Enterprise Intelligence – Migrating & Managing the Cloud

The 7 Step Cloud Migration Process
Step 1 – Identify the potential Return on Investment
If you can’t justify the “obvious” benefits, then you will probably struggle to build a robust business case. At a high-level, review the likely benefits of implementing a better IT & Test Environment Management operating model.- Consider obvious “cloud-centric” saving like reduction in Infrastructure Costs.And consider related “non-cloud-specific (or better Environments Management) benefits: Including:
- Reduction in Support / Service Costs (through Operational Simplification).
- Reduction in License Costs through improved housekeeping & accelerated decommissioning.
- Reduction in Programme/Project Spend through accelerated provisioning & resilience.
Step 2 – Enterprise Intelligence – Environment Discovery and Modelling
If you don’t know what your IT landscape looks like you will struggle to manage (or migrate) it effectively. “If you can’t see the forest for the trees” then take a step back to ensure you understand what all your Systems look like and how they relate with each other. Establish a discovery process to identify all your core systems. Consider capturing information that will support future risk analysis & migration endeavours. For example, for each System (Platform) identify:- System Name e.g. Group Data Warehouse
- Ownership e.g. Marketing Business Unit
- Subject Matter Expert e.g. Jane Temov
- System Relationships / Dependencies e.g. GDW gets all data from Mainframe & Siebel
- Number of Physical System Instances e.g. 2 in System Test, 1 in UAT, 1 in Production
- For each System Instance, capture the:
- Components e.g. GDW UAT has 1 x IIS Server and 1 x MSSQL Database
- Components physical location e.g. London DC1
- Components performance & usage metrics.
Step 3 – Enterprise Intelligence – Environment Operations
Don’t stop at simply understanding what the Systems or Physical Assets look like. Understand & Value Map your existing environment operational capability. Key Operational activities that are important for cloud migrations include:- Application Operations: Build, Deploy and Test
- Data Operations: Extract, Transform (Subset & Mask) and Load.
- Infrastructure Operations: Provision, Configure & Decommission.
- Act as a foundation to support the migration activity itself.
- Provide you with frame of reference that can be modified, improved and streamlined as you take advantage of cloud specific features and automation.
Step 4 – Develop a Business Case
Following on from a “positive” ROI Analysis and enriched by deeper insight, acquired in the Enterprise Intelligence Phases, create a business case that helps to justify the migration journey you are about to embark on.FYI: For those of you that wonder why we have the Business Case as Step-4, and not Step 2, the answer is as follows: If you don’t have Enterprise Intelligence then you are probably not managing your environments & operations as effectively as you should. By doing Steps 2&3 you are investing in the future of your IT organization and driving a level of insight, independent of cloud, that will support better analysis, decision making & optimization.Tip: Enov8 dashboards and reports will help you accelerate the development of your business case by helping you aggregate relevant information, identify both financial & productivity benefits of restructuring your landscape, spot the paths of least resistance (e.g. avoid potential risks) and select the appropriate migration strategies.
Step 5 – Migration Planning
With your enterprise IT landscape now mapped, it is time to plan the migration. Ultimately a portfolio (enterprise release) management level activity, this involves breaking the migration effort into logical sprints. Tip: Consider migrating by family (or mix thereof), for example:- By System (Platform)
- By Systems Groups (Tightly Coupled Platforms)
- By Business Process
- By Business Division
- By Teams (Ownership)
- By Technology Tier e.g. MSSQL Databases first
- By Location e.g. Rack 24 London
- By Complexity i.e. Low, Medium, High, Very High
- By Cost
Step 6 – Migration Sprints
Refine further, progress from Portfolio level planning to the more granular System level. For each migration sprint:- Design Target State,
- Migrate*,
- Validate New Cloud Systems and
- Decommission Legacy
- Re-host (aka Lift and Shift)
- Re-Platform (move parts of the system/solution to cloud)
- Re-Architect (redesign the system and move to cloud)
- Re-Purchase (decommission and buy something new)
- Re-tire (surplus to requirements)
- Retain (do nothing, leave it alone)

Step 7 – Operate & Manage
Post-migration, harness the benefits of cloud and IT Environment Management. Use your new Cloud to:- Rapidly Provision Infrastructure on Demand,
- Rapidly Provision Base Applications on Demand,
- Rapidly Decommission &
- Replace manual operation with streamlined “Operations as Code”.
- Ensure transparency, control & collaboration across the Enterprise IT Landscape
- Infrastructure & Cloud Provisioning Tools
- Application CICD (Build/Deploy) Tools
- Data Integration Tools
- Testing Tools
- ITSM Tools
- ALM Tools

Why use Enov8 Environment Manager for Cloud Migration & Management?
Use Enov8 Environment Manager to:- Continually Map/Model your Cloud and Non-Cloud (Legacy) Environments in a Visual CMDB
- Monitor Health/Readiness of Your Cloud and Non-Cloud Applications and Data
- Promote Sharing Efficiencies and/or Avoid Conflict through Demand Management
- Centralise Planning & Coordination (scheduling) to ensure proactive & accurate provisioning
- Manage Environment Service Requests (e.g. Change, Release & Incident)
- Standardise & Automate all Environment Operations (e.g. Data, Applications & Infrastructure)
- Track your delivery pipeline, as your solutions move through the life cycle
- Provide end to end auditability and history &
- Use real-time insights (via rich Status Accounting & Reporting) to improve continually
- Centralised Intelligence for all Environment Information
- Control of all Environment Types e.g. – On-Premise, – Cloud, – Hybrid, – Monolithic – Legacy and Microservices
- Improved Environment & Release Operations,
- Reduced Environment Disruption,
- Program Streamlining and
- Cost Optimization across Cloud and Non-Cloud – Infrastructure, – Licensing & – Services
Want to learn more?
If you are interested in learning more about implementing a mature Environment (including Cloud) Management framework in your organisations then speak to enov8 about enov8 Environment Manager. Enov8 Environment Manager is the only complete platform that takes you across the Environment Management & Release Spectrum.Relevant Articles
Sand Castles and DevOps at Scale
03JUNE, 2022 by Niall Crawford & Carlos "Kami" Maldonado. Modified by Eric Goebelbecker.DevOps at scale is what we call the process of implementing DevOps culture at big, structured companies. Although the DevOps term was back in 2009, most organizations still...
Test Environment Management Explained
Test Environment Management Explained3JUNE, 2022 by Erik Dietrich, Ukpai Ugochi, and Jane Temov. Modified by Eric GoebelbeckerMost companies spend between 45%-55% of their IT budget on non-production activities like Training, Development & Testing and lose 20-40%...
Serverless Computing for Dummies
3JUNE, 2022 by Eric GoebelbeckerWhat Is Serverless Computing? Serverless computing is a cloud architecture where you don’t have to worry about buying, building, provisioning, or maintaining servers. In return for structuring your code around their APIs, your cloud...
Test Environments – The Tracks for Agile Release Trains
25MAY, 2022 by Niall Crawford & Justin Reynolds. Modified by Eric Goebelbecker.So, you’ve decided to implement a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and promote a continuous delivery pipeline by implementing “Agile Release Trains” (ART)*. Definition: An Agile Release...
What Is Data Masking and How Do We Do It?
24MAY, 2022 by Michiel Mulders. Modified by Eric Goebelbecker.With the cost of data breaches increasing every year, there’s a need for higher security standards. According to IBM’s 2021 security report, the average total cost of a data breach has risen to $4.24...
Test Environments: Why You Need One and How to Set It Up
24MAY, 2022 by Keshav MalikWith the rise of agile development methodologies, the need to quickly test new features is more critical than ever. This is especially true for websites and applications that rely on real-time data and interaction. The only way to ensure...