What is a Cloud Readiness Assessment?

A cloud readiness assessment can help businesses determine whether they’re prepared to move to the cloud by working through a checklist. This cloud readiness assessment checklist should include an examination of what needs to be done (if anything) to the applications and data used by a business to prepare it for cloud migration. It can also help make a plan for migration that causes minimal interruption to “business as usual.”

A thorough cloud readiness assessment checklist will include defining your business objectives, a discovery process, an evaluation of team resources, an understanding of current IT infrastructure, IT security & compliance considerations, operational readiness, and budget considerations.

Defining Your Business Objectives

Before you can define what migration readiness looks like, your organization must ensure the planned migration aligns with the strategic goals within your business objectives. Goals to consider include:

• Agility
• Innovation
• Competitive advantages
• Enhancing the overall customer experience

Discovery

After you define your business objectives, begin a deeper discovery process. During this stage, it’s important to consider costs, cloud scalability, data resiliency, failover, remote collaboration, and so on. Think about the following questions:

• How quickly will you need to be able to expand or contract your cloud environment in the face of fluctuating demand?
• How would you like to insulate your organization from disaster, and what can cloud environments provide that your current infrastructure cannot?
• What would you like to continue in a cloud environment that’s already working with your present setup?
• Do team members need to be able to access certain applications on their mobile devices or other remote sites?
• Starting with stated objectives will ensure your cloud migration strategy doesn’t leave anything important by the wayside.

Starting with stated objectives will ensure your cloud migration strategy doesn’t leave anything important by the wayside.

Team Resource Evaluation and Training

What internal resources are at your disposal? Where might you require additional training or talent? Assessing your internal skill sets, available funds, and unclaimed IT staff time can better illustrate gaps in your knowledge and processes. If you don’t have anyone who’s a cloud migration expert, or you plan on adding tools that no one internally has used, bringing in outside help may be necessary. A third-party provider could do everything from conducting the assessment and planning and implementing the migration to training your team.

Evaluate Existing IT Infrastructure

Chances are, some of your workloads will be easier to move to the cloud than others, and some may not need to move at all. To determine what should make the move, businesses should evaluate by considering the following:

• Workload complexity
• Resource requirements
• Data security needs
• Best cloud fit for each workload (public, private, hybrid)
• App and component dependencies
• Physical appliances needed during migration

A more complex workload with increased dependencies will be more difficult to move than one that is self-contained and easy to translate to a public cloud environment, for example.

You likely also have some workloads that can be eliminated at some point in the migration process. Applying the 7 R’s of cloud migration can categorize the workloads for you – more on that later.

IT Security and Compliance

What should move to the cloud may be partially or completely determined by the security and compliance requirements you have for your data. If you have strict regulatory requirements to meet for some of your data, it may make sense for it to stay in an on-premises framework. Weigh what you might want to do with public and private cloud alongside your compliance needs.

In addition to considering security and compliance requirements when determining what data should move to the cloud, it’s crucial to consider the following potential factors when it comes to migration timing:

• For End-Users: Requirements can encompass factors such as access controls, authentication mechanisms, data privacy considerations, and user training or awareness programs. It’s important to note that these aspects directly impact the security posture of the cloud environment and must be evaluated to ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards.
• For Customer-End Users: Requirements may involve contractual obligations, service level agreements (SLAs), data handling procedures, and privacy protections.

Addressing these requirements during the cloud readiness assessment ensures that the migration plan aligns with the needs and expectations of end-users and customers, thereby enhancing overall security and compliance readiness. Additionally, by carefully assessing both the technical aspects of security and compliance alongside end-user or customer needs, organizations can strategically plan and execute cloud migrations that prioritize data protection, regulatory adherence, and user satisfaction.

Operational Readiness

This may sound obvious, but a major part of cloud readiness is making sure you’re operationally prepared for a migration. Consider the following questions:

• Are teams ready to shift the way they do things in favor of progress?
• What training might you have to do?
• Do you have maintenance windows or moratoriums on when an outage can occur during migration?

