EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES IN THE CLOUD

REACH HIGHERMaximise business agility and profi tabilityby migrating applications to the Cloud.

Planning and Discovery09

Step 2 - Analysis and Planning10

Application Sentencing11

Migration Strategy and Sequence12

Step 3 - Validation, Testing and Integration13

Step 4 - Migration14

Step 5 - Operation and Optimisation15

BJSS Cloud Services16

CONTENTS

Introduction01

Our Goal02

Cloud Migration Services03

Our Approach04

Five Steps to Successful Migration05

Step 1 - Migration Business Case06

Understanding Strategy and Business Drivers07

Cloud Readiness Assessment08

The next 12-18 months will see the start of mass migration to the Cloud, as enterprises and public-sector organisations take advantage of new-found agility and scalability.

The migration process itself has been well-codified but vital questions remain for each organisation preparing to make the leap. How to efficiently handle complex applications that are more difficult to migrate replatforming? How to embrace automation through the integration of the existing operations and service management? What to do with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and harness the DevOps approach that is integral to the Cloud?

Your journey to the Cloud starts here

The benefits of the Cloud are compelling, yet migration can be complex. Balancing business continuity with IT transformation may need additional expertise and resource. Migrating enterprise IT deployments, with hundreds or thousands of applications running on tens of thousands of virtual machines (VMs) is a daunting prospect. Which applications should be moved first? How to prioritise?

How does operating in the Cloud affect regulatory compliance, data security, and enterprise

processes? What does it mean for organisational roles, training, and change management? And, last but not least, how can you manage change while continuing to serve the business?

Successful Cloud migration requires careful consideration, expert design and precise execution across the organisation. So, it makes sense to engage partners with deep technical expertise, dedicated resources and practical experience of delivering at-scale Cloud solutions for some of the world’s largest organisations.

INTRODUCTION

This e-Book draws on our experience of delivering complex migrations, providing detailed method for transformation. It encapsulates our view of how to integrate automation and introduce DevOps capabilities into the organisation, along with practical guidance for unifying the business with a shared vision, aligned objectives and a collaborative culture.

Our goal is to prepare and support your organisation through transformation, modernising applications and operations to extract the full benefit of Cloud scalability and agility.

25 years’ experience managing end-to-end IT delivery for some of the world’s largest organisations underpins BJSS’ independent, expert and agile approach to digital transformation, from initial assessment through development and execution of long-term Cloud migration strategies.

Expert design, development and delivery of Cloud migration pilots

OUR GOAL

Experience with some of the world’s largest retailers, financial services and healthcare organisations has helped us create a more flexible approach to migration that can be customised for your unique business challenges.

BJSS can support an initial needs assessment or help build and deliver a complete migration plan, from requirements through to implementation.

In a world where shareholders and customers demand increased agility, inflexible, outmoded development strategies and mindsets can slow the pace of digital innovation.

Accelerate business success with a flexible approach to migration

Key Questions to Resolve

What’s the best approach to migrate legacy applications, especially complex applications, to the cloud?

How do we ensure the migration is assured and services continue without interruption?

How should new cloud services be operated and supported during and after migration?

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2

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CLOUD MIGRATION SERVICES

Working with business of all sizes, the first question we are often asked is, “How do we get started with Cloud migration?” We recommend a growth learning approach that tackles the easy projects first, generating quick wins and momentum throughout the organisation. That experience builds confidence and understanding that is invaluable in supporting more complex migrations.

Start simple, gather momentum, tackle complexity with confidence

Identify simple to migrate, “lift and shift” applications where you can change the hypervisor via a drag and drop approach. Higher value apps can be more complex and entangled with cross-functional processes, dependencies or specific support requirements. These are best tackled later, once experience has been gained.

Regardless of the chosen strategy, our recommendation is to ensure supporting activities such toolchain set up, automation and a supporting service team are established early in the process. These are key components in the migration effort and shouldn’t overlooked.

In the early stages of digital transformation, organisational learning and development is just as important as technical changes.

Better suitedto Migration

Potential benefits

Harderto Migrate

Starthere

Quickwins

Longtermbets

Pursuelater

OUR APPROACH

BJSS has identified five steps to successful migration which can equally be applied to straightforward “lift and shift” rehosting as well as to more complex replatforming projects.

