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Organizations are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud strategies, recognizing it as a more adaptable fit for their business needs. This shift involves repatriating data from public clouds, moving away from customary data centre architectures, and leveraging multiple public cloud providers – often alongside on-premises cloud solutions. However, migrating legacy applications to these new environments presents significant challenges, primarily stemming from inadequate preparation.
The Rising Tide of Hybrid Cloud Adoption
More organizations are embracing a hybrid cloud approach, driven by a desire for greater adaptability and control. This isn’t a wholesale abandonment of existing infrastructure, but rather a strategic blend of on-premises resources wiht the scalability and innovation offered by public cloud platforms. The trend reflects a growing understanding that a one-size-fits-all approach to cloud adoption is often ineffective.
The Pitfalls of Unprepared Migration
Successfully moving legacy applications to the cloud isn’t simply a matter of lifting and shifting code. A lack of understanding regarding application dependencies, the feasibility of migration itself, and critical data security concerns can quickly derail projects. IT leaders are grappling with fundamental questions: Is migration truly necessary? And, if so, when is the optimal time to proceed?
The Importance of Asking “Why?”
To gain insight into these challenges, three IT leaders shared their perspectives.A recurring theme was the critical importance of questioning the reason for migration. Bill Hineline, field CTO at observability platform provider Chronosphere, emphasized that a clear understanding of the “why” behind a migration is paramount. He cautioned that simply backing up and restoring an application may not work, and having access to original installation binaries is crucial.
Understanding Costs and Mitigating Risks
David Vidoni, CIO at enterprise transformation platform provider Pega, highlighted the dangers of making false assumptions and the need to understand operational metrics and cost drivers. He warned that older systems are inherently more vulnerable from a cybersecurity perspective and can present interoperability challenges.
Vidoni emphasized the importance of evaluating the risks and costs associated with cloud migration against the benefits of maintaining the status quo. He stated that a key factor in determining ROI is identifying the timeframe for achieving payback – “what is the year or month [in which we achieve] payback?”
real-World Lessons in Cloud Migration
Practical experience reinforces these insights. Vidoni shared Pega’s successful 2020 migration of its ERP implementation from a colocated data center to Google Cloud, completed in just 13 weeks. This success was attributed to thorough initial testing, environment right-sizing, and capacity reservation. Pega also leveraged the elastic capacity of AWS and the AI capabilities available in the cloud, accelerating progress and functionality deployment.
Hineline drew on his experience at United Airlines, were the MileagePlus loyalty program was migrated from a mainframe to the cloud. He noted that the code refactoring process took months of preparation, but the entire system was cut over in a single evening thanks to insights gained from observability tools. He also advocated for maintaining vendor agnosticism, warning that tying oneself to a single provider can hinder future flexibility.
The Importance of Performance Profiling and cost Control
Vidoni stressed the need to understand the performance profile of applications – how they run and where – to avoid overprovisioning resources and unexpected costs. He cautioned against the false assumption that cloud environments are inherently always available and redundant, emphasizing that redundancy comes at a price.
He also highlighted the importance of secure communications and robust monitoring to detect and respond to anomalies. Ultimately, the main cost drivers are the workloads themselves – the resources they consume and the features they utilize.
as organizations increasingly adopt multi-cloud strategies, understanding the nuances of each provider becomes critical. Vidoni pointed out that different clouds excel at different tasks and that data egress charges can significantly impact costs when systems communicate across cloud platforms. Careful planning and consideration of these factors are essential for maximizing the benefits of a hybrid cloud environment.
