Many organizations are eager to migrate their business or workloads to cloud platforms. According to research institutions on a large number of customers,
cloud migration is often things such as the expiration of data center and managed service provider (MSP) contracts, upcoming audits, large equipment renewal cycles, and urgent needs for market opportunities. Although these things may help cross-team acquisitions, it may lead to a less than ideal transition to a cloud computing platform. Fearing that there is not enough time for migration, in this case, many organizations usually move to the cloud platform, hoping to solve all problems in the future. But once the migration is complete, there will be an imminent question: Now that the organization is ready, how should the migrated assets be optimized for the cloud platform?
Evaluation
Although quick action may be required before
cloud migration, now is the time for analysis. Organizations need to check the integrity of the system and determine which applications have high business value and low business value. It is recommended to divide the organization's applications into two categories: investment applications and sustainable applications.
An investment application is an application that directly contributes business income while maintaining the application to support the business. For example, the e-commerce engine is an investment application, while the HR employee holiday reporting system is a sustainable application. Sustainable applications should be optimized for cost, while investment applications should focus on innovation and operational excellence.
Optimize sustainable applications to reduce costs
Starting with sustainable applications re-hosted to the cloud platform, organizations can further optimize costs by:
(1) Retire. Is this application still relevant or necessary? If not, can the organization retire the application and reinvest the savings?
(2) Repurchase. If this application is licensed from an external vendor, does it offer this application as a SaaS solution? If so, from a manual maintenance perspective, repurchasing it as a SaaS version may be a more sustainable option .
(3) Rebuild the platform. For example, does the application use a commercial database? There are many options for migrating to lower-cost database platforms that have similar performance, scalability, and reliability indicators, but at a much lower cost.
(4) Automation. Add infrastructure automation to reduce maintenance and save staff time to focus on investment applications.
Cloud computing optimization investment application
Through sustainable applications that are optimized for cost, then move to investment applications. Therefore, it is recommended to conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine the best course of action. Ultimately, for each application, the organization will determine the best degree of modernization.
In order to evaluate which path is suitable for any given application, a cost-benefit analysis is helpful. It is recommended to calculate the cost by asking the following:
(1) Rewrite the required development resources. Are there knowledge resources available? And if so, in what time frame? If not, are there resources to hire third-party consultants to help?
(2) Expected business interruption. Can the application be modernized without disrupting the business? If not, what is the expected scope of the disruption? How sustainable is the disruption to the business?
(3) What expected benefits will the application see from modernization, and how will these benefits affect the business?
For a better understanding, the following diagram needs to be considered. Based on experience, cost-benefit analysis is conducive to the modernization of cloud computing for a few applications. Although the operational excellence, innovation, and cost benefits achieved through this approach are the greatest, it also requires a knowledgeable team that can be done within time and other business constraints. For these reasons, more investment applications are considered containerized, and this approach allows the application to take advantage of some cloud computing features, such as constant infrastructure and continuous integration (CI)/continuous delivery (CD).
Prioritize business interests
By adopting an improved approach, the organization's services have benefited from the cloud platform. However, without further optimization, organizations really cannot take advantage of the transformational value of cloud computing. By using cost-benefit analysis, organizations can understand which projects should be prioritized to achieve the greatest business benefits. Although the priorities will vary between different organizations, there are some important things to consider, such as:
(1) The time required for each project. Whether the organization can win a quick victory will easily illustrate the benefits of cloud computing technology for other businesses. For example, when migrating a database back-end for an existing application, it requires minimal downtime but at a lower cost, and by using cloud-native database backup facilities to develop a clearer business continuity plan, the value of cost vectors can be demonstrated.
(2) How manageable is the calculated risk (such as service unavailability)? For example, during off-peak hours or once a mitigation plan is formulated, it is best to prioritize projects with higher risks.
(3) Availability of required resources. Is the original development team available for this project? If so, in what time frame?
(4) What types of business benefits does the project have? For example, does this become the basis for further innovation within the organization? If so, it may have a higher priority than other projects because it may have a snowball effect.
Although the organization may also consider other business-specific factors, based on experience, this list is a good starting point. Indeed, many organizations choose to hire experienced consultants to help with this process. They have the skills to help speed up assessments, prioritize and execute processes, while also training their teams to do their jobs better.
The cloud migration of promotion and transfer is a fact in real life, they can migrate business to cloud platform, but this is actually just the beginning of a journey. Cloud computing provides many new ways to automate, innovate, and transform IT delivery. Refactoring an organization's applications into cloud-native applications can provide unparalleled flexibility and productivity, but it does require a new way to think about its delivery model.
According to the "Cloud Computing Vision 2020 Research" report released by LogicMonitor, by the end of 2020, 83% of workloads will be based on cloud computing. However, just being in the cloud is not enough. Upgrading and transferring services to the cloud platform is a good step to reduce costs and achieve benefits such as operational excellence and digital innovation. Organizations can now start optimizing the cloud platform with a strategy that maximizes business benefits.
