Five critical check points on your hybrid cloud journey

Watch EY cloud professionals discuss common client pitfalls and successes along the journey to the cloud.

Highlights

• Organizations need flexible, cloud-based infrastructure and services to quickly react to, and support, changing business and customer needs.
• CIOs are finding that “cloud-first” doesn’t mean “cloud-only,” because on-prem infrastructure still plays an important role.
• Today’s hybrid IT model requires a strategic approach to infrastructure modernization.

Checkpoint #1: Plan the journey

Sook: To create a cloud strategy, I will start with answering two key questions: Why go to cloud? What are the key outcomes the business wants to achieve with going to cloud?

Tim: If your primary objective in moving from cloud is to gain agility, it’s a very different journey than if your primary objective is to save money or to rebuild IT because on-prem IT is broken, or if you’re looking to extend the reach of your applications.

Sook: Most organizations approach cloud migration without fully understanding that cloud migrations are far more complex than anticipated.

It’s critical to make sure you’ve done a comprehensive analysis of your IT environment, in the context of your primary business objectives, before you begin any migration journey. On average, 32% of total IT budgets will be allocated to cloud computing in 2021.1

Sook: Any inadequate planning can lead to costly mistakes that result in overspending, inefficiencies and a long timeline. Equally important is what you want to achieve once you get to the cloud. And that is the long-term goal that organizations must embed as they develop into their cloud strategy.

Checkpoint #2:  Communicate the journey

Strategies are only effective if they’re communicated broadly to help all stakeholders understand the plan – and the value it will bring to the business. 62% of organizations are deploying change management tactics as part of their broader digital business transformations – which means more than one-third are lagging in this critical area. 1

Tim: Many of our clients have an excellent cloud strategy, but they’ve communicated it once or twice and declared victory. In reality, that is not how people learn and change. Our successful CIOs have overcommunicated the cloud strategy, so much so that they really get sick of hearing themselves repeat it.

Sook: It is important that, once you have a cloud strategy, you have a road map, and you must communicate the strategy broadly and consistently throughout the organization to drive cloud adoption.

A good communication plan doesn’t just focus on leadership – it extends across the entire organization to help people understand how the migration strategy will affect their day-to-day activities.

Checkpoint #3: Prioritize the journey

With a strategy and communications plan in place, it’s time to prioritize the migration. Identifying which applications, workloads and data to move to the cloud, and which to keep on-prem, is vital to securing early wins that help build momentum.

Sook: Not all applications are suitable for cloud. And even for those applications that are going to cloud, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, a modern application may require a minor refactor, or a monolithic legacy application will require rearchitecting and sometimes even in-depth code changes before it can run on cloud. In the short run, a migration approach might look like it costs less than a modernization; but, in the long term, modernization allows organizations to harness cloud-native technologies in order to realize the full benefits of going to cloud, like speed, agility and innovation.

Tim: So, the right sort of strategy and road map for most clients is a combination. You’ve got a portfolio of things that require relatively small investment and happen quickly, but gain relatively small returns. And that tends to be toward the migrate end of the spectrum. Then you’ve got other applications that are important to the organization and truly differentiate the enterprise. And that’s where you take the time to rewrite these as cloud native. 

Sook: Conduct an in-depth application assessment before the migration starts. Consider the application architecture, the complexity and the business criticality, and then apply the 7-R disposition to the applications.

7 Rs of cloud migration

1. Rehost
2. Refactor
3. Rearchitect
4. Replatform
5. Rewrite
6. Replace
7. Retire

Checkpoint #4: Measure the journey

Runaway spending is a big challenge for IT leaders moving to the cloud. That’s why you need the right controls and metrics in place to measure performance and ROI.

Sook: Besides cloud security, I would say that controlling cloud costs is the number one obstacle and the number one concern that most executive leaders will be focused on as they make their transition from on-prem to cloud.

Tim: A cloud business case needs to understand the current state costs, the transformation costs and the end state run costs. Together, these create the business model. Clients that are all about gaining agility have different metrics than clients that are looking for cost takeout or clients that are looking for improved resiliency for IT solutions. 

The Final Checkpoint:  Adapt the journey

Revisit your plan frequently to make sure it’s delivering on your goals and objectives.

Sook: Cloud migration is a journey. It is not something that you do overnight. So, it is important to make sure that you continue to update it so that you can track progress, measure progress, and report on progress. I would also say that no plan is set in stone, so you do need to make sure that you revisit it as technology changes.

Tim: The clients that are doing innovation on the cloud the best understand that there are two parts to it. One is to be able to create the innovation quickly, get it in the market to test; but then the second piece is being able to scale fast those tests that are successful. Cloud is perfect for both ends of that equation.