Migrating Mature Companies to the Cloud Opportunities & - PowerPoint PPT Presentation


 Migrating Mature Companies to the Cloud Opportunities & Challenges Mentation Solutions

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What is a “Mature Company”? • Established IT dating back over 40+ years • Large installed base of hardware and facilities • Systems span multiple infrastructure and development methodologies • Heterogeneous inter-systems communications • Complex processes and decision making • Belief that infrastructure is hard to change Mentation Solutions

Are There a Lot of Mature Companies? • Gartner makes some interesting predictions for global IT spend in 2016 • Total spend, $4 Trillion • Public Cloud spend, $203 Billion • Or in other words only 5% of the global IT budget will be spent on Public Cloud • Looks like there are a lot of mature companies out there Mentation Solutions

CHALLENGES & BENEFITS Mentation Solutions

Challenges • Confusion, what is Cloud, lack of an understanding of what will be delivered • Complex processes designed for a traditional technology stack and it's accompanying timelines • Locked in costs and assets, existing DCs, contracts, hardware and software licensing Mentation Solutions

Benefits • Most companies core business is not IT , they need to… • Reduce fixed costs to deliver competitive advantage • Focus on projects that improve the business • Stop spending just to “keep the lights on” • Keep pace with rapid technical change Mentation Solutions

PRACTICALITIES Mentation Solutions

Perception Management • Develop a clear understanding of what the Cloud will deliver in the context of the organisation • Put in place a framework that allows scope of opportunities and benefits to be objectively determined • Stay grounded, in many ways it is best to regard the Cloud as just another data centre Mentation Solutions

Entry Conditions for Cloud Migration • Establish a clear set of goals that migrating to Cloud will deliver • Back this up with a well defined strategy • Identify behavioural and organisational changes required • Understand what activities the company can stop doing Mentation Solutions

How to Approach Migration • Cloud First, all new applications are built in the Cloud • Hardware Refresh, applications migrate when hardware is due for refresh • Big Bang, tackle biggest/hardest systems first, the rest will be easy Mentation Solutions

Cost of Change • Cloud will bring down operating costs and (largely) eliminate capex • But it takes time to achieve this • In the short term change will cost and this has to be funded Mentation Solutions

EMBRACE THE FOLLOWING Mentation Solutions

Which Cloud Vendor? • Clouds are not interchangeable • Vendors strive to differentiate their offerings with bespoke Intellectual Property (IP) • Higher value offerings are vendor IP specific • Understand implications and value delivered by adopting vendor IP Mentation Solutions

Key Technical Issues • Don’t over complicate the process, first stage will see many systems “Lift & Shift” • Avoid prolonged debate of PAAS vs SAAS vs “serverless” vs latest buzz words • Work to understand the security model, where does responsibility transfer between vendor and customer • Is something missing, e.g. an AV offering? Mentation Solutions

Organisational & Cultural Change • Cloud will impact areas other than technology • The utility based model is not well understood • Simplify decision making and processes to support increased rate of change • Delegate authority to the lowest practical level, move from an approval model to self service Mentation Solutions

Management & Control • Be realistic about how Cloud will be adopted • Understand how it will be managed and controlled • Avoid temptation to implement overarching approach that across internal IT and Cloud Mentation Solutions

Skills & Resourcing • There is a resourcing challenge, Cloud skills are currently in demand • Don’t underestimate the contribution of existing staff • Knowledge of company systems can make a significant difference Mentation Solutions

AN EXAMPLE OF CHANGE 
 THE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE Mentation Solutions

Changing the Enterprise SDLC • Traditional/Enterprise SDLC has a complex set of checks and balances • Evolved to deliver systems correctly sized for the expected workload • Hardware is a key driver, being expensive, slow to deploy and difficult to change • Given the number of under-utilised servers in most data centres it is an error prone process Mentation Solutions

The Cloud SDLC • Cloud fundamentally changes the nature of infrastructure • It removes one of the core assumptions of the SDLC • This makes a number of significant changes possible • Less time spent on design, more on prototyping and measurement • Enables data based decision making, more likely to be correct • Low risk when a server is deployed in minutes at the cost of a few dollars • Use automation to deliver repeatable results, scalable systems • Change approach to delivering DR solutions Mentation Solutions

A FEW LAST WORDS Mentation Solutions

Identity In the cloud, user identity is changing. The user identity is held somewhere, and access is granted on a platform by platform basis, i.e. use Facebook login details, authenticate, and then Spotify give you access to their premium content and other bits specific to their platform. That means you need to really trust Facebook to hold your master credentials very securely as you've put all your eggs in one basket. But if you assume theses guys are doing a better job than you could, in your data centre, on your kit, with the small amount of resources you have to secure the environment, then you're in good hands. So could you use your Facebook login for your corporate systems? Are they a better identity manager than you, of course!! Do all your traditional legacy systems allow Facebook to pass credentials in to authenticate you? Not at all. So in the short term, we're stuck with AD and ADFS. Glen Robinson, Chief Technology Officer, Computer Sciences Corporation Mentation Solutions

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