As more and more organizations embrace the benefits that cloud modernization can bring, the most frequently asked question about these kinds of digital transformations has stopped being ‘Is Cloud the right choice for us?’ and is instead ‘How do we make Cloud work for us?’ That will be the focus of this piece.
Understanding Cloud-Enabled Digital Transformation
First, it’s essential to ensure that you fully comprehend what a cloud-enabled digital transformation is. While Cloud migration migrates a legacy system, transferring old infrastructure directly to the Cloud, Cloud modernization takes things a step further. It serves to enhance the operations process, injecting a fresh perspective and enabling companies to run applications and IT infrastructure in a much more convenient and time-efficient way.
Effectively, Cloud modernization can optimize your business goals, which is why so many businesses are choosing Cloud digital transformations, and reaping the benefits. After all, the Cloud is flexible and scalable, meaning it can be adapted to suit almost any business needs.
Three Approaches to Kick Start your Digital Transformation
While the benefits of Cloud migration are considerable, often so are the complexities involved in the process. How long a Cloud migration takes will depend on your existing architecture and your business infrastructure’s size and complexity. However, securing initial success in your first small migration will build confidence and create a best practice model, which is why it is always recommended that you begin your transformation with a low complexity project that will be relatively fast and easy to complete. Here are three core approaches you can adopt to help you kick start your Cloud modernization process:
1. Rehosting
Many refer to this as the ‘lift and shift’ approach, and it is a good choice for large companies who have a lot of legacy applications, and those who hope to complete a Cloud migration quickly, and with minimal impact. Once these applications are hosted on the Cloud, you are then in a better position to move on and focus on a full digital transformation (either immediately, or when the time is right for your business) as your data will already be running in the Cloud, meaning that you will have laid a solid foundation for further development.
2. Replatforming
Not ready to make large or wide-scale changes to your business architecture? Why not look for an element of your architecture that is ripe for change, ensuring your business sees fast Cloud benefits but without changing the core structure of your architecture. An excellent example of this would be to move from a self-managed database to a fully managed database: the business benefits are tangible, the company has dipped its toe into the waters of Cloud transformation, but the core architecture doesn’t change.
3. Refactoring
Perhaps the most significant project you can undertake, if you want your digital transformation to have a maximum impact is to refactor (also known as re-architecturing). This will involve using modern cloud-native principles to redesign your full infrastructure. While this is not a small undertaking, there are benefits to tackling a transformation project at once, providing you the opportunity to enhance your output and deal with all your pain points simultaneously.
Whichever approach you choose, we know that adopting a Cloud-first mindset will be vital to ensuring your digital transformation’s success, and this should be an organization-wide culture change. The Cloud is the future, and it could be the future of your business success.