The first step is to define he business case for migration. This could be done at a very high level to get a feel for the benefits, or it can be done following a deeper dive. Whatever the process, BJSS believes it should be iterative, with the benefits fully understood and the total cost of ownership defined.

This is why we add a feedback loop to initial stages.

Our five-step approach to Cloud transformation encompasses activities across the organisation, with a new operating model developed and tested before migration.

• Strategy and drivers

• Planning and discovery

• Cloud readiness assessment • Application sentencing

• Migration strategy, readiness

and planning

• High level cost to migrate and

cost to run to feed in to

business case

• Validation

• Initial landing zone design

• Team structure for migration

• Early life support model design

• Testing

• Pilot migration

• Set up migration factory

• Migrate

• Discover

• Design

• Build

• Validate

• Cutover

• Application optimisation

• Process optimisation

• Operational optimisation

• Cost optimisation

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Validation, Testing,and Integration

Analysis andPlanning

Migration BusinessCase

Migration

Operation andOptimisation

FIVE STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL MIGRATION

When approaching the business case for Cloud migration, identify the business rationale for and benefits of migration. Inevitably, development costs will be incurred before benefits are realised, so it is vital the business understands the need for transformation.

Once the benefits have been crystallised, focus on the plan - how will the organisation deliver change, while maintaining user satisfaction with current service delivery. From there, identify the project team and delivery schedule.

Larger businesses often engage multiple partners, who may have varying approaches to migration. For example, BJSS believes that an agile approach to complex migration is preferable to a waterfall approach. Also, that automation and testing should be built into the early-life support for the applications.

Internal IT resources should be supplemented with experienced partners during migration. After all, there is still a day job to do. In this environment, consider and be clear on project ownership and governance.

During business case development, be sure to think about what happens when then migration work is complete. Our approach is to build the service alongside the migration effort, so that there is a more efficient handover. We call this a Minimum Viable Service - something that both the developers and operators of the new environment have worked together to create and are happy to support on a continuing basis.

STEP 1 - MIGRATION BUSINESS CASE

A Cloud migration is like any other IT transformation, requiring upfront planning plus a clear and compelling business case for change. Business drivers can be broadly classed as responding to external competitive pressures or internal productivity and efficiency requirements.

Understanding how these drivers are enhanced by Cloud operation is critical. Simply stating the desire for a Cloud-first strategy is an insufficient defence when migration costs start to impact budgets.

Early identification of the cost and profit drivers impacted by Cloud adoption helps to shape and prioritise migration activities and create an initial design for the target operating model.

Examples include exiting a data centre to reduce costs, developing functionality in a legacy application to meet new market requirements or building new services to counter a disruptive entrant. Each driver should be outlined with a specific business case and cost benefit.

It is also important at this stage to capture the vision of the senior stakeholder responsible for the transformation and the high-level operating principles.

Ensure consideration is given to development and support requirements throughout the transformation programme. One aspect often overlooked is the dual-running of services during migration and in the early support stages, before processes are analysed and optimised.

UNDERSTANDING STRATEGY AND DRIVES

Developing a strong but flexible operating model is an essential step in the migration plan, but is one that is often overlooked.

While decisions regarding the design of the supporting operating model will be made throughout development, the initial Cloud Readiness Assessment will provide early indicators for the model design, supporting delivery of your business goals and the chosen migration strategy.

BJSS has developed a market-leading method to help organisations envision and shape the target operating model for a migrated application or application estate. The design will differ from traditional ITIL-based models due to the automation features (and associated benefits) offered by Cloud services.

Thanks to extensive experience providing managed services to clients with Cloud-based requirements, we can provide a detailed view of the available benefits within your organisation, on request.

CLOUD READINESS ASSESSMENT

In the Planning and Discovery phase, we recommend defining the migration approach at a high level. Alongside the business case and cost benefit analysis, be sure to define the project team with a detailed definition of tasks and accountabilities. This step is particularly pertinent where multiple partners are involved but is a good idea for any migration project.

The identification of required resources is a critical step in calculating development costs but be sure to consider additional resources required to run new/legacy services in parallel during migration. Costs incurred through early support stages post-migration are also likely to be higher until the organisation has had the chance to review and optimise operational processes.

