Google Cloud Infrastructure RFP Template

Before You Issue a Google Cloud Infrastructure RFP

Infrastructure engagements on Google Cloud should start from the landing zone: organization structure, IAM, networking, and the security baseline every workload inherits. Migrations executed before that foundation exists get rebuilt within two years, expensively. Your RFP should ask vendors to describe their landing-zone blueprint and, critically, what they customize per client versus stamp out identically.

Migration planning quality shows in wave design — how workloads are grouped, sequenced and cut over with rollback plans — and in honesty about what should be re-platformed versus lifted as-is. Pair that with FinOps from day one: tagging standards, budget alerts, committed-use planning and a named owner for cost review, because cloud economics are an operating discipline rather than a procurement line.

What the Google Cloud Infrastructure Sections Cover

• Landing zone, org policy and folder hierarchy
• VPC design, peering and hybrid connectivity
• Workload inventory sorted by migration pattern
• GKE or serverless, decided per workload
• Production access, break-glass and audit logging
• Cost allocation, budgets and committed use

Writing the Google Cloud Infrastructure Scope of Work

Scope the foundation before the workloads, and describe it in terms of the decisions it fixes. The organization hierarchy, the project structure, the network design and the identity model determine what every future workload inherits, and they are expensive to revise once things are running on them. State whether you have an existing footprint that must be reorganised or whether this is a clean start, which organizational policies are non-negotiable, and how you intend to separate environments and business units. Say who owns the foundation after it is built, because unowned foundations diverge quietly.

Describe the estate you intend to move with enough detail to be priced. For each application or group of applications, record the operating systems, the databases, the dependencies between them, the licensing arrangements, the data volumes, and the tolerance for downtime during cutover. The last of these is the one that most changes effort: a system that can absorb a weekend outage migrates very differently from one that must move with minutes of interruption. Say which applications have an owner willing to test them, since a migration wave stalls on unavailable testers more often than on technology.

State the connectivity and security requirements as scope rather than as assumptions. Hybrid connectivity to remaining on-premise systems, address space planning, shared network arrangements, egress controls, encryption key management and any requirement to restrict where data may reside all belong in the scope with owners. If you operate under a specific regulatory regime, name it and name the controls it implies, because retrofitting these after workloads are running means changing the foundation with production on top of it.

Define done in terms of operation, not of workloads moved. Reasonable criteria: an application runs in the new environment for a defined period meeting its stated availability and performance targets, its backup and restore procedure has been tested by restoring rather than by documenting, the monitoring and alerting is connected to whoever is on call, the cost of running it is visible and attributed to its owner, and the decommissioning of the old environment has actually happened. Name what is out of scope: application code changes, database version upgrades and any modernisation beyond what the move requires.

Requirements That Actually Separate Google Cloud Infrastructure Proposals

• Landing zone customisation — ask which parts of their standard foundation they adapt per client and which they never change, since a blueprint applied without adaptation will conflict with your existing identity and network arrangements.
• Wave design reasoning — require an explanation of how applications are grouped into migration waves, based on dependency mapping rather than convenience, and what they do when a dependency is discovered mid-wave.
• Tested rollback — ask for a rollback procedure per wave that has actually been executed rather than documented, including how data written in the new environment is reconciled if you go back.
• Cost attribution model — require the labeling and billing structure that will let each workload's cost be attributed to an owner, since cost discipline is impossible while spend is a single undifferentiated total.
• Identity integration — ask how cloud identity integrates with your existing directory, how privileged access is granted and revoked, and what break-glass access looks like.
• Reliability targets per workload — require availability and recovery objectives to be stated per application rather than as a blanket standard, because designing everything to the strictest target is how cloud programs become unaffordable.
• Operational handover content — require the runbooks, alert definitions, escalation paths and patching responsibilities to be named as deliverables, with a stated period of joint running before your team takes sole responsibility.

Common Mistakes in Google Cloud Infrastructure RFPs

• ✕ Migrating workloads before the landing zone, then retrofitting security and networking under pressure.
• ✕ Lift-and-shift everything, importing datacenter inefficiencies at cloud prices.
• ✕ No FinOps discipline, with the first cost review triggered by an alarming invoice.
• ✕ Cutover plans without tested rollbacks, discovered the night a wave goes sideways.
• ✕ Operations handover skipped — the partner leaves and nobody owns patching, monitoring or IAM hygiene.

• ✕ Scoping the migration without the application owners who must test and accept each workload, so the technical move completes and the sign-off that allows the old system to be switched off never arrives.
• ✕ Planning address space and network design around the current estate only, leaving no room for the acquisitions, partners or additional environments that will need connectivity within the design's lifetime.
• ✕ Omitting the decommissioning of the source environment from the scope, so the saving that justified the program never materialises and you pay for both estates indefinitely.
• ✕ Treating data transfer as a logistics detail when the volume, the available bandwidth and the acceptable outage window together determine the migration approach and sometimes rule out the plan entirely.

Questions Worth Asking Google Cloud Infrastructure Vendors

1. Walk through your landing-zone blueprint and what you customized for your last two clients.
2. How do you design migration waves, and describe a rollback you actually executed.
3. What is your re-platform versus lift-and-shift decision framework, with an example of each?
4. Show the FinOps practices you leave behind: tagging, budgets, committed-use strategy, review cadence.
5. What does the operations handover include, and who answers the 2 a.m. page in month four?

How to Weight the Google Cloud Infrastructure Evaluation

Weight the foundation work above migration throughput. A program that moves workloads quickly onto a weak foundation produces a second, more expensive program within two years to fix identity, networking and separation under production load. Proposals that insist on the foundation first, even where that delays the first visible migration, are usually recommending the cheaper path over five years.

Score honesty about modernisation heavily. Moving an application unchanged is sometimes correct and sometimes imports a decade of inefficiency onto metered infrastructure. The useful vendor is the one who distinguishes between the two for your specific estate and can say which applications should be left alone, which should be moved as they are, and which should not be moved until they are changed. A uniform recommendation in either direction indicates a methodology rather than an assessment.

Give ongoing cost management weight equal to delivery capability. Cloud spending is an operating discipline rather than a procurement decision, and the difference between a well-run estate and a poorly run one is substantial and recurring. Weight the practices a vendor leaves behind, including labeling standards, budget alerting, commitment planning and a named review routine, because those persist long after the migration team has gone.