This is the second in BroadPoint Cloud’s “Up-shift to the Cloud” series of blog posts
In the first part of this series we compared and contrasted two potential workload approaches - cloud-native and legacy. In this installment we review key challenges you may face on the road to your digital transformation.
Some common roadblocks on the path from legacy to cloud-native are significant include:
Contracts with existing third-party providers preventing significant change
Limited in-house experience with cloud technologies
Security and data protection concerns
Remaining amortization of existing CapEx
Technology incompatibilities
A reliable way to ensure these potential roadblocks are ruled out, is completing an extensive cloud-readiness assessment. Aside from the technology aspects and that help identify and prioritize migration candidates from your legacy application portfolio - this readiness assessment must also encompass broader organizational factors.
We’ve described seven critical aspects of a cloud readiness assessment to ensure a smooth transformation journey:
Business case
A well-fortified business case must specify business benefits of migrating each application identified for a move to the cloud. For instance - IT assets over 5 years old that may be approaching end of life make an excellent business case for cloud migration considering the high cost to replace
Cloud Provider Selection
Setting aside the tech stack, approach your cloud vendor with the same mindset as with purchasing any commercial off-the-shelf software. Evaluate service level agreements, native monitoring solutions, region availability per provider, breadth of tech stack (OS, languages, tooling), and ease of migration.
Security
How well will your existing security connect in the cloud? This includes user identification, authorization and authentication; data and transport encryption (especially in regulated industries like banking or healthcare); intrusion detection and threat mitigation.
Networking
Do you have excessively chatty applications? Are there special requirements that have caused you to implement internal firewalls and will they need to be implemented in the cloud? Do you currently have latency or bandwidth issues?
Application and Data Integration
How many non-migrating applications are interdependent on the applications scheduled for migration? Will data movement on-premise to/from the cloud present any issues like latency or integrity? Does your provider have data ingress or egress charges that might be prohibitive?
System, Service, Release, Configuration and Change Management
How will application delivery differ in the cloud vs. on-premise? How will configuration and state be managed? How can you right-size capacity and will your provider enable seamless scaling on demand? If your solution requires more IaaS, how will you handle patching, security and faults?
People
Traditional IT skills do not always translate well into cloud technology skills. There will be a training gap for your staff. The shift to cloud native will also bring with it cultural and organizational changes. You will need to bring in people with the necessary cloud skills (like architecture, process transformation or DevOps) to help your team acclimate to the new way of doing things.
In Part 3 of this series we will spend some time considering the changes necessary to help your teams adjust to the changes and to make your long-term cloud journey a successful one.