Given the much-touted benefits of moving to the Cloud such as scalability, reliability, lower costs and security, businesses are under increasing pressure to fully leverage its advantages. With average cost savings reported at 20-30%, any delay in getting to the Cloud could cost your business dearly, both in terms of operational agility and profitability.
In this blog we’ve taken a look at the potential cost implications of delaying a migration to the Cloud and whether it is really necessary to wait until the Portfolio Planning and Discovery phase is complete before embarking on the move.
Often the most challenging and time-consuming part of a Cloud migration project is in the Discovery phase, especially if your infrastructure is spread across multiple data centers or multiple teams. Visualizing your entire IT infrastructure, uncovering potential issues, documenting your findings and turning them into actionable insight takes time. Many organizations rely on manual processes to assess their current environment, leading to further delays and potential roadblocks - and all the while your journey to the cloud is no further ahead.
Waiting for a comprehensive answer to all these questions may not be necessary. In fact, earlier this year the UK-based bank TSB attempted a major IT migration following several years of planning and the result, according to Forbes Magazine was a ‘complete and utter fiasco’. Multiple reasons were cited, but the biggest mistake was tackling the entire effort in a single ‘big bang’ initiative. Not only did the migration fail, but time was wasted in ‘preparing for failure’, costing the bank millions – and now potentially billions – of dollars in the wake of the fiasco.
Trying to do everything at once, as per the case with TSB Bank, runs the risk of slowing down the entire migration process. So to avoid this scenario we recommend you start small. Select the best applications for early migration, such as those with the fewest dependencies, while your discovery project runs its course, and start actively migrating them to your chosen Cloud service provider straight away. This means you can ramp up slowly, building expertise and confidence before tackling more complex workloads.
To demonstrate the potential cost savings of moving to the Cloud we have put together a high level calculation:
As we know, transitioning to the Cloud takes time:
So using our previous example, the cost to the business could be calculated as:
We recommend that to ensure a successful migration you do not delay any longer. Start with your easiest application sets following these key steps:
The answer is yesterday. In almost every case a migration to the Cloud will deliver a reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for your IT infrastructure. In addition to this you instantly realize the inherent benefits that the Cloud delivers including resilience, reduced management overhead, flexibility and scalability, and improved security and compliance.
Don’t wait to get started just because your discovery project is stalling. Talk to one of our Cloud Migration Experts or watch our 8 Minute Migration Demo and find out how RiverMeadow’s powerful SaaS Cloud Migration Platform and Managed Migration Services can get help you to start reaping the rewards of the Cloud today.