Highlights webinar Cloud journey

These and other questions were addressed during the Centric webinar Cloud journey - from ambition to transition. This webinar took place on November 25 and was hosted by Mike Wilmot, business development manager at Centric. He discussed the relevance of the cloud, the ideal roadmap and how to get a grip on and keep control of the cloud. He also discussed this with his guests Ronald Israels (principal consultant at Quint and author of the book ‘Digitale diensten regisseren’), Hans Lagaaij (CIO at Sanquin) and Tjerk Melinga (cloud practice lead at Centric). Missed the webinar? This article will get you up to speed with the highlights in no time.

Relevance

The benefits of the cloud are so obvious that the switch is often seen as an end in itself. But in doing so, you risk shifting "boxes" from a to b. To determine how you can best deploy the cloud, you need to see it as a means to achieve your business objectives. It is important to have a clear idea of why you want to go to the cloud and what you need to do so. Of course, the cloud may not be the best option. For example, in the case of legacy applications, where a transition would be more expensive, or when an application is not cloud-ready. However, there are often few reasons not to make the switch, provided the transition is well thought out.

Key takeaways:

• Cloud is relevant because of its flexibility, pay per use, security and short time-to-market.
• Cloud is a means to achieve your business goals.
• Provided you have thought it through, there are very few reasons not to move to the cloud.

Roadmap

The step-by-step plan starts with the basics: where are you now as an organization? That is the IT foundation in which you examine to what extent your organization is already ready for the migration. This mainly concerns non-technical matters such as: how are you organized? What do you already have in place? And what still needs to be done before you set up the cloud environment?

The next step is to determine exactly how you are going to set up that environment. A business case is used to determine what and how to migrate. Finally, the choice for the cloud platform that best suits your organization must be made. Will you go for Microsoft, Google, AWS or private?

The applications are an important part of the cloud roadmap. By assessing your applications, together with the business, and using your knowledge of the roadmaps, you determine the right migration strategy for each application.

Key takeaways:

• Your current situation is the guiding starting point for your cloud journey.
• Think about the application roadmap when drawing up the cloud strategy.
• Go through all the steps carefully for an optimal outcome of your cloud journey.

Grip

After the cloud transition it is important to get and keep a grip on your cloud environment together with your supplier. This requires a good policy, which is guaranteed and implemented in practice. By drawing up the so-called guard rails together, you can keep control and check whether the environment is secure and compliant.

Another way to get a grip on your cloud environment is with the use of a management platform. This way you give the autonomy back to the business. Working with a management platform provides more automation and therefore more control.

Key takeaways:

• Keeping a grip is something you do together with your IT supplier.
• A management platform helps you to keep a grip on your cloud environment.
• A cloud management platform gives autonomy back to the business.

Management

With a well-organized cloud, you spend less time keeping your cloud environment operational. Due to the rapid pace of IT developments, good policymaking and management require more energy. That is why it is important to establish a strong management organization with competencies in finance, architecture, and security.

The trend is for organizations to take on the directive role themselves rather than placing it with a vendor. Many companies work on the basis of a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), in which customers and suppliers work together on management. Here, organizational changes and business needs are the drivers for technological development. With the arrival of the cloud, the role of management is an intensive collaboration between customer and supplier.

Key takeaways:

• In order to keep a grip, customer and supplier work together.
• The management of a cloud environment requires different competencies than a traditional environment.
• Organizations are once again taking matters into their own hands when it comes to management.

Want to know more? Then watch the webinar! Please note, this is a Dutch spoken webinar.