The journey can be a long one and the decision parameters can be multiple, starting with the willingness of top management to transition to the cloud. Marc Neukirch, Lead Architect and Eva Gram, Head of Codit Luxembourg discuss this topic before doing a deep dive at the conference Cloudification in cloudy times.
How do you adopt the cloud once and for all, or at least accelerate the transition to it?
More and more companies want to start with their cloud transition and are searching for accelerators, how-tos and best practices. But to create a cloud native environment and enable the full functoriality of cloud in terms of technology and culture is not a cooking receipt you can just follow. Instead, it is like your adventure journey to a sunken Inca temple where the path contains multiple crossings, wrong turns and pitfalls. Without a great travel guide, this journey can end in dangerous and costly wandering path or with the wrong accelerators in a deadly pitfall closely before you reach your dream destination.
Codit, with our broad experience in cloud transition, digital transformations and data integration, will accompany you on your journey independent of your cloud or data maturity. Together, we will identify your drivers and business values for the journey and find the right destination. We will plan your complete trip, train your talent to success, and accompany you with our expertise on your change towards a smart and sustainable environment fit for the future. Let’s reach the sunken temple together and search for treasures.
What are the keys to modernizing applications?
The most important thing is a long-term view of your application environment and the goals you want to reach. This can simply be done with recurrent assessments. Having this in mind enables you to create a future proof innovation strategy for your applications where you can control the track and not being stuck in a modernization loop, where you have to start from the beginning after some years again and again.
Having a long-term vision enables you to have the right people with the right mindset driving your projects. From our experience, the mindset of the people is a principal key point for your success as well as the environment they are working in. For innovation to flourish it needs to be tested, tried, and failed. Innovation is not running blindly after each hype. A good working environment with strong support from management enables a team to record performance. A fitting principle is “Failures are great if you have learned something afterwards” and “Fail, but fail fast”.
After having a strategy and the right people, the long-term vision needs to be broken down into a starting point and reachable milestones for the short-term future.
These keys are a good starting point for your application modernisation.
What are the essential points to follow to succeed in the cloud journey?
The first essential point to clarify is the why. What are your main drivers to start a cloud journey? This is often not an easy question; the answers can be very diverse, and all are valid. But the combination of your drivers will change your journey and the target environment.
Next comes the goals you want to archive. This is closely coupled to your drivers and both points need to be aligned. It is possible, that your drivers are not fitting to your goals, which means a consideration needs to be done to meet your drivers and the goals in the end.
Create a working environment which fits your cloud journey and the goals to be defined. Cloud can change the working culture of your technical departments. This happens especially, when you want to take the full benefits of cloud and target a full cloud native application stack in the end.
Having guidance to build your new cloud environment can speed up your adaptation and avoid pitfalls and costly failures. This guidance can support you in your strategy and the fulfilment of the defined goals.
Last but not least, train your people to fully leverage the new possibilities offered to them.
