Cloud Migration Strategy: SPY INDEX Call it app modernization as-a-service. For many enterprises it is their “last mile” to the cloud: How to assess and measure the business impact of migrating legacy, e.g., non-virtualized, distributed applications to one or more cloud deployment options.
In a previous post, Bulletproof Your Core App Migration to the Cloud: An Essential Readiness Checklist, I presented a checklist for assessing and selecting the right cloud migration path, transition approach, operating model, and service provider(s) for core enterprise apps. In that post, I suggested a way to think about the work breakdown structure (WBS) and artifacts that you will want to produce before engaging with your business unit application teams on a cloud migration initiative.
In this article, I am going to take the WBS to the next level by delineating seven key value outcomes you can deliver to business and IT stakeholders in the migration initiative. I will then present a common business use case for core app migration to the cloud that maps the activities, dependencies and primary inputs associated with the WBS. I also suggest some common solution scenarios where the use case can be applied.
My goal is to illustrate how the approach embodied in my WBS creates tangible value for you and your organization.
Seven Value Outcomes of the “Checklist”
- Better align your initiative to weighted stakeholder needs because the Checklist imposes a rigorous and consistent model for ingest of stakeholder requirements across the entire organization.
- Deploy an “app modernization” approach that is based on a business service / app / workload profile hierarchy allowing you to generate “cost-of-compute” based assessments in support of digital transformation opportunities.
- Change the conversation with stakeholders to a value- and needs-driven conversation, rather than “solutions first.”
- Support dynamic service offerings to the business with near real-time automated configuration and bundling / unbundling of services.
- Rapidly calibrate migration decisions on price, performance, and/or risk dimensions according to business need, at scale; by business service, and by the impact on underlying IT infrastructure.
- Dramatically reduce initiative cycle times; eliminate RFPs; sourcing of 3rd party services.
- Supports a single source of truth for your “as-a-service” catalogue.
The Use Case – Solution Scenarios
Here is a list of potential solution scenarios supported by the use case:- Workload re-host/re-platform
- Workload consolidation / optimization
- Database-as-a-service
- Desktop-as-a-service
- Backup-as-a-service
- IT-as-a-service blueprints
Get the Use Case