As you define the project team and required resources, identify and develop plans to fill any skills gaps in development, application management and operational support. Ensure delivery risks are called out and additional costs are included in your plan.

PLANNING AND DISCOVERY

With the business case agreed, the migration team proceeds to analyse the application estate and define the transformation plan. We recommend adoption of an agile planning approach at this stage, with supporting detail defined during the validation phase.

Review the application estate and define the plan

The application estate review includes data classification and supporting insight which helps the organization decide the best approach for migration. Typically, the 6R’s are used to evaluate and ultimately define the plan.

This activity is known as ‘application sentencing’ - deciding the fate of the application for the foreseeable future. We map the current state of the application to the desired state to identify gaps and development requirements.

Those gaps might involve changes to workload architecture or even a complete rewrite.

STEP 2 - ANALYSIS AND PLANNING

Typical Application Migration Approach and Effort Operating Model Impact

Retain

Retire

The IT service is difficult and/or expensive to migrate to a public cloud in the current roadmap and the implementation will result in significant risk to service. There is likely to be technical dependencies that are difficult or impossible to resolve. Service support, especially from Third Parties, will not exist at a level that the business requires. Business Requirements are vague, or test coverage and confidence is low.

None requiredRevisit laterPossible candidatefor refactoring

None required No impact Costs are reduced

No impact Costs are retained

Current services specified are due for retirement. The functionality the application provides will be delivered by and existing application in the estate or new application which may be deployed on premise. One of the benefits of undertaking a review is the opportunity to switch off applications that are not used and consume resources. This activity will often give an immediate cost saving.

Rehost

Often automated Medium impactNew skills needed in operations

Redeploy the service to a different hardware environment and change the application’s infrastructure configuration. Rehosting an application without making changes to its architecture provides the fastest cloud migration. However, the primary advantage of laaS - that teams can migrate systems quickly, without modifying their architecture - can be its primary disadvantage as benefits from the cloud characteristics of the infrastructure, e.g. scalability will be missed. Additionally, BJSS believe that the service operation needs to be considered , as a move without a supporting operating model is not effective.

A popular concept in cloud transformation, the 6Rs define various approaches to application migration. Each approach, or Sentence Type,

is evaluated for use in the migration plan and employed as required.

Discard an existing service and use commercial software, delivered as a service. This option avoids development investment when requirements for a business function change quickly. Disadvantages can include loss of bespoke business processes or rules, inconsistent data semantics, data access/security issues, and lock-in.

Data migration only

Often quite complex especially if there are many dependencies

High impact on skillsNeed continuous testing and early life support in place

Re-imagining how the application is architected and developed, typically using cloud-native features. This method is typically driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment. In addition, it is highly possible that the current state architecture may contribute as a limiting factor.

As with refactor, is more complex High impact on skillsNeed continuous testing and early life support in place

Often employed when more cost-effective technology is available, such as a database service, replatforming can offer both agility and cost benefits bu has a bigger impact on the operating model and migration strategy. This approach rebuilds the solution on PaaS, discarding code for an existing application and re-archtecting the application. Although rebuilding requires losing the familiarity of existing code and frameworks, the advantage is access to innovative features in the provider’s platform. However, lock-in is the primary disadvantage.

Medium impactNew skills will be required

Repurchase

Refactor

Replatform

A popular concept in Cloud transformation, the 6Rs define various approaches to application migration. Each approach, or Sentence Type, is evaluated for use in the migration plan and employed as required.

The 6 Rs of Cloud Migration

APPLICATION SENTENCING

Once an application sentencing decision has been reached, the team moves on to building the vision and definition of the target operating model.

To support this process, we have defined a number of standard operating model patterns which can be evaluated and selected for the migration process.

Typically, the model selection is informed by the overarching business drivers and migration strategy to be employed.

Description Best use

Build separate facade between old and new environments.

Educate teams.

Same team to run with resource augmentation.

Gradual migration from old to new.

Large scale data centre exit

or drain

Typical lift and shirt rehost

New business unit

Demand for app refactor or

replatform

Build small ops model and separate team.

Deploy some shared services.

Major focus on automation.

