A six-stage cloud health check

16 Feb 2012

Is your organisation ready for cloud computing? For many IT teams, the biggest challenge will be deciding how to fine-tune their existing IT infrastructures to take best advantage of new cloud-based services, says Peter Job, CEO at IT optimisation consultancy, Intergence. 

At Intergence, an independent IT optimisation consultancy, we believe that this ‘check-up’ needs to focus on six key areas:

1. Business buy-in. It’s vital to ensure that senior managers from all parts of the business support the migration process. This support is often referred to as ‘buy-in’. A cloud migration will likely need to go through several pilots and iterations before full deployment. If it’s to be a success, senior management buy-in for the timescales and processes is a critical factor in ensuring that project momentum is maintained.
2. Due diligence. Once you have executive buy-in for your proposed cloud project, make sure that you understand the processes behind the applications that the organisation currently uses. For example, from a technical perspective, where are particular applications located? What are their dependencies and what performance metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) are they expected to meet? From a user perspective, how many people use these systems? How is the migration process likely to affect their ability to work? Will other projects be affected by the migration? Finally, there may be compliance considerations: is the organisations comfortable with they type of data that is associated with a particular applications and will soon be flowing across the cloud?
3. Migration planning. Start small. Set up and run some pilots to check that your plans executive smoothly. These will also provide some baseline numbers; by running pilots for several months, invaluable data on likely performance and user experience can be collected. After a trial, start to move logical segments into the cloud, making sure at each stage that users and managers are happy with the new service. This way, you won’t be caught out by unexpected glitches.
4. Mature the process. Once all required applications are in the cloud, more steps will be needed before the set-up can truly be considered ‘mature’. Staff will need to be certified in the cloud technologies they use. More advanced cloud capabilities, such as automated failover, will need to be explored. Resource usage must be monitored closely. From a business perspective, it’s important to understand all the financial impacts of the migration, from savings on hardware and power usage to improvements in business continuity.
5. Get feedback - and act on it. Ultimately, what matters is employee productivity. Throughout any cloud migration process, it’s important to gather feedback on user experiences of the new set-up. A mistake at an earlier stage – for instance, missing incompatible applications (from a physical resource perspective – can lead to the IT team having to ‘un-migrate’ everything and start again. Spotting the problem as soon as users report poor performance is much better than the help desk being inundated with tickets about a business-critical application on a Monday morning!
6. Continue to optimise. Your business doesn’t stay static, so why should your cloud? Keep monitoring both current and future requirements and plan accordingly. Use analytics to check on user experience and resource usage – and make use of the information you collect.