Reaping the rewards of a methodical approach – migrate and modernise!

During the final phase of migrating data to the cloud, the effort put into coordination and the methodical preparation of the various stages of the AWS cloud migration will pay off. Phase 1 includes the business case adopted by the company and which defines the basic parameters. During phase 2 the Cloud Center of Competence will have established the confidence needed to understand the various tasks and their interdependencies. Now – when the focus is on implementation – the company can efficiently carry out the migration and modernisation process thanks to the work completed already.

When comparing different systems to be migrated, experience shows that a considerable number of the systems exhibit similar patterns – usually 20 to 50 percent. These similarities allow appropriate applications to be clustered into groups so they can be migrated together in a single wave, i.e. by taking a ‘factory approach’. Once the servers are no longer treated individually, the migration team can begin thinking in terms of processes that are broken down into repeatable subprocesses. The teams then optimise these subprocesses instead of treating each batch of servers like a new task that has to be completed – an interesting new way of thinking that affects the efficiency of the migration.

‘It’s impressive to see how a team transforms. Its members think less like mechanics and more like industrial engineers optimising a production line.’

Tristan Woerth, Cloud Architect at Swisscom

Letting the tools do the work of cloud migration

Migration tools assist with typical kinds of process optimisation. They perform the repetitive heavy lifting, offer employees relief and free up valuable time for them. The teams can invest this time, for example, in developing automation strategies or regrouping library patterns that are found in many applications. Because once a library has shown its ability to accelerate a process during restructuring, it can be used in a similar way for other similar applications. At the same time, it is common to see how code patterns emerge from infrastructures. The migration teams can use these as templates, meaning they do not have to develop separate methods.

Once the tools work and have proven effective, the benefits of the methodical process become clear. Usually, this is the point at which there is an improvement in the performance indicators that were identified during the assessment phase. Most of the time the employees manage more containers and applications than they had before the cloud migration, without increasing their workload. The frequency of the releases usually improves quite considerably as well.

Crossing the finish line sooner with support from the partner

No company wants to become tangled up in complex migration processes. A partner who judiciously guides a company through the process can eliminate obstacles along the way and always stay focused on the final goal. There are even more areas, however, where having the right partner makes it possible to reach goals more quickly. Tasks that require specialists only for a brief period of time are ideal for this. Typical examples include database migrations or highly developed networks. While it might be possible to train internal staff to handle these tasks, if there are no plans for further big migration projects, acquiring this expertise is not necessarily worthwhile.

Smart job sharing at the migration factory

Which tasks make the most sense to outsource to external partners is a decision each company has to make for itself. Instead of completing a task internally, it is often more effective to have the internal teams plan and coordinate the packages and deliveries. And even here the company can ask itself whether it really makes sense to acquire internal expertise for operating migration tools. Deciding not to can allow the internal IT team to invest its resources into identifying and managing dependencies. The experiences gained in the process go beyond the migration itself. For example, the IT team will be able to consistently recognise and avoid close dependencies in the future.

Find out more about migrating to the AWS Cloud