How IBM helps clients accelerate app modernization and control costs

A large US-based healthcare company recently engaged with IBM to accelerate their cloud adoption with consistent and predictable outcomes. This collaboration enhanced their confidence to navigate app modernization across various applications and landing zones for both hybrid cloud and platform-native modernization.

As a healthcare company, this client had an obligation to provide safe, reliable, time-sensitive, high-quality services to its customers. Ultimately, they needed best-in-class application modernization tooling to help deliver on that obligation.

When a client is not able to properly visualize all applications and their underlying dependencies properly, they risk experiencing diminished reliability. Managing large internal and vendor teams to maintain multiple applications can be extremely difficult. To accelerate the hybrid cloud journey and control costs, it is critical to prioritize specific execution and transformation steps. 

How IBM helped improve the app modernization strategy

IBM Consulting® worked with the client’s cloud team and technical experts to deploy IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator, which helped them understand the business logic surrounding their many applications. The solutions deployed included IBM® Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI), Cloud Transformation Insights (CTI), Analysis and Renovation Catalyst (ARC), Mainframe Application Modernizer (MAM) and Candidate Microservice Advisor (CMA).

IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator understands complex program interactions in the current state of applications and microservices and can perform a what-if analysis of possible target states. It provides flexibility to choose what applications to move and when to move them based on business imperatives. It also helps to enable consistency and provides an accelerated modernization process end-to-end, from rapid discovery to solutioning and low-touch delivery.

Hybrid cloud migration with predictable outcomes and lower risk

The client was able to leverage a repository that provides a collaborative environment where multiple resources can search, modify and test the business rules by ingesting extracted business rules.

The IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator also provided a detailed discovery of mainframe applications. These improvements are further underscored by the solution’s automated discovery of dead code or unreachable code and its ability to identify microservices in potential target states.

IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator integrates and orchestrates a wide range of migration tools across IBM’s assets and products, as well as open source, and third-party tools. IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator offers these capabilities:

• Cloud transformation planning: Create a wave plan for migration and modernization workloads to the cloud.
• Application and workload analysis: Collect infrastructure, app data and target state preferences. Produce cloud modernization paths that are optimized for time, cost and business benefits.
• Migrate, modernize and build capabilities: Migrate workloads to the cloud or develop new applications natively on the cloud with our automation-first, journey-based approach with low-touch factory squads to deliver predictable outcomes.
• Application and platform design: Create technical blueprints to help guide the implementation of consistent experiences across multiple cloud platforms and services.
• Cloud services configuration: Automate the build-out and configuration of the cloud platform and the required cloud services for application workloads.
• Day 2 operations: Drive consistency in cloud operations in a vendor agnostic manner, regardless of choices in cloud providers or landing zones.
• Co-creation with IBM Garage™: Ideate, build, measure, iterate and scale solutions seamlessly with our end-to-end framework of design thinking, agile and DevOps practices. Achieve speed-to-value and adopt breakthrough technologies through the partnerships between your team and a diverse set of IBM technology, business and design experts.

IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator enabled the healthcare company by deploying IBM hybrid-cloud capabilities across the client’s locations in a cost-effective manner. This allowed them to deliver higher-quality health outcomes to their customers. The company is now expanding to additional use cases as a result of their collaboration and innovation with the IBM Consulting team.

We believe that this engagement reflects the IBM values of client dedication and innovation that matters. It is our honor and privilege to provide value to our clients. IBM’s mission is to harness the power of data and hybrid cloud to drive real-time, predictive business insights that help clients make intelligent business decisions.

Source: ibm.com

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Cloud migration best practices: Optimizing your cloud migration strategy

As businesses adapt to the evolving digital landscape, cloud migration became an important step toward achieving greater efficiency, scalability and security. Cloud migration is the process of transferring data, applications and on-premises infrastructure to a cloud computing environment. This shift involves a fundamental change in the way a company operates.

Why migrate to the cloud?

There are many reasons for migrating from on-premises infrastructure to cloud. Businesses are increasingly embracing cloud infrastructure due to its scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness, among other benefits. Recent statistics indicate a significant rise in companies adopting cloud services to meet their operational and cost saving needs.

Cloud-based collaboration tools enable team members to work together from diverse locations, enhancing productivity and enabling remote work. Cloud migration can also help reduce a business’s carbon footprint.

Additionally, cloud providers regularly update their services, supplying access to the latest features, security patches and technology advancements. 

Types of cloud migration

The specific strategies and scenarios for cloud adoption and migration depend on the needs of the organization and its current IT infrastructure. It is important to understand the cloud migration best practices for effective execution.

Complete data center migration involves the transmission of all company data to the cloud. This migration approach is favored when businesses seek to fully use the benefits of the cloud, including scalability, flexibility and advanced features. By transferring all data and operations to the cloud, organizations can reduce operational costs and retire traditional on-premises setups. 

