Cordant were recently engaged by a client to develop a technology modernisation strategy. Like most large organisations, this client had a mixed environment with workloads deployed across different on-premises technologies and the cloud. They were uncertain about how to modernise their environment to meet the needs of their existing workloads at the same time as supporting major upcoming projects.
Firstly, we developed a technology vision that painted a picture of what the future could be like across on-premises and cloud technologies. We didn’t simply say ‘move everything to the cloud’, we looked at the different business, technical and operational aspects of the client’s business to establish a vision that made sense for them.
Once this was agreed, we then defined a workload placement framework using their specific business context (e.g. cost, security, compliance, skills) to provide guidance on how to make workload placement decisions when migrating existing workloads and deciding on upcoming projects.
We didn’t do this without considering other great resources available, such as the Gartner Workload Placement Tool and Amazon Web Services 7Rs. They both provide great insights but in Cordant’s view unless you are a large multinational, or you are committed to migrating everything to the cloud there isn’t enough room for nuance and specific business context.
We therefore used both as an input to develop a workload placement framework for our client that provides a simple tool for decision making aligning with their direction and principles.
We believe that there are 5 options of workload placements – these align with common definitions of private, public and hybrid cloud and the ‘as a service’ definitions.
The different options are:
The first step in our approach is where we establish the specific context for the framework. It’s where we identify and agree the groupings of workloads that are specific to a business and then map these to the relevant and available workload placement options. We uncover information related to organisational preference, strategy, scalability, security, compliance and other factors that might impact the decision-making process.
Once we have an agreed position on this we move to the second step where we ask a series of questions that are intended to knock out workload placement options for a workload. For example, level of complexity, level of customisation, integration points etc. The aim is to knock out workload placement options to get to a preferred position.
If there are two or more options still available then we apply organisational preferences, principles and strategies to this to get to a preferred position. No cost or timing analysis has been done on the preferred position. In effect we are trying to establish a view of where a specific workload should go prior to establishing the cost and timing of the implementation.
We believe a ‘one size fits all’ approach for deciding where to place your workloads is not appropriate for all businesses in all cases. We aim to develop a simple framework that respects the operating landscape and constraints of each business.
Each business is different, and while there might be similarities in frameworks, there are likely to be differences. Our aim is to crystallise decision-making through as small a subset of questions and steps as possible.
Organisational landscapes are messy, and there are many aspects to consider when developing technology modernisation strategies. At Cordant, we understand this and are ready to work with you to develop an approach that works for your business.
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