DNA of a Successful Cloud Transformation Strategy

Planning an effective cloud transformation strategy largely depends on your current readiness to go to the cloud. This includes all forms of readiness like business, technological, and cultural. Hence, there cannot be a
one-size-fits-all kind of solution for all applications. There needs to be a thorough and clear mindset regarding why the cloud migration is required, and what are the business, technology, and cost objectives that you are trying to achieve through the legacy application migration to the cloud. Most of the enterprises face one common blocker in the middle of their cloud journey – improper planning, processes, and strategy. This impacts their overall pace of cloud modernization and influences the amount of time and costs to be invested in completing the project.

DNA of a Successful Cloud Modernization Plan

Here is a quick summary of what we learned over the last decade from our experience of serving Fortune 500 and other clients in the cloud transformation of highly complex applications.

Assess the Applications to be Migrated

Most organizations fail to complete their cloud modernization project mainly due to an improper assessment and planning right at the start. While doing the application portfolio rationalization, companies tend to follow a rehost-heavy approach with an objective of rapid cloud migration or data center exit. This lift-and-shift heavy strategy ignores the adverse impact of taking legacy workloads to the cloud without modernization and cloud transformation best practices. It results in major over-consumption of cloud services with no added business value. A thorough assessment of the legacy application to be migrated to the cloud with respect to architecture, code patterns, database, functionality, technical debt, etc. will help to invest in the right cloud transformation services.

Prepare a Cloud Transformation Strategy Canvas

Can you put a one-page cloud strategy canvas that maps every individual, every project goal back to the KPIs and the business and technology objectives? Define business goals and align these business goals to technology. Focus on biztech goals i.e., the agreement of business that what technology is trying to achieve will serve the purpose that needs to be delivered to the customers. Define the application’s R-treatment based on the varied parameters like simplify apps, build for speed, and retire technical debt. Build KPIs around it so that the teams stay focused on what exactly needs to be delivered and in how much timeframe.

Bring Modernization Mindset- Cloud Dojo

Every cloud, be it public or private, is not designed exactly to match your goals. Every organization has its unique mix of applications, data, infrastructure standards, security guardrails, etc. To make the cloud work for your organization, you would need to choose the patterns, guardrails, and standards that fit your organization’s requirements. The organization can fail initially in its modernization attempts, but it should learn from the failures. A lot of organizations are using the concept of cloud dojo where they bring their multi-functional teams together to learn one cloud pattern at a time. Failures and incremental learnings through execution are considered as a part of cloud dojo. A dojo is like a dedicated space where the organization can learn in an incremental way by having quick failures again and again. A typical dojo will start with an easier workload like
lift-and-shift, perfect it, and then move to a harder pattern like replatform.

Check the Cloud Transformation Blockers- Critical Applications

Most of the cloud journeys stop when it comes to cost estimation for cloud migration of critical heavy and complex applications. Organizations are attempting for manual decoupling and cloud native transformation of applications in an agile way. Manual migration is increasing complexity as there are no SMEs or documentation for years-old apps with regards to the number of patterns added, code formats, database access layers, security patches added, and so on. There is limited visibility to make these apps cloud native as it takes time to even understand what’s going on in the system architecture. Adapting code changes, the reliability of the transformation, and whether the transformation is really required are some of the worries that organizations are grappling with.

Research on top 27 Fortune 500 companies that form 13 Trillion Dollars of Revenue, 6170 Applications reveals that:

• 74% of the organizations fail to complete modernization projects due to improper planning and processes
• 45% of the organizations going ahead with lift and shift to cloud IaaS without retiring technical debt will be overprovisioned by nearly 55% in the first 18 months

Check Automation Feasibility for Critical Workloads

Implementing automation to accelerate cloud adoption for critical workloads can enable the teams to focus on the key tasks and save a lot of time and costs.

Unique Cloud Transformation Strategies Adopted by some of our Clients

Cloud Transformation Case Study 1

One of the largest secondary mortgage companies that we worked with adopted the Dojo approach wherein it formed a dedicated team to manage an application or portfolio of applications for its entire cloud lifecycle. The team first did a quick learning before joining the Dojo and had a cloud Sensei (a product manager). It was dedicated to look only into this and was empowered to make decisions regarding processes, technology, and talent. It created a continuous learning environment by allotting a dedicated space.

The team applied the concept of incremental learning in a monolithic flight operation system. To adopt Azure/AWS cloud, it divided the workloads into 4 categories:

It picked lift-and-shift first and went through a complete learning process from intake to deployment and learned that pattern end-to-end in 7 days. After that, it made a choice of the toolchain, people, and methodology, and implemented Dojo. It then developed an organizational culture for the cloud transformation to begin with.

Cloud Transformation Case Study 2

A leading education and professional testing solutions company had a goal to double its revenue in 3 years and reduce expense by 20% through legacy applications migration to the cloud. It planned the cloud migration by addressing one major concern – how will the current goal match the execution journey?

The solution was a single-page cloud strategy canvas that mapped every individual’s and every process’s goal back to the KPI and business and technology objectives. It created a risk-exchange platform that enabled all the underwriters throughout the geography to act as local underwriting providers and aligned biztech goals.

The top biztech goals were judged on–

• Simplify apps
• Built for speed
• Retire technical debt
• Define KPI

The single-page cloud strategy canvas helped everyone to know their role in the cloud modernization journey.

Cloud Transformation Case Study 3

A banking firm converted its governance program into an event-based program by adopting the following approach:

• Readiness – The application owner teams, and the product owners made responsible to figure out talent, infrastructure, decision-making, and architecture goals.
• Review – Cloud architecture board looked after the patterns approved, toolchain available, and the resource and time they can provide to application owners.
• Parties – Cloud parties/ceremonies where a ceremony cycle was going on and the client had all the readiness. Ports were open, the provisioning control panel was available, resources were aligned, catalyst engineers from DevOps were involved, and the application owner’s responsibilities were defined. It ran a 7 day to 2 weeks cycle in which everyone would be available, and the application was taken from point A to point B in one go by overcoming the usual blockers.

How Amaze^® helps in Rapid Cloud Transformation?

Hexaware’s game-changing cloud replatforming product suite amaze^® for Applications enables automation and gives three things that you are looking for from a critical application.

• Complete visibility into your application
• Breaking down the application very rapidly into APIs and microservices
• Deploying and retiring technical debt for optimum transformation of the application into cloud native app

Amaze^® enables automated code refactoring/replatforming. This leads to rapid cloud migration within weeks with a considerable TCO reduction.