Hybrid cloud migration is relocating a portion of resources to the cloud while keeping some data on-premises. This approach suits scenarios where businesses have specific data compliance needs, keeping sensitive or critical data on-premises while leveraging the cloud for other operations. The hybrid model allows organizations to gradually transition to the cloud, managing risks associated with a complete migration while benefiting from cloud scalability and flexibility. 

Cloud-to-cloud migration occurs when organizations move resources from one cloud to another. This migration type is driven by the pursuit of cost efficiency or for better security. 

Multicloud migration is a strategic approach that involves utilizing services or resources from multiple cloud service providers. Multicloud environments range from leveraging software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for portability to orchestrating enterprise applications across various platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings from leading cloud vendors like Amazon Web services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), through a centralized management console. 

Cloud migration strategies 

There are several types of cloud migration strategies that organizations employ, based on their specific needs. These include rehosting, re-platforming, refactoring, repurchasing and retiring.

Rehosting 

Rehosting, also known as Lift and Shift, involves moving applications from an on-premises environment to the cloud without making significant changes. 

Re-platforming 

With a re-platforming migration, some adjustments or optimizations are made to the applications before moving them to the cloud.

Refactoring 

Refactoring involves modifying or redesigning applications to fully leverage cloud-native features. This migration type often involves breaking down monolithic applications into microservices, making them more scalable in the cloud environment.

Repurchasing

Repurchasing involves retiring an existing application and replacing it with a SaaS alternative. Instead of migrating the application to the cloud, businesses opt for a cloud-based SaaS solution that meets their needs.

Retiring 

Retiring involves decommissioning outdated or unused applications as part of the migration process. This helps in reducing maintenance costs and eliminating redundant resources. 

Common cloud migration challenges

Performance bottlenecks

Performance bottlenecks particularly occur during the testing phase when migrated resources are validated, which can pose a significant challenge during cloud migrations. The transition to a cloud environment can introduce differences in performance compared to on-premises setups, necessitating careful identification of bottlenecks, latency, issues and other performance-related challenges. Successfully addressing these issues during testing is essential to make sure that applications and services operate smoothly post-migration, minimizing disruptions and maintaining optimal performance for end-users. 

Cost overruns

Estimating and controlling expenses throughout a cloud migration and beyond is hard work. Although cloud services can offer long-term cost savings, the initial migration phase often incurs significant expenses related to data transfer, re-architecture and training. Additionally, without proper monitoring and optimization, ongoing cloud usage costs can escalate rapidly, leading to budget overruns and financial strain. To address this challenge, organizations must implement robust cost management strategies, leveraging cost optimization tools and continuously monitor and adjust their cloud resources to promote cost-efficiency and alignment with business objectives. 

Time and resource commitment

Achieving a successful cloud migration entails significant time and resource commitment due to the intricate nature of cloud migration projects. These endeavors demand meticulous planning, extensive testing and skilled personnel, all of which can strain an organization’s resources and divert attention from other critical business initiatives. Without adequate planning and resource allocation, businesses may face disruptions to operations and potential project failure, emphasizing the importance of careful consideration and investment in cloud migration initiatives. 

Scalability and performance

Scalability and performance present notable challenges for cloud migrations, despite the inherent scalability benefits of cloud computing. It’s critical to make sure that the selected cloud solution can effectively manage the increasing volumes of data and processing demands, both at present and as the business expands. For instance, a rapidly growing online gaming company migrating to the cloud for scalability might encounter issues if auto-scaling features are not configured optimally. This could result in subpar performance or unexpectedly high costs during peak traffic periods, highlighting the importance of thorough planning and testing for seamless scalability and performance in the cloud environment. 

Vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in causes organizations to risk becoming dependent on a single cloud provider’s proprietary services, APIs and pricing models. This dependency can limit flexibility, hinger innovation and cause costs to increase over time. Moreover, transitioning away from a cloud provider can be complex and costly because of data transfer fees, re-architecture efforts and potential app rewrites. To mitigate this risk, you must carefully consider your cloud strategy, adopt multi-cloud or hybrid cloud architectures and implement cloud-agnostic solutions wherever possible to maintain flexibility and avoid being locked into any one cloud vendor’s ecosystem. 

Service disruption

Due to the complexity of transitioning mission-critical applications and services during a migration from on-premises to the cloud, service disruptions pose a significant challenge. Migrating workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud often involves reconfiguring network settings, transferring large volumes of data and adapting to new cloud-native architectures. During this transition, any interruptions or downtime can lead to lost revenue, decreased productivity and damage to your organization’s reputation. You must safeguard seamless continuous service to minimize disruptions and maintain business operations throughout the migration process. 

