Rapid assessment and migration roadmap.
This migrate-to-modernise approach is so successful because it balances quick wins and long-term benefits. When you work with a cloud-native partner, you ensure the right tools and methodologies are driving your strategy from the outset, so you’re not just superimposing legacy inefficiencies on to the cloud.
The process starts with a rapid migration assessment, which is a tool-driven review of your infrastructure and application estate. Once we have the right data, it takes just 4 weeks, and there are 2 deliverables:
- Evidence-based business case – so you understand your TCO and value creation potential with the cloud (week 2)
- Recommended migration strategy – focused on early achievements and continuous modernisation and discovery. That way, your migration is fast, cost-efficient and maximises value based on ongoing learnings (week 4)
Step 1
Discovery meeting.
Because the strategy is focused on migrating to modernise, it’s not about delving into the technical detail around infrastructure and apps. Rather, it’s about understanding the overall strategy and how cloud can drive it to maximise value. That way, you’re aligning your cloud journey to business drivers.
A key reason digital projects fail is because people within the business aren’t on board with the change. Migrating to the cloud is more than an infrastructure change – to capitalise on the benefits, it involves new mindsets and ways of working (e.g. agile, DevOps). To get people on board with that broader change, you have to involve them early.
The kick-off discovery meeting is essential for aligning business and tech stakeholders – and your migration partner. Include relevant management and IT directors so there can be a holistic discussion of objectives, priorities and potential roadblocks.
Sample discovery meeting agenda
✔ Cloud transformation drivers
✔ Current infrastructure and application estate
- Continuity investments – what can’t be retired and must be leveraged
- Legacy application estate – what’s your impression, what needs modernisation, what’s approaching end of life
- Licencing agreement status and optimisation opportunties – what’s flexible, what can be rationalised
✔ Organisational readiness for cloud
- Current support and governance model – what’s working and what isn’t
- Existing and future skills base – what gaps there are
✔ Current infrastructure and application estate
- Flexibility and scalability requirements
- New application/tech capabilities
- Virtual desktop requirements
- Preferred cost model
Step 2
Technical discovery.
This is a tool-driven analysis of your current infrastructure. It gives an accurate view of your existing requirements and performance, so we can determine what cloud capacity you’ll need post-migration (taking into account the discovery meeting outcomes). This then forms the basis of your business case.
Technical discovery analysis elements
- Infrastructure performance
- Infrastructure sizing
- Technical dependencies
- Database performance
- Target infrastructure sizing
- Licence optimisation opportunities
Step 3
Evidence-based business case.
The business case and associated TCO assessment are the outputs of Steps 1 and 2. Because the process is driven by cloud-native methodologies and tools, you receive this within 2 weeks.
Depending on how your infrastructure estate is currently structured, the assessment is broken down by country and data centre. That way, you have essential, early clarity for your business case – and have benchmarks for demonstrating success within the business.
Step 4
Application discovery.
The technical discovery underpins the business case. But infrastructure is only one part of the cloud equation. To lay the foundation for ongoing value from cloud - and determine any modernisation requirements – you need a clear understanding of your application estate, too.
Often, because the application estate has grown organically – with different departments investing in different point solutions over time – it’s hard to know exactly what’s there, who owns what and what patching/updates are lacking. The application discovery gives the clarity needed for an evidence-based plan, so you’re positioned to optimise cloud capabilities ongoing.
Like the technical discovery, when you work with a cloud-native partner, this is a tool- and automation- driven process that supplements stakeholder discussions. Based on your objectives and previous discovery work, we develop an attribute list. Then, we analyse elements such as source code, software quality, dependencies, lifecycles, security and maintenance. This process can also include important data considerations, because these can be major hidden costs of running legacy applications.
Step 5
R-lane selection.
Based on the discovery processes, we use a rules engine to decide the best migration and modernisation approach for each application.
We call this R-lane selection, based on the 6Rs codified by AWS.
R-lane analysis involves cloud-native tooling that combines technical and application data and uses customised parameters specific to your needs. It processes more than 7,000 rules to deliver a cloud migration recommendation for each application. These form the basis of your migration roadmap.
6 Rs: Strategies for Migrating to the Cloud
- Retire
- Retain
- Rehost
- Replatform
- Refactor
- Repurchase
Rules engine-driven R-lane selection Example
Step 6
Migration roadmap.
The migration roadmap outlines the approach best suited to your objectives, so you achieve the right balance between exiting your data centre quickly, future-proofing your architecture, reducing ongoing technical debt and driving business value.
3 broad data centre migration approaches
Lift-and-shift workloads to the cloud
A lift-and-shift gives you a foundation for piece-by-piece application modernisation as a continuous service from the migration.
One way to do this is by using VMware, where you can rehost workloads without service breaks or IP changes. From your VMware foundation, you have direct access to native services in Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform.
Hybrid lift-and-shift
An on-time exit by lifting-and-shifting most workloads while refactoring/replatforming in specific circumstances. Modernisation then proceeds as a continuous service from the migration.
Migrate and refactor
So you exit your data centre while removing technical debt. You’re modernising workloads as you migrate them, so you have you a more gradual data centre exit but faster path to cloud native.
Workload prioritisation.
Once we agree the broad migration approach, we prioritise applications for modernisation. If you’re doing a lift-and-shift, some or all of the modernisation will proceed from that foundation. If you’re doing a migrate and refactor, it’s a progressive migration/ modernisation process.
Based on the rapid assessment findings, we prioritise workloads based on business criticality and complexity. Many organisations make the mistake of prioritising based on age and cost alone, but by balancing business criticality and complexity, you build momentum and uncover new efficiencies and opportunities to derive value.
We start with a proof of concept (POC). This focuses on low-criticality applications to allow all stakeholders to understand the process and get a stronger picture of the organisation’s true cloud maturity.
Then, we incorporate lessons learned into the migration of more business-critical and complex applications.
Although we start with low- and medium-complexity workloads, we focus on the most complex ones approximately a third of the way through. This ensures there’s sufficient time to align on the process and adapt to any challenges that arise well in time for the data centre exit.
Once your workloads are prioritised, we can create an evidence-based project plan, complete with timescales and milestones. This enables you to proceed with complete transparency on costs, inputs and outcomes – during migration and ongoing modernisation.
Workload prioritisation.
Once we agree the broad migration approach, we prioritise applications for modernisation. If you’re doing a lift-and-shift, some or all of the modernisation will proceed from that foundation. If you’re doing a migrate and refactor, it’s a progressive migration/ modernisation process.
Based on the rapid assessment findings, we prioritise workloads based on business criticality and complexity. Many organisations make the mistake of prioritising based on age and cost alone, but by balancing business criticality and complexity, you build momentum and uncover new efficiencies and opportunities to derive value.
We start with a proof of concept (POC). This focuses on low-criticality applications to allow all stakeholders to understand the process and get a stronger picture of the organisation’s true cloud maturity.
Then, we incorporate lessons learned into the migration of more business-critical and complex applications.
Although we start with low- and medium-complexity workloads, we focus on the most complex ones approximately a third of the way through. This ensures there’s sufficient time to align on the process and adapt to any challenges that arise well in time for the data centre exit.
Once your workloads are prioritised, we can create an evidence-based project plan, complete with timescales and milestones. This enables you to proceed with complete transparency on costs, inputs and outcomes – during migration and ongoing modernisation.
