Thanks to their flexible, scalable and reliable nature, hybrid cloud environments help IT play the role of strategic enabler by creating a highly virtualized enterprise systems architecture that spans the legacy infrastructure and the public cloud. However, hybrid cloud comes with challenges of its own.
From infrastructure and app modernization, to integrating all elements of the IT stack, there are multiple parameters for a successful hybrid cloud implementation. Here are some core pillars that can make or break your hybrid cloud migration roadmap:
- Application centricity: App-focused cloud adoption, or app-centricity, takes on an important role in defining the strategy. Given the cloud’s highly distributed nature, it’s important to take into account end-to-end application profiling, performance management, app monitoring and cloud-native concepts such as containerization. Enterprises that embrace these constructs have radically overhauled their application strategy, for instance, by building apps as microservices and functions rather than in a more costly traditional monolith structure.
- Governance, security & compliance: Organizations must conform with both local and global data protection guidelines – a mandate that Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has only served to strengthen. Compliance is an ongoing process, and as data processors, a business’s cloud vendors should take care of compliance obligations, not just from a technology standpoint but also from a people, process and documentation point of view.
- Enterprise integration and automation: As multi-cloud provider environments become the norm, enterprises need to establish comprehensive integration frameworks. Automated workload orchestration, unified monitoring and operational analytics across legacy, digital and the hybrid cloud environment are key tenets of a successful enterprise cloud integration plan.
- Cloud economics & legacy debt: Assuming that cloud infrastructure is more cost-effective than traditional on-premise models, enterprises can make a business case for migrating to cloud, but only if they can eliminate legacy system costs post-migration. Legacy assets have book value or license issues that can’t always be depreciated or sold. To achieve a positive ROI, companies should ensure these costs are eliminated and that cloud computing resources are not under-utilized.
Enterprises adopting cloud often overlook the risks and depth of changes that inevitably follow their shift to the cloud. Businesses should be clear on how a cloud migration can affect IT budget, security and infrastructure, and ensure they have the right migration strategy in place. In the original blog post, you can read about how Cognizant has helped several companies and organizations to accomplish that.