How to avoid cloud migration challenges 

There are many benefits to cloud migration but that doesn’t mean the cloud migration process is not without its own challenges. A well-developed strategic approach is crucial for a smooth migration and to navigate potential challenges, but a strategic approach alone is not enough to avoid the associated challenges. What’s needed is a comprehensive solution that not only manages, automates and continuously optimizes your cloud environment in real-time but also helps you in planning and executing a successful cloud migration, whether you are transitioning from on-premises to the cloud or migrating between cloud providers. IBM® Turbonomic® supports your cloud provider, whether it’s private or public cloud. 

With IBM Turbonomic you can avoid many challenges associated with cloud migrations, like 

• Service disruptions: Dynamically optimizes workloads performance and resource allocation for uninterrupted operations 
• Vendor lock-in: Provides insights and recommendations for workload placement across multiple cloud providers, reducing dependency on any single vendor’s ecosystem. 
• Cost overruns: Continuously optimizes resource utilization and provides insights to help control cloud spending (during a migration and after). 
• Time and resource commitments: Automates workload placement and optimization, reducing manual effort and streamlining the migration process. 
• Performance bottlenecks: Dynamically identifying and addressing workload performance issues for smooth operation post-migration. 

IBM Turbonomic What-If Planning: cloud migration edition

IBM Turbonomic makes sure your cloud migration runs smoothly no matter what challenges are thrown your way, but what makes the platform special is its ability to run What-If planning scenarios. IBM Turbonomic has a plan specifically tailored for cloud migrations called ‘Migrate to Cloud’, offering invaluable foresight and strategic insight for a seamless transition to the cloud.

The plan simulates the migration of on premises virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud, or the migration of VMs from one cloud provider to another. This plan focuses on performance and cost optimization by selecting the most suitable cloud resources for your VMs and their associated volumes. Additionally, the plan can recommend cost-savings measures such as transitioning workloads from on-demand to discounted pricing and purchasing more discounts. 

The ‘Migrate to Cloud’ plan calculates costs based on your negotiated billing and price adjustments with your cloud provider, covering compute, services (for example, IP services) and licensing fees. Additionally, the plan factors in discounted purchases for VMs eligible for discounted pricing.

The plan results show: 

• Projected costs 
• Actions to execute your migration and optimize costs and performance 
• Optimal cloud instances to use, combining efficient purchase of resources with assured application performance 
• The cost benefit of moving workloads from on-demand to discounted pricing 
• Discounts you should purchase 

Turbonomic shows results for two migration scenarios, Lift and Shift and an optimized cloud migration. For the Lift and Shift results, Turbonomic shows the migration of your VMs to cloud instances that match their current resource allocations. As for the optimized plan, Turbonomic actively seeks opportunities to optimize both cost and performance. Through the analysis of historical VM resource utilization, Turbonomic discovers instances of over-provisioning. In an optimized migration scenario, Turbonomic will suggest transitioning these VMs to more cost-effective instances without compromising performance, showcasing the resulting cost savings. Furthermore, when examining the actions for an optimized migration, Turbonomic provides charts that plots the historical utilization data used in the analysis. 

By simulating cloud migrations, Turbonomic enables organizations to anticipate potential challenges, such as resource constraints or performance bottlenecks and proactively address them before implementation. This capability empowers businesses to optimize their migration plan and strategy, mitigate risks, reduce cloud costs and maximize the success of their cloud migration initiatives. With Turbonomic’s What-If planning, organizations can confidently navigate the complexities of cloud migration and achieve their desired outcomes with minimal disruption.

Source: ibm.com

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Common cloud migration challenges and how to manage them

Cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, and its scalability, functionality, cost-effectiveness and other potential benefits have helped transform traditional business models and update legacy systems, creating opportunities for various organizations. A cloud migration, however, is a huge undertaking that requires thorough planning and execution of a comprehensive strategy to successfully achieve business goals. Cloud services are readily available and come in all shapes and sizes—it’s important to determine which is best for your organization.

Though it can deliver many benefits, a migration project poses some risks to an organization and presents a unique set of challenges. The better an organization understands those challenges, and prepares to proactively address them, the more successful (and less stressful!) a migration will be.

In this blog, we review the benefits of cloud migration and some common challenges organizations face, to help your organization better prepare for a cloud migration.

