7 Things to Consider Before Your Cloud Migration (1/3)
The buzzword “Cloud” is shorthand for “Cloud Computing”, which implies a non-physical/ virtual platform for processing information. As the Cloud’s capabilities and scale have gown, processing large quantities of data has become much more practical, cost efficient and commonplace. As a result, IT infrastructure costs within companies (and specifically those for on premise solutions) are increasingly being scrutinized, particularly with the broadening of the Cloud’s offerings related to: storage, computation, data distribution, access freedom (i.e., where and when), access control (i.e., who and what), reliability and fault tolerance.
1. Why might you want to migrate to the Cloud?
With so many benefits associated with the Cloud, it’s not hard to understand why so many companies and organizations feel pressured to develop and adopt a Cloud strategy. And yet, before going ‘there’ – they would be better served to determine whether their needs can be met by simply enhancing their existing technology. If this is not deemed practical or favorable, then a company should feel comfortable with the idea of proceeding in embracing the Cloud sooner than later.
Presuming one is now heading down the path to the Cloud, the first thing one needs to ask is, “What exactly is the purpose for my Cloud solution?” Is it to solve a missing capability? Is it to mitigate an existing issue? Or, might it be a means toward enhancing a current (or near-term future) offering? Perhaps it’s a mix of these. Whatever the case may be, you would be well served to next make a list of the goals you would like to reach with a Cloud solution. In developing this list, you will then want to prioritize your goals and determine the optimal timing for each. Having a prioritized list is important, especially if you were to take an agile (piecewise) approach in building your solution.
2. Are your customers ready for the Cloud?
While you may have made the decision that migrating to the Cloud is the right solution for your organization, you need to understand whether your customers are ready for such a solution – and this will require you to perform a thorough customer impact assessment. Two of the most important elements associated with this assessment relate to access capability and regulations, policies and procedures.
With regard to access capability, a Cloud solution demands a live internet connection from all access points – all the time. You need to know whether these live access points are available to your customers and end users. If not, you need to know whether they can be established, and if so, the relative timing.
With regard to regulations, policies and procedures, you will want to know where there are any policies or procedures that may make it difficult or perhaps impossible for your customers to adopt a Cloud solution in the short or near term.
3. Is your infrastructure ready for the Cloud?
Is your IT infrastructure ready for the Cloud? IT infrastructure is made up of many interacting components, and each aspects related to service access, application logic/data processing, and data storage. Can the user access pattern be supported? Can the security be maintained without impacting accessibility? Can the application/processing logic be easily ported and deployed in the Cloud? Can the data storage to be duplicated in the Cloud? If not, might a hybrid Cloud solution (Cloud + on prem) be an option? These are just some of the questions you need to consider.
4. Is your migration timing right for the Cloud?
If your system is only partially ready for Cloud, then a phased approach might be more practical for your migration effort. If that’s the case, then your migration needs to be carefully planned to support the transition period during which your overall system is part on premise and part in the Cloud. This will likely impact the architecture of the system and requires a ‘bridging strategy’. One possibility is to migrate new systems/applications to the Cloud first. In doing so, it will give the organization an opportunity to gain experience and knowledge that will prove beneficial in subsequent migration efforts. Another approach to consider is the idea of migrating based on your organizational structure, which has the distinct benefit of making it easier to staff resources. The complication of the phased approach, however, is that during the transition period the interaction between the old system and the migrated system (Cloud-based) may not be fully function. Planning will be needed here in order to mitigate this risk and address the gap.
5. How are you going to choose the Cloud solution?
There are many Cloud vendors, and they are not all equal. They come with different features, costs models, strengths, and weaknesses. Your time will be well spent to ensure you understand the relative costs and benefits of each vendor and the associated elements based on your prioritized goals, as this will enable you to better quantify and assess the relative merits and value of each.
Here are a few key elements to consider:
Processing: Batch, Stream, Container-based Solutions
Storage: Formats, Duration (short/medium/long term storage), Auditing Capability
Scalability: In terms of users, access points, requests, data volume, etc.
Flexibility: How flexible can the plan/contract be modified? Time commitments?
Elasticity: How flexible can the configurations be? How fast can the capacity be dynamically scaled up, and down, automatically, depending on the demands/loads?
Fault Tolerance: How tolerant is the Cloud solution? Up time guarantee?
Cost Model: Vendors have different charging models. Some are sensitive to the number of users while others are more sensitive to processing time (CPU time).
Special Needs: Location guarantee (EU and China, for example, have laws that forbid storing citizen data outside their jurisdiction); reproducibility (FDA Dx systems need to show evidence that Dx outcomes are the same and are processed the same way)
6. How are you going to perform the migration?
System migration, particularly infrastructure system migration, is a highly complicated operation that requires significant collaboration and coordination. Identifying your stakeholders is paramount with a system migration. Stakeholders are the organizations and people who will be involved in the migration or impacted by the migration in some shape or form. It is important to identify upfront who is sponsoring the effort, who is performing the migration operation (i.e., who owns what), and who may be impacted by the operation. Each and every stakeholder’s concerns and requirements need to be carefully evaluated and prioritized. At the same time, decisions and appreciation for impact needs to be discussed and communicated to ensure ‘everyone is on the same page’.
7. How are you going to assess the Cloud migration effort?
It is crucial for the migration team to have a general agreement on the assessment process in advance of starting the operation. While aspects related to this will be discussed in our next two related postings, here are a few things to consider:
Start planning your assessment from day one of the entire effort
Assessment criteria should reflect the goals of the migration effort
Assess the success from multiple angles: User Feedback; Cost Effectivenes; and, Feature Delivery
Ronald B. Niland, President, JANA Life Sciences
Cell: (805) 405-4115; eMail: rniland@janacorp.com
