Moving to a cloud model changes the way you need to provision and operate services.
Are you ready for cloud – and if so, what cloud?
To be successful you not only need to understand your objectives, but you must also clarify your maturity, gaps and actions. Practical considerations like regulatory regimes, data security, interoperability, support, and disaster recovery weigh heavy on the would-be cloud champion.
Vohkus not only understands the technologies and practicalities of cloud adoption – whether public, private or hybrid – but we are able to take a step back and provide agnostic advice that will help you understand where you are on your journey to cloud and the practicalities you need to build into your business case.
We approach these kinds of engagement with a two-stage discovery process. We begin with a light-touch cloud readiness assessment (CRA) that will deliver strategic pointers for your organisation. Assuming all’s well, we move on to a full current state assessment (CSA) that delves deep into your existing environment.
Let’s take a look at what you can expect.
Stage 1: Cloud readiness assessment
The beginning of your journey to cloud is the CRA. This is a workshop held to discover what you have today in terms of workloads and the relative importance of each of those workloads. We also gather an overview of what the current physical infrastructure looks like.
Vohkus takes a top-down approach to assessing application cloud readiness and preparing for migration. We start with documenting the business context and objectives to ensure goals are clear and user requirements are understood. We then move on to a discussion of the technical environment.
The workshop helps customers assess their applications and infrastructure to understand if public cloud really is the best solution to support their business, or if other models such as private cloud, hybrid models or managed services are more appropriate. Output from the session helps customers understand the relative benefits, challenges and ROI of each available option.
The CRA is structured to cover five key areas:
- Business drivers
- Service levels
- Architecture and technology
- Service management
- Security
Our goals for the end of the CRA are that you should have clarity around which model is right for you; that you understand long-term benefits and quick wins; that you have considered service management and your data protection requirements; and that you know how to minimise the risks of moving to a cloud environment.
Stage 2: Current state assessment
Assuming you are confident in the overall strategic direction suggested by the CRA, Vohkus will undertake a CSA. Using the Vohkus toolset and a specialist cloud consultant, this is a far more detailed discovery of your infrastructure, workloads and suitability to migrate to your chosen platform (such as Azure).
We do a deep dive into the five areas identified above, enabling the prospective platform to be fully scoped and sized, as well as making sure the proposed approach to managing the environment is practical and cost-effective.
To minimise the effort and impact of the CRA, we deploy data gathering tools to build a detailed picture of the current environment’s use, including any performance or capacity challenges. If this causes any concern we’re also able to specify the information required and you can provide this through your own tools or reports.
Toward migration
The CRA and CSA simply provide a launch pad for your journey. We’ve managed dozens of migrations and recognise that there can often be unforeseen snags once projects have commenced. The aims of the CRA and CSA are to make sure those risks are minimised.
And with Vohkus by your side throughout the migration programme itself, you can be assured of reliable support and advice every step of the way.