Cloud migration benefits

Cloud migration—the process of moving data, applications and workloads from an on-premises data center to a cloud-based infrastructure, or from one cloud environment to another—offers several significant benefits: 

• Scalability: A move to cloud removes the physical constraints to scalability; it reduces or eliminates the need to add servers and supporting infrastructure to a data center.
• Cost-effectiveness: With cloud pricing models, you can pay for only the capacity you use. Rather than adding on-premises capacity in anticipation of scalability you may or may not need, cloud deployment enables you to pay for the capacity you currently need and scale on demand when required.
• Security: Leading cloud providers offer secure environments that comply with applicable industry standards and government regulations. They protect these environments with security tools, best practices and policies, updating them regularly and at scale as needed.
• Accelerated adoption: Migrating applications to the cloud allows your company to adopt new technologies faster and increase compatibility. In short, enterprises typically migrate workloads to cloud to improve operational performance and agility, workload scalability and security.

Cloud migration challenges

Though cloud migration might be the right move for your organization, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t challenges involved. The nature of these obstacles depends on your organization’s migration plan. The outcome of your migration might be affected by whether your organization plans to migrate all its computing assets to the cloud or run a partial migration while some applications and services remain on-premises. This replatforming can reveal vulnerabilities and help to highlight your business needs.

In the following sections, we explore some of the most common cloud migration challenges and offer cloud solutions to help your organization manage a smooth migration and avoid issues such as data loss and performance degradation.

Lack of cloud migration strategy

While businesses and organizations are often eager to take advantage of cloud infrastructure, it’s important to approach the process with a clear design and plan of action to achieve the best outcomes. A cloud migration strategy should consider many different factors, including overall migration goals and how to avoid downtime.

It’s important to carefully examine which workloads are most appropriate for cloud and avoid selecting applications to run in cloud that might be better suited on-premises. This factor differs depending on your company’s specific needs and business objectives, chosen cloud service providers and cloud distribution models (SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, for example).

Solution: After you have decided to adopt cloud, creating a detailed roadmap outlining the migration process and necessary resources is crucial for success. Things to consider include what you migrate and why, and who is responsible for each part of the migration. Clearly defining these workflows makes for a smoother transition.

The roadmap considers factors like dependencies, latency and security concerns, and the leveraging of technologies like automation. Organizations must decide whether a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid environment is best suited for their cloud data needs.

Migration cost

Calculating cloud migration costs can be one of the most challenging aspects of migration. Organizations often underestimate the full scope of expenses incurred during data migration, such as new network connectivity needs to handle increased bandwidth demands and post-migration costs to run workloads in cloud environments.

Solution: The best way to plan your cloud costs is by taking advantage of cloud migration planning tools that walk you through all the considerations of the cloud migration process. Set a budget for the migration and be sure to factor in current costs associated with moving the workloads and the expense of running them in the cloud.

Complex architecture

Matching your organization’s cloud strategy with the overall IT strategy can present a challenge, particularly if the current IT infrastructure is complex. IT complexity can make it a bit more difficult to develop and run a compatible cloud migration strategy.

Solution: To prevent creating a complex new cloud or hybrid environment, along with its accompanying costs and challenges, your organization needs to carefully plan and establish a realistic vision. Strive to design a cloud architecture that is compatible with the existing in-house IT infrastructure to minimize inconsistencies and interoperability problems between different systems.

Data security and compliance risks

There is security risk involved with any transfer of information, including when moving data to and from cloud platforms. Cloud-hosted data and apps must follow the same security protocol as those on-premises. A successful cloud migration includes these security measures as part of its refactoring.

Solution: To address this risk, choose a cloud service provider with robust security features and a demonstrated history of platform security. Ensure that network connections are appropriate for the task at hand. For example, always opt for a secure private connection to handle sensitive data. Additionally, ensure that cloud providers have the tools, practices and policies in place to comply with relevant security requirements.

Cloud migration and IBM

Cloud migration doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The IBM Instana™ and IBM® Turbonomic® platforms provide cloud migration solutions and tools that simplify the migration process and help your organization find the most efficient and cost-effective path to the cloud.

Here’s how it works:

With IBM Turbonomic you can optimize your cloud consumption from the start, expedite cloud migration initiatives and enable cloud security.

Turbonomic analyzes the real-time resource needs of application workloads, whether they’re cloud-based or running on-prem. The platform then delivers potential application migration plans. These plans detail specific actions and indicate which cloud configurations will support your workloads. This applies whether you take a “lift-and-shift” approach or optimize workloads as part of the migration. This migration assessment strategy can help with cost savings by avoiding expensive lift-and-shift migrations.

Whether your organization is pursuing a cloud-first, hybrid cloud or multicloud strategy, Turbonomic can deliver cloud migration planning tools to accelerate your digital transformation and help you take full advantage of discounted pricing.

With IBM Instana you can establish pre-migration performance baselines, understand your infrastructure needs, automate cloud provisioning and orchestration, pinpoint the root cause of issues during migration and establish proactive post-migration monitoring processes. IBM Instana™ Observability helps to ensure your success throughout the entire cloud migration process (plan, migrate and run) for smooth and efficient application and infrastructure performance, without disruptions to your users.

Source: ibm.com

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