Most cloud migration projects will also come with a significant level of organizational change. By building a clear plan, and communicating that plan to all teams at all levels, you can emphasize the end goal and more deftly navigate through any potential disruptions. Proactively address concerns when you can and identify early champions of your cloud migration efforts – both of these approaches will help improve areas of resistance. Offer training throughout the migration, provide post-migration support, and welcome feedback as a way to iterate and improve.

Determine Your Budget

A gap may exist between what you’d like to accomplish and what you have the resources to achieve, but the only way to know for sure is by budgeting out your migration plans. Whether you’re planning on doing it all at once or in phases, the following questions may help you determine your budgetary needs:

• What’s your desired timeline for completing your cloud migration project?
• Who will be involved in the process?
• Will you need to pay for outside help?
• What’s the cost of any downtime you might experience, even if it’s minimal?
• When you’re making the switch to new software, what’s the cost of licensing?
• How much will cloud providers charge for the resources and services you need?
• What does the total cost of ownership (TCO) look like?

The more you include in your budget scoping, the better you’ll understand the overall cost of the project.

Benefits of Cloud Readiness Assessment

Getting started can be the hardest part of any new project. A cloud readiness assessment is a powerful first step businesses can take before exploring all of what the cloud has to offer. Developing a cloud readiness assessment can help organizations optimize their budgets, identify potential risks, focus on scalability and resource management, and keep security at the forefront.

While businesses have already been increasingly migrating their workloads to the cloud, more is on the way – 44% of respondents to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud say that moving more workloads to the cloud is a top priority for the coming year. As more organizations deploy generative AI services and other, more resource-intensive workloads, they will be looking to public cloud and managed cloud providers to handle these technological advances.

Streamline Cloud Strategy and Migration Budget

Strategic planning as part of a cloud readiness assessment will include the cloud service model that makes the most sense for your business (IaaS, PaaS, or Saas) based on your requirements and your budget. The more you can determine upfront, the less likely you are to encounter surprise expenses.

Mitigate Cloud Migration Risks

It’s easy to think you have a good understanding of all of the steps involved in a cloud migration without having to document them anywhere, but without a readiness assessment, it’s easy for small steps to go unaccounted for. Conducting an intentional analysis enables you to pinpoint specific, sequential steps of the migration, giving you the power to plan with greater accuracy and less risk.

Scalable Infrastructure

Being transparent about your infrastructure’s ability to adapt to future growth and the changing needs of your business in a readiness assessment can help you create new cloud architecture that is more scalable and flexible. Unlike an on-premises environment, the cloud can provision resources and respond to fluctuating demands automatically.

Resource Management

It’s hard to manage what you can’t see. A cloud readiness assessment can illustrate how resources are currently being used across your environment and help you optimize resource allocation, which will in turn reduce costs and make resource use more efficient. So, it’s important to develop a plan for continuous monitoring and optimizing resources post-migration.

Security and Compliance

Some security concerns should be addressed prior to cloud migration, whereas others may need to be implemented post-migration, and a cloud readiness assessment can help you consider needs for both. Outline current security vulnerabilities, determine necessary compliance requirements, and carve out a plan for continuous monitoring in your readiness assessment.

Risks of Not Assessing Your Cloud Readiness

Maybe it feels like you don’t have time for a cloud readiness assessment before it’s time to make a migration. However, rushing into the process can open yourself up to preventable risks.

Excessive Downtime

Moving something without considering important dependencies can lead to unexpected and excessive downtime, decreasing productivity and output that can lead to a loss in revenue and overall trust. Oftentimes, the problem is bigger than the average cost of downtime for an hour or day of being out of commission. Bigger risks come from the ripple effects caused by the downtime itself.

Vendor Lock-in

Making a hasty decision and signing with a vendor before determining whether they’re the right partner for the job can lead to lock-in, either because of a long-term contract or due to sunk costs of migration and configuration.

Compliance Issues

Compliance should always be top-of-mind when choosing a cloud provider