Architecting for Cloud is both a rewarding, and at times frustrating process. Consultations can sometimes take a long time to go from start to finish, and a guaranteed cloud sale for your account manager. It involves a vast amount of knowledge about Cloud, coupled with an intimate knowledge of the client’s application and VM landscape in order to make the correct decisions and recommendations.
How do you go about it then?
Your first point of call is to ensure that you are getting in front of the correct person in power. Speaking to an administrator who might be worried about losing their job if some or all of the workloads are moving to the Cloud will ensure a lot of negativity and push-back around this, and chances are good you won’t get anywhere. This isn’t to say all administrators are the same, but they shouldn’t be your primary target for discussions, either initial or on-going.
Speaking to the decision makers who have the business interests at heart is where you should start, and the relevant “power” should be identified early on. It could be the CFO or financial manager wanting to decrease operating costs onsite and move to a more variable billing cycle, or the CTO or IS manager wanting to gain more benefits by moving some or all of the workloads to Cloud, or another manager wanting to release products and services to a target market quicker than the opposition to gain an advantage over them. Sit down with the relevant people internally to your company and map out who needs to be in the initial, and subsequent, meetings and drive the discussions with them directly around a table.
Getting a clear indication of what they want to do by migrating to the Cloud is also key. Being told that a company just wants to move to the Cloud might sound great, but can end up with a whole host of issues later when you try narrowing down specific reasons and motivations. Finding out more background about the company, their competitors, and how they work will assist you in gaining some idea of what they could do, but reasons for Cloud migration from the client are what defines the rest of the discussions. Clients also need assistance with this, so be prepared to listen, and then advise around what they are trying to do, and whether or not it is possible do execute what they are envisaging.
Once you have an idea of what they’re wanting to do, you need to start gathering information on applications, VM resources being utilized, sites and number of users, applications, services and document it all. You need to understand which applications can be moved without interruption, and which applications are integrated and would have to be moved together. This will indicate whether or not you need to forklift a whole bunch of VMs, or migrate them piece-meal. For this you might need applications support staff input so keep that in mind as they’re the experts in this regard. Also identify which servers or applications are legacy, as these might not be able to be migrated to a Cloud environment.
Check the network in terms of WAN specifically as this needs to be factored in when connecting to a Cloud platform. Connecting to the Cloud doesn’t necessarily mean faster applications if your connection to the Cloud platform isn’t fast enough. Indeed, the opposite might be true if users find access to applications or files and folders is slower than they were used too. You can mitigate this by planning for the correct type of connection (SDWAN/fibre/MPLS) with the right speed. Also, moving applications to the Cloud that would be better off remaining on site wouldn’t be the correct design. You would be wise to keep those onsite instead.
Once you have all the information on hand you can prepare your design around where to locate the company’s data or VMs: Will you look at SaaS if using an ERP application or keep those on site instead? Will you look at moving Exchange and then use Azure for further services? Will you only move Test and DEV servers to a Public Cloud and turn them off to make use of consumptive billing?
Your design needs to encompass all this, including the connectivity to the cloud and all services related to this. Migrating to the Cloud isn’t a quick and easy process, and needs proper planning so include more than enough professional services hours around this to allow for any deviations.
Plan properly, present a professional and well-thought out case for the company’s migration to the Cloud and the business is yours!