Migrating to the Cloud with Speed and Resiliency
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Author: Chloe Lovatt
In our change-driven economy, most CIOs are under pressure to deliver more with less - and to deliver it faster than ever before. Migrating applications to the Cloud seems like a way to easily deliver more for less - on the surface. However, there are challenges when increasing the pace of migration to the Cloud:
1. Historically, companies had looked at migrating infrastructure to the Cloud but later realised the focus should just be on moving applications.
2. 80% of incidents are caused by change. Rapid migration to the Cloud doubles or triples the change rate, increasing risk.
3. Some applications just aren't Cloud ready. This means you have to make decisions about whether to update or replace these applications, do without them or have a hybrid Cloud and on premise model. Making these changes can lead to a further increase in change across the organisation.
Change is becoming increasingly complex and requirements and demands are increasing, taking up tremendous amounts of time and resources. Despite these challenges, 80% of companies are increasing their use of Cloud services. Gartner predicts that the shift to the Cloud will affect more than $1 trillion in IT spending by 2020.
So, what can CIOs do to cope with all of these challenges?
Focus on Applications, Not Infrastructure
Business leaders don't care if infrastructure is unavailable. However, take away any customer-facing system and everyone cares - business leaders, customers, regulators. So, the emphasis has to be on the smooth movement of applications to the Cloud, with minimal impact on the end user.
To achieve this, you have to be able to plan change better, manage change capacity better, rehearse change events, and execute them better with the efficient orchestration of humans and technology. Plus, you need a comprehensive audit trail based on real data to satisfy the auditors.
Change the Way You Do Change
If you continue to manage change the way you do today, your number of incidents is going to increase. You need a platform that will allow you to execute change better and a way to keep stakeholders informed of progress on critical applications. You need access to real-time data to allow you to make key decisions such as when it's necessary to roll back, as well as the ability to satisfy auditors and improve upon your execution capabilities and level of resiliency.
Are Your Applications Cloud-Ready?
CIOs will have to look at each application and decide which ones should be migrated, retired or left where they are. Data and visibility will be key to understanding the enterprise's unique Cloud needs and requirements for each application. How are you going to get each application ready to realise the benefits of the Cloud?
With your change capacity being stretched by the constant need for change, you'll need to plan carefully and have the right tools to reduce incidents and increase resilience. You have to manage the landscape of change better or results will be less than optimum.
Business leaders are demanding more and wanting it faster. Yet, business as usual will not increase change capacity and could hurt resilience. Neither is acceptable.