Start up

New business acquisitionStraight switch from old to new operations model.

No time constraints.

Replacement of expensive

technology such as WebSphere,

web logic, Oracle to cloud system

Replacement of old tech stack driven by need to replace and

reduce costs and/or add new features.

Start up

New business acquisitionCombination of two approaches.

Useful when time on side.

Often an intermediate step before full pattern or when no

clear strategy is available.

Target operating model patterns

Strangler

Side car

All in

Rotten Apple

Combination

MIGRATION STRATEGY AND SEQUENCE

The Validation phase of the migration can be relatively straightforward if rehosting dominates the strategy or quite complex if replatforming is required.

Several automation tools can be employed in rehosting to smooth the migration process. For more complex migrations and those involving multiple partners, deeper consideration is required.

Building the target architecture with early-life support

For both scenarios, BJSS recommends that the operating model is reviewed and plans developed to support the new Cloud platform.

We also advise that a degree of automation is built into the process for continuous integration and deployment.

Early-life support for the initial migrated services is often overlooked but much needed to ensure confidence in the Cloud and to provide know-how for operational teams. BJSS has developed a rapid take-on model designed to assist and augment existing teams, imparting knowledge where applicable.

Validation phase activities

Building a target architecture or landing zone

and ensuring it is fit for purpose

Undertaking test migrations

Deploying and testing early-life support for the

new cloud platform and applications. This is part

of the modern service management development

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STEP 3 - VALIDATION, TESTING AND INTEGRATION

MIG

RA

TIO

N P

RO

CE

SS

PREPARATION PREPARATIONMIGRATION

2

WEEKS

2

WEEKS

MIG

RA

TE

• Current network• Key management processes• Necessary credentials

• Install discovery appliance

• Validate connectivity• Configure security groups

• Security variances• Environment expectations• Migration processes

• Initial architecture design • Review existing blueprints • Document success criteria

• Resolve dependency conflicts • Conduct • POC test • Migrate data

• Firewall requests • Set up and configuration • Allocate credentials

• Application connectivity • Functional validation • Audit

Sprint one: Prepare Sprint two: Migrate

DESIGN

MIG

RA

TE

In most cases, the migration of an application or service to the Cloud is a two-step process: migration preparation and migration execution.

In migration preparation, a single team or individual carries out an application discovery deep dive and then creates the end-state design.

Prepare and migrate the application to the Cloud

Migration execution moves part or all of the application to the Cloud, carries out service and operations integration, and completes testing.

We prefer to use the same individual or team to perform migration preparation and execution as it reduces cycle time and removes the overhead incurred when creating one-off migration documentation. If this is not possible, we use an alternative process that minimises hand-offs between individuals or teams.

Migration tasks are outlined in the adjacent diagram. BJSS advocates the use of Cloud-provider tooling to accelerate the process and reduce costs.

STEP 4 - MIGRATION

The final phase in a migration project is the delivery of operations and service management. Here the goal is to ensure the effective, continued delivery of services while seeking to optimise and further refine execution.

BJSS believes this is an integral part of the programme and not an after-thought, to be bolted on after migration.

Modern Managed Services - delivering the Cloud promise

The BJSS migration approach builds on years of experience of developing enterprise Agile capabilities. We tailor and apply the principles of Minimum Viable Product development to create efficient Minimum Viable Services for clients.

Efficiency is optimised by developing operational processes in parallel with the application build, harnessing the benefits of automation wherever possible. This streamlined approach results in faster development, reduced downtime and earlier realisation of business benefits than a traditional, waterfall approach.

Service Management Wrapper

Platform

Engineering

Support &

Maintenance

ContinualImprovement

Agile Project

Services

ToolingSkills

STEP 5 - OPERATION AND OPTIMISATION

BJSS is an award-winning delivery-focused IT and business consultancy providing a comprehensive range of IT delivery and advisory services to an international client base.

With extensive experience in hyper-scale Cloud deployment, and a suite of enterprise Cloud consulting services, BJSS can assess, develop, optimise, manage and innovate your Cloud platform to deliver business value.

Contact us at cloud@bjss.com to discover how we can support and accelerate your organisation’s journey to the Cloud.

ModernisationM Migration

Readiness

CONTACT US

bjss.com/cloud

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