governance, performance measures, and
decision gates.
Scope boundary. The plan defines strategy and target-state direction. It does not constitute a final bill of
materials, low-level design, production change record, regulatory opinion, or vendor contract. Those artifacts
follow discovery and architecture validation.
Planning assumptions
ID Assumption used in this model Required validation
A1 NorthStar operates one primary on-premises data center with aging Replace with exact asset inventory, hypervisor,
x86 servers, shared storage, and a virtualized application estate. age, utilization, warranties, and sites.
A2 Demand is variable and existing capacity procurement is too slow Insert scenario growth forecasts, utilization
for business growth. ceilings, and procurement lead time.
A3 Regulated or sensitive records require data-location, privacy, Name the exact laws, contracts, classifications,
retention, and access controls. and approved Azure regions.
A4 Existing workloads can run on Nutanix AHV or can be migrated after Confirm OS, application, database, license, and
compatibility testing. vendor support matrices.
A5 A 12-month program is feasible, with executive sponsorship and a Replace with the rubric timeline, budget, staffing,
cross-functional cloud adoption team. and dependencies.
A6 Targets below are proposed baselines and require approval after Recalculate KPI baselines using finance,
discovery. operations, and monitoring data.
Decision statement
Approve a discovery-and-pilot program for NC2 on Azure, governed through Azure Arc and Microsoft Entra ID,
with production expansion allowed only after security, resilience, cost, performance, and rollback criteria are
met.
NorthStar Services, Inc. | Planning assumptions require validation against the official scenario Page 2
, WGU E028 | Hybrid Cloud Strategic Plan
Executive Summary
NorthStar's legacy data center has become a constraint on growth. Capacity is purchased in large
increments, infrastructure refreshes consume capital, recovery depends on a limited physical footprint, and
fragmented administration makes consistent security and evidence collection difficult. Maintaining the status
quo increases the probability that demand will exceed capacity, aging equipment will fail, or recovery
objectives will not be met.
The recommended strategy is a deliberately hybrid operating model. Systems whose latency, data-residency,
dependency, or business requirements favor local execution remain in the private cloud. Elastic,
customer-facing, development/test, analytics, backup, and disaster-recovery workloads use Microsoft Azure.
NC2 on Azure supplies a consistent Nutanix infrastructure layer in both locations, reducing the amount of
replatforming required for initial migrations. Azure Arc provides a unified resource representation for eligible
non-Azure servers so policy, inventory, monitoring, and security controls can be applied centrally (Microsoft,
2026a; Nutanix, n.d.-a).
The plan is organized around four strategic pillars: secure-by-design governance; resilient and scalable
service delivery; financially accountable consumption; and workforce/operating-model readiness. Migration
occurs in five gated phases: discovery, foundation and pilot, noncritical workloads, production waves, and
validation/optimization. Each phase has entry criteria, technical actions, acceptance evidence, ownership,
and rollback provisions.
Within 12 months, the proposed outcomes are: migrate at least 60% of eligible development/test and low-risk
workloads; reduce avoidable infrastructure capital expenditure by 30% against the approved baseline;
sustain at least 99.95% availability for tier-1 services after stabilization; achieve recovery point and recovery
time objectives through tested failover; attain at least 95% policy compliance; and ensure 100% of in-scope
resources are tagged, inventoried, monitored, and assigned to accountable owners. These targets are
approved only after baseline validation.
The recommended immediate decision is to fund Phase 1 and Phase 2, appoint an executive sponsor and
cloud governance board, and authorize a limited pilot. Production migration remains contingent on signed
acceptance of architecture, security, performance, cost, and recoverability evidence.
Business outcomes and enabling capabilities
Business outcome Enabling capability Success evidence
Scale without long hardware lead Azure capacity plus NC2 workload mobility Approved scale test; time-to-provision
times reduced to <=4 hours
Protect sensitive data and Classification, Entra ID, RBAC, Policy, >=95% policy compliance; no critical
demonstrate control encryption, logging unresolved findings
Improve continuity Second-site cloud capacity, replication, Tier-1 failover test meets approved
immutable backup, runbooks RTO/RPO
Shift spending toward accountable Tagging, budgets, showback, reservations Unit-cost dashboard; variance <=10%
consumption after stabilization after month 3
Reduce operational fragmentation Nutanix Prism plus Azure Arc/Azure Monitor 100% in-scope inventory and telemetry
coverage
NorthStar Services, Inc. | Planning assumptions require validation against the official scenario Page 3
