March 5, 2019 // By Stuart Williams
From the scrappiest start-up to the largest enterprise, many organizations are looking to the cloud to modernize their approach to developing and managing software. There are a lot of considerations, such as what you can expect to gain, how to approach the move, and how to equip your team. It’s hard to avoid all bottlenecks in the process but there are always answers. In this post we’ll teach you how to find them.
Levels of Modernization
In any migration, there are three levels of possible modernization:
- Minimal = Cloud Friendly. Enough to do the migration and have the end result be functional and equivalent to how it ran before it was moved. This usually entails a simple lift-and-shift migration.
- Median = Cloud Ready. Taking advantage of the features in the cloud to reduce costs.
- Maximum = Cloud Native. Fully leveraging the savings and capabilities in the cloud.
This becomes the strategic foundation for the goals your company wants to accomplish with the move to the cloud. Other considerations include how much modernization is required on top of the minimum to use the cloud efficiently, and how much needs to be done to be truly cloud-native and gain the benefits that accompany that level.
Choosing a Cloud Service
The next bottleneck happens when companies need to decide whether they’d like to move into the public or private cloud. Both options have significant pros and cons, outlined below:
Public:
- Best for companies with data centers but limited staff
- Simple to maintain
- More affordable
- High-level data security
Private:
- Best for companies with data centers and a robust staff
- Flexible and easy to manage assets actively
- Hands-on and responsive
- Higher end
- High-level data security
There isn’t much of a difference between the two and shouldn’t warrant a huge debate. Public works best for smaller companies who might not have the resources to manage their own data centers. Private works best for larger companies who can afford the high-end price the private cloud brings. Both have maximum data security and will bring efficiency to your teams.
The Fear in the Teams
While these technical bottlenecks are important to be aware of and have an easy solve for, it’s not the biggest bottleneck you’ll run into as you move to the cloud. There is a large feeling of fear that surrounds the business and the IT organizations as they’re pushed to grow, evolve, and contemplate the new thoughts this age of technology brings to the marketplace. In order to create sustainable value with your technology upgrade, there has to be buy-in from all sides of the company – especially with the leaders. It’s worth the investment to do some internal education and to show how this fear to change will only keep you falling behind.
To read more about these common bottlenecks as you migrate to the cloud, and how you can proactively prepare for them to get to the cloud faster, visit our white paper.