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ICT CLOUD

to the cloud in a disorganised or unplanned manner is a recipe for cloud services continually evolving, this optimisation is an
failure. Instead, a cloud migration roadmap can help provide a time ongoing process. However, not every legacy application
frame for the completion of individual sub-projects as well as the will be able to shift to the cloud without changing some of
critical transition points. This ensures the move to the cloud is not the underlying components. It is not simply a lift and shift
only planned but also purposeful. approach, but one that requires ongoing testing.

Getting the concept right Understanding the changes needed
For organisations that are entirely new to the cloud, using a proof Given the monumental changes associated with moving to
of concept (PoC) will help them validate the architecture and other the cloud, any organisation will need to put a comprehensive
critical success factors. It also provides the opportunity to better change management strategy in place. This will incorporate
understand what cloud computing has to offer and how best to use every aspect of people, processes, technology and data that
it. The PoC delivers an environment where mistakes can be made will be impacted by the shift to the cloud. A transition to
(and lessons can be learnt) without any material impact on existing the cloud cannot be successful if change management is not
production systems. implemented.
Without this, employees will not understand the
Keeping it logical reasons behind the move or how to best use the ‘new’
The logical data architecture design should also be considered. This environment. Moving to the cloud is not an easy process,
will include a lower level of additional information compared to the despite how it is positioned by service providers. There are
conceptual architecture. Here, things like data flow, integration points numerous considerations to bear in mind. However,
and integration patterns are important. This information will be used having a well-designed cloud migration framework in place
to enhance the cloud migration plan and associated costs. can help mitigate many of the challenges an organisation is
When the organisation completes the PoC, its focus can likely to face. n
then move to putting the cloud foundation in place. Things to
consider here include creating reference architectures for use as
blueprints, setting up identity and access management, dealing
with cost governance, and establishing the development life cycle
environments.

Critical steps to the overall process
As part of this process, the organisation must conduct a cloud PoV or
MVP implementation as part of their cloud migration journey. This is
to assess and validate critical success factors for the migration.
These success factors, to name a few, typically include
architecture patterns, implementation effort and associated costs.
It is very difficult to predict cloud expenditure accurately upfront
and so implementing a representative workload as a pilot or MVP
enables organisations to better manage this risk and better plan going
forward.

Iterative build and migrate
Once the above aspects are completed, or at least in a usable
form, the cloud environments are available for the cloud
migration project teams to start moving workloads to the cloud.
This is done by iteratively creating data platform capabilities as
per the migration roadmap and deploying the business use-
case on the platform capabilities as they become available for
widespread use.

Optimise for the cloud
Organisations have found that it is easier to optimise their
applications after they have migrated them to the cloud. They can
then realise the cloud’s true potential by optimising solutions to
make full use of its high performance computing capabilities. With

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