IT teams can significantly mitigate risk in moving workloads to the cloud by using familiar technologies, processes and skill sets across all environments, from the data center to the edge to multicloud environments.
The importance of choosing a safer, more secure and less expensive migration path has become more important in 2020 because the pressure to move more workloads is increasing.
This pressure is coming from all directions:
- Business leaders seeking competitive differentiation through digital transformation and IT modernization via cloud-first or cloud-only strategies.
- Changing workplace requirements accelerated by the need to support, scale and secure the sudden shift to work from home and the growing likelihood of lasting workplace transformation.
- Developers and DevOps teams demanding fast access to reliable infrastructure to support application modernization and new architectures for containers, microservices and Kubernetes.
All of this means that IT leaders must be assertive in minimizing risk and uncertainty in driving cloud migrations. The cloud can deliver huge advantages―in agility, cost savings, speed to market and digital transformation―but only when moving workloads to the cloud is not disruptive to ongoing business activities and operations. To fully realize the potential of the cloud, IT teams must align the cloud to the business.
Many organizations have struggled in migrating to the cloud because they have succumbed to pressure and moved too quickly, taken on too much change at one time, or failed to take into account all of the variables in migrating to the cloud―not just in technology but in skill sets, cultures and processes. The challenges are exacerbated in multicloud environments due to additional risks caused by increased complexity, potential lack of portability, security gaps and siloed data and applications.
More than three-quarters of organizations have migrated critical workloads back from the public cloud to a private cloud or on-premises environment, according to Enterprise Strategy Group research. Primary reasons include:
- Inconsistent security
- Inability to meet service-level requirements
- Unpredictable and rising costs
- Limited visibility and control
Moving apps to the cloud is a major initiative that can have high visibility within the organization. Migrating them back can be demoralizing and costly, not just in dollars but in time and lost business opportunity.
Benefits of a consistent platform
By using a familiar, consistent platform that extends across multicloud environments, IT teams can not only move faster in migrating workloads to the cloud, they can also move smarter.
They can move workloads at their own pace, with a strategy that enables them to prioritize which workloads should move to the cloud—and when—based on the needs of the application and the business. They can be much more data driven in evaluating key criteria around where, when and how to place workloads, including:
- Performance: Leveraging best-of-breed infrastructure across servers, storage and networking; considering the impact of latency and the volume of data having to travel across distances on workload performance; and managing the performance of each workload based on its own requirements.
- Economics: Having the flexibility of consumption-based usage models; leveraging skills sets of IT admins and personnel; accelerating time to market by giving DevOps teams the modern tools they need, such as Kubernetes; reducing complexity through automation; and saving money and optimizing resources by evaluating usage characteristics, seasonality and data access patterns across multicloud environments.
- Security and compliance: Using consistent infrastructure to manage and enforce policies; having a data-driven model for security posture and risk sensitivity; having vision from data center to edge to multicloud to manage regulatory and compliance requirements; and ensuring intrinsic security protections that are common to each workload.
Taking the next step
The path to the cloud does not have to be fraught with risk. With IT infrastructure teams facing increased pressure to move more workloads to the cloud, it is possible to move faster, smarter and safer by choosing a consistent infrastructure platform with familiar tools, technology, operations and processes.
IT teams can remove multicloud complexity and improve security while addressing the needs of all their constituencies, whether business leaders focused on digital transformation; workers forced to adjust to work-from-home and other new requirements; line-of-business managers seeking competitive edge; or DevOps teams looking to use modern tools to streamline development and accelerate speed to market.
For more information on how your organization can leverage the Dell Technologies Cloud to reduce risk in moving workloads to the cloud, please visit Dell Technologies.
