Graig Paglieri is the CEO of Randstad Technologies Group and Managing Director of Global Professionals.
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In today’s digital economy, the outcome of cloud migrations can have a profound long-term impact on business outcomes for organizations of all sizes. However, independent research suggests that few organizations fully realize the anticipated benefits from their migration effort as the journey to the cloud increases in complexity. In fact, one-third of cloud migrations fail outright, and only 1 in 4 organizations meet their migration deadlines.
Despite these daunting statistics, there are numerous ways that firms can ensure a successful migration. A successful journey to the cloud now starts with a clear understanding of drivers, services and workloads.
The Road To Success Starts With Drivers
It cannot be overemphasized that organizations should carefully consider the issues driving their transition to the cloud before taking the leap. This exercise in evaluating and identifying drivers is critical, and it consumes nearly one-third of the work associated with a successful migration.
Think about your business goals, which can be anything from improving productivity to consolidating workloads—or maybe your current data center contract is about to expire and this is a good time to make a change. Then consider how these goals or drivers align in unique combinations that require tailored technological solutions for your firm. A well-balanced team that incorporates the perspectives of all departments involved in the migration process—DevOps, security, user support and more—is more likely to yield a successful transition to the cloud than a team that prioritizes one or more perspectives at the expense of others.
With this understanding in hand, businesses are then partially equipped to make informed decisions about the applications that should be selected for migration—and the order in which this should happen. But to further streamline the process, it is imperative for the managing team to inventory and map application dependencies to understand the cascading effects of the transition and better prioritize applications for migration.
Use Key Drivers To Set The Project Scope
A general best practice is to migrate your least complex applications, which are typically internal-facing or have fewer users, first. “Mission critical” applications—like ERP solutions, data warehouses, mainframe applications or SAP/financial applications—should be delayed or, in some cases, refactored later on to utilize native cloud features. It’s worth noting, however, that the sequence of application migration isn’t written in stone and that all businesses must ultimately manage a unique set of circumstances that could require some platforms to be migrated before others.
If understanding drivers and application sequence are the most challenging phases of cloud migration, then creating an accurate budget for the transition—and controlling costs—is a close second. One survey of 450 CIOs found that 75% of migrations exceeded planned budgets as “hidden costs,” such as the expense of transitioning to an agile organizational model or embracing DevSecOps, emerged throughout the process.
Fortunately, there are concrete steps that firms can take to better identify how and when hidden costs could emerge. A skills inventory will help organizations understand which skills their IT teams possess and the training costs needed to fill gaps. Automating migration processes and cloud usage policies could further reduce the risk of unanticipated costs. Correctly analyzing storage needs could yield further savings. Though no project is without its unanticipated costs, an organization that learns and iterates its budget based on drives and application priorities is much more likely to succeed in its migration efforts.
Manage Your Technical Debt
Finally, every organization must acknowledge the technical debts—the gap between the skills required to plan and implement the migration and those of the team charged with implementation—that can undermine a cloud migration process. Technical debt is growing at a rapid pace as cloud technologies unveil new versions with thousands of new features at ever-shortening intervals. Proceeding without an accurate accounting of this debt yields either a dead end or a suboptimal migration as teams struggle to efficiently utilize the cloud. Firms should regularly track their technical debt, consider allocating 15%-20% of the migration team’s resources to quickly and regularly pay back technical debt and standardize procedures to minimize debt incurred by future capabilities or features once the migration is complete.
While cloud migration is a popular strategy, it’s also an opportunity to do a detailed analysis of and streamline your company’s business processes. Whether it is identifying migration drivers, prioritizing applications for migration or managing exploding tech debt, it’s critical to have the right team of skilled engineers and experts in place to bring your business to the cloud—and the advanced digital economy of the 21st century.
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