Cloud Assessment is understood to be the entire prior assessment process to guarantee an effective migration to the Cloud, which, on the other hand, is known as a «journey to the cloud».
Thus, the objective of the Cloud Assessment is to review the current situation of the organization’s infrastructure, analyze the possibilities for improvement, and propose a line of action. This takes place regardless of the state the organization is in.
Each case is a world, and, for this reason, the Cloud Assessment work will be carried out in very different technological scenarios, whether they are organizations with CPDs in their facilities and that need to migrate to the cloud due to lack of physical space, to others with an almost 100% cloud scenario that they need to optimize to ensure that they are in the best possible economic scenario.
Each case is particular, but in all, it is necessary to use a methodology focused on the benefit of the client that minimizes the risks of change.
The Step-by-step To The Ultimate Journey To Cloud
Let’s see, step by step, what is the Cloud Assessment process applying the T-Systems philosophy and methodology.
- Understand the customer’s context: The objective is to have a transparent vision of the entire current set, from applications to infrastructures, what is the state of the machines, the risks of obsolescence, or how the applications are related to each other. This part is vital to reduce risks since in many cases, we are talking about substantial changes, thus, the better the understanding of the situation, the lower the risk in the change.
- Decide which is the best option among the alternatives on the market: At T-Systems we are cloud-agnostic, we work with all platforms and we also have our own cloud, which gives us very important flexibility and objectivity. Having good visibility on the final situation, both for applications and for infrastructure avoids misunderstandings and makes changes much easier.
- Analyze: The goal is to be able to develop a clear execution plan to move from the starting point to the final situation. This plan is designed to minimize business and technology impacts and is based on objective facts and a shared and communicated understanding. The result of the analysis is a detailed report on what needs to be done and what the future scenario should look like.
A critical chapter in the process refers to the organization’s application ecosystem, as they are components that affect both IT and the business. Many times, it is not easy to understand an application map in which custom developments, apps, intranets, old applications, ERPs, and disparate databases that need to be consolidated coexist.
This is where our consultants analyze and rank applications through interviews to determine the best recommendation on migration strategies, applications, and servers.
At the end of the Cloud Assessment process, we create the so-called «Assessment Report» with the total inventory of current servers and applications, the transformation plan, and the economic estimate of the different scenarios proposed.
The benefits of conducting an assessment process for our clients are very clear:
- First, a thorough knowledge of the entire infrastructure and its state of affairs. Day to day does not always allow us to stop for a moment and thoroughly examine what we have.
- Second, as it is an external consultancy, an objective view of the scenario is obtained, without contamination or partial views.
- Finally, it allows you to jump to the cloud by greatly minimizing the risks of doing so without considering all the pieces: infrastructure, contractual commitments, communications, and applications. Thus we can offer the client a realistic and objective economic business case.