Migrating to the Public Cloud – Lessons from the Trenches

In this video Jon Gasparini, CTO OF Brightsolid, gives an informative lesson about migrating to the Public Cloud.

Goal of this Video

In this Video his goal is to share some of the experience that he has kind of built up over the last eight years helping organizations and successfully adopt public cloud services.

At (01:37) He says that there are a wide range of technical challenges that every organization will face in that journey. But, He is not going to focus on these this morning. But, instead he wants to focus on four other tough challenges that he believes should be part of every cloud migration program. 

At (01:54) He Introduce from Four tough challenges that every organization faces.

These Four Tough Challenges are following:

1. Operating Model
2. Skills Enablement
3. Finance Management
4. Security and Compliance

From (02:59) He starts to explain that what is Operating Model. 

• Operating Model:

According to him If you want to be succeed, then you must transform your Operating System.  Every organization needs to consider changes to the operating model as part of a cloud migration program. A cloud migration program just isn’t a technology program. It’s not moving services from a to b in order to successfully operate the services in the target environment.  You will need to implement new processes, procedures, new tools and also new skills and again that’s across both the technology and different parts of the business. 

From (10:46) He describe the impact on business due to change in Operating Models. List of Impacts on business are following:

• Procurement
• Finance
• Internal Audit

At (14:18) He explain the one of the tough challenge that is “Skill Enablement”. He states that whether you’re the coolest startup the largest enterprise a managed service provider like bright solid we’ve all struggled to get access to the scale and experience. we need at the time that we need it and unfortunately there’s no silver bullet you cannot magic that’s going experience right it’s just not there today it will grow over time but it’s not there today but there are things that you can do to help navigate that challenge.

From (15:01) He describe that the Skill Enablement Consist of these things:

• Expert Cloud professionals.
• Investing in new Programs and re-new skills.
• Attract others by your Skills.
• No Sourcing strategy is complete without an approach to retention.

At (17:30) He has explained the another tough challenge that is Finance Management. He states that Financial Management is main of core Cloud Migrating program. If you ignore to the financial management. You will experience bill shock at some point.

 Some of the Financial Management challenges that you need to be aware are Following:

• Shift from Capex to Opex.
• Increasingly complex Cloud provider bills.
• Ability to account for all cloud resources.
• Lack of automation and reporting.
• Proactive cost optimization.
• Consider show-back and charge back.

From (21:52) He States that he Cloud providers offer a set of levers but again you have to take advantage of these levers in the right way is a significant on the challenge and requires a level of expertise you know within the organization. 

There are some factors that you need to exploit complex commercial levers to drive down spend:

• On-Demand.
• Spot.
• Reservations.
• Sustained.
• Scheduling.
• Savings Plans.
• Exchange rate.
• Ent. Agreement.
• Account Structure.
• Right Sizing.
• Instance Family.
• Generation.

At (29.09) Seek early help to avoid paying premium and failure.

He says that the Organizations that don’t take advantage of financial management typically pay a 30 premium at least 30 premiums on their monthly cloud spend and that premium will only increase over time as you start to consume more and more of that public cloud platform. 

But, help is available if you’re an enterprise support customer with a public cloud provider go and talk to your account team. They are there to help you.

At (30:35) He has explained another tough challenge that is named as “security & Compliance”. He states that Security & Compliance of public Cloud resources is a responsibility that is shared between the public cloud provider and customer.

At (32:45) He says that: In February 2020, 10,000 patient records exposed by a UK care home that lacked the right Cloud controls.

From (33:30) Establishing a strong set of controls at the outset is critical.

He states that Strong cloud control framework will ensure you avoid the mistakes of others.

At (35:34) He also states that Guardrails form the technical implementation of your cloud Controls. They are designed to keep your Cloud developers and engineers safe without causing any unnecessary friction.

What we Learnt?

If you want to be a successful than you must have to focus on that Four Tough Challenges:

1. Operating Model: Recognize the need to change the ways of working across the whole business.
2. Skills Enablement: Get expert help and retention is just as important as Sourcing.
3. Financial Management: Understand your Cloud Spend and optimize to avoid Bill Shock.
4. Security & Compliance: Implement Cloud control framework and Guardrails at the Outset. 

CloudMigration.directory best practices: Migrating to the Public Cloud – Lessons from the Trenches.

@jgasparini of @brightsolid shares his experiences of enterprise scale Cloud migrations.