Client
Our client is a global leader in health information technology and clinical research with a revenue exceeding $13.8 billion, offering advanced analytics, technology solutions, and clinical research services to the life sciences sector. They wanted to embrace Azure cloud adoption to deliver greater value to their customers, enable faster time to market, and innovate with more flexibility as they scaled.
Challenge
The client’s infrastructure is extensive, spanning 20 data centers with over 15,000 servers and more than 800 applications. The on-premises IT systems and operations costs were steadily increasing, and with an impending data center lease expiration, the client urgently needed to modernize their IT environment. They decided to transition from a CapEx to an OpEx model.
The CTO aimed to adopt Azure to deliver greater value to their customers, enable faster time to market, and innovate with more flexibility as they scaled. The large and complex on-premises ecosystem made operations highly inflexible. Workloads running on physical servers made it challenging to provision new servers or decommission unnecessary ones based on fluctuating demands. This rigidity resulted in significant time and effort spent on these tasks, leaving the IT team with little capacity for innovation. Additionally, the high TCO was driven by overprovisioning for most workloads and low utilization rates.
- High Operational Costs: The client is facing substantial expenses with operations costing upwards of $300,000 per month
- Datacenter Lease Expiration: An impending datacenter lease expiration necessitates a strategic shift in infrastructure management
- Inflexible Operations: The current on-premises setup with physical servers across 20 datacenters makes it difficult to scale up or down efficiently, leading to operational inflexibility
- High Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Overprovisioning and underutilization of resources contribute to an unnecessarily high TCO
- Complex and Outdated IT Environment: Managing over 15,000 servers and more than 800 applications across multiple legacy systems complicates IT operations and modernization efforts
- Challenges in Cloud Migration: The size and complexity of the IT environment pose significant challenges in migrating to a cloud infrastructure quickly and efficiently
- Integration with Existing Systems: Ensuring seamless integration between the new cloud platform and the existing on-premises systems and applications is critical
- Performance Concerns During Migration: Maintaining performance and minimizing business impact during the migration of critical workloads and end-of-life servers is essential
- Workload Consolidation: There is a need to consolidate workloads across various datacenters to streamline operations and improve efficiency
- Modernization of Legacy Systems: The client requires modernization of their existing systems to enhance functionality and support new business needs
These challenges highlight the need for a strategic transformation of the client’s IT infrastructure to adopt a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective model using Azure cloud services. The client’s decision to adopt Azure aims to address these challenges by moving away from a CAPEX model to a more flexible and cost-effective cloud solution, enabling them to innovate and scale more effectively.
Solution
Cloud migration of workloads from complex IT environments, consisting of multiple legacy systems and applications, posed significant challenges. The process demanded considerable changes to existing processes, infrastructure, and applications. Seamless integration with the existing systems was critical, requiring the cloud platform to be highly compatible. Moreover, the migration of large-scale workloads necessitated a cloud platform capable of handling high-speed and high-efficiency migration while being adequately prepared and sized for the task.
Hexaware addressed these challenges by implementing a cloud migration program that included the following strategies:
- End-of-Life Servers Migration: Prioritized the migration of end-of-life servers and critical workloads to ensure continuity and security.
- Minimal Business Impact: Migrated the infrastructure landscape to the cloud with minimal disruption to business operations.
- Workload Consolidation: Consolidated workloads across different data centers to optimize resources and enhance efficiency.
- Complex Transformations: Managed numerous complex transformations accumulated from years of operations, ensuring a smooth transition.
- System Modernization: Upgraded and modernized their IT environment to align with the new cloud infrastructure, enhancing performance and scalability.
- Automated Discovery and Baselining: Automated the exhaustive discovery and baselining of client workloads, enhancing data quality for better decision-making.
- Application Readiness and Right-Sizing: Developed an application readiness report and right-sizing recommendations to optimize the cloud environment.
- Co-Creation and R-Treatment Planning: Collaborated with client’s SMEs to define the R-Treatment for each workload, creating a tailored migration strategy based on workshops and expert recommendations.
- Migration Calendar and Prioritization: Created a detailed migration calendar, prioritizing applications based on dependencies and complexity assessments.
- Cloud Migration Factory: Established an automated cloud migration factory to streamline the migration process and eliminate manual steps.
- Integration and Tracking Tools: Integrated multiple tools for updating wave groups and tracking migration progress visually and efficiently.
- Metrics and Outcomes:
- Speed of Migration: Achieved a migration rate of 450 servers per month.
- Total Duration: Migrated applications within 2.5 years.
- Discovery & Evaluation: Completed discovery and high-level R-Treatment at the infrastructure level during an 8-week period.
Through these measures, Hexaware ensured a seamless, efficient, and high-speed cloud migration, transforming the client’s IT environment into a modern, flexible, and reliable system.
Benefits
Hexaware’s solution delivered transformative results across multiple dimensions, enhancing operational efficiency and competitive advantage.
- TCO Reduction: The recommendation engine helped achieve a 64% reduction in TCO, significantly lowering operational expenses.
- Cloud Adoption: Accelerated the development, testing, and deployment of applications and services, enabling rapid cloud adoption.
- Speed to Market: Launched new products and services 70% faster, providing a competitive advantage, increased revenue, and enhanced customer experience.
- Improved Accessibility: Ensured applications and services could be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, improving flexibility and usability.
- Enhanced Data Management: Streamlined data analysis through the integration of new tools, data sources, and data aggregation techniques.
- Actionable Insights: Provided real-time, well-informed decision-making capabilities, boosting productivity and satisfaction among employees and customers.
- Simplified IT Environment: Transformed complex, costly, and risky IT setups into flexible, reliable systems, reducing operational headaches.
- Better Visibility: Offered stakeholders greater control over scaling capacity and managing costs effectively.
- Transparent Consumption: Provided detailed reporting on cloud usage down to individual service levels, ensuring clear and transparent consumption tracking.
- Cost Control: Enhanced managers’ ability to monitor and manage expenses effectively, leading to more controlled and predictable budgeting.
- Comprehensive Design: Delivered a 360-degree view of the large and complex operating environment, enabling faster time to market, improved productivity, and reduced infrastructure TCO.
Summary
Hexaware empowered the client to establish a robust foundation for growth, enabling them to swiftly generate value and make bold, decisive choices in a rapidly evolving industry. The success of the migration hinged on a thorough IT infrastructure discovery, which provided the migration team with clean data and a comprehensive 360-degree view of the client’s large and complex operating environment. By forming an integrated client/partner team, Hexaware facilitated faster and more frequent migrations. Additionally, the convergence of operations and engineering teams streamlined the migration process and ensured a seamless handoff to operations upon project completion.
