One trillion dollars. That, according to McKinsey, is the business value that can be unlocked by organisations that migrate to the cloud. However, the research firm also found that much of this business value can be lost due to poor integration, unexpected costs, and inefficiencies throughout the cloud migration itself. It is not, as the hype would have it, a lift and shift, one-size-fits-all, process.
That is in its favour. After all, cloud migration should be a process of planning, benchmarking and analysis. It needs to be meticulous to ensure that the move to the cloud doesn’t bring with it legacy complexities or introduce new complexities of its own. However, while moving on-premise infrastructure to the cloud can be complicated, intense and time-consuming, it doesn’t have to leave the business gasping at the end.
There are a lot of benefits to the move. Cloud migration will tick the following boxes if it’s done properly and aligned with business strategy:
• Cost savings
• Productivity
• Application innovation, performance and integration
• Competitive advantage
• Speed to market
• Agility and resilience
The challenge is to ensure that every one of these benefits is realised by ensuring that the cloud platform, the underlying architecture, the applications, and the migration are managed properly and implemented realistically. Cloud migration can rapidly overtake budget expectations if there aren’t realistic expectations and boundaries in place, and if the migration itself isn’t managed meticulously.
You need to invest into a technology that has a proven footprint and methodology.
Microsoft Azure has long been a market leader. Supported by Microsoft’s vast ecosystem and ongoing research and development, the hyperscale platform has evolved to provide organisations with robust architecture and infrastructure that can be customised to fit unique workloads and environments. When wedded to VMware, it suddenly becomes a cloud and data centre migration powerhouse.
The Azure VMware Solution, known as AVS Azure, is designed to provide organisations with the tools and architecture they already know and use within a modernised and more agile environment. Essentially, it’s a Microsoft solution that’s been verified by VMware and runs easily on the Azure infrastructure so that many of the barriers to entry and complexities that come with cloud migration are overcome by the ubiquity of the technology.
In a recent report sponsored by Microsoft, Forrester conducted a Total Economic Impact™ study to assess the potential financial impact of the solution on a business. The research found that it saved the companies interviewed nearly $400,000 in maintenance costs, nearly $2 million in overprovisioning, and regained 75% in application downtime.
But that’s not the only fix for cloud migration complexity.
The architecture and technology of AVS Azure are sound but, like any platform, it requires expertise to ensure that it’s implemented properly. Discovery, benchmarking, solution design, implementation and maintenance should be undertaken by experts who are certified in both Microsoft and VMware and that understand two key concepts: speed is important, but complexity should be kept to a minimum.
Strategix has a 21-day implementation process designed specifically for companies migrating to Azure. The company ensures a fast migration path without compromising on the essential steps that make it an exceptional migration. Discover how Strategix will translate your AVS Azure thinking into agile reality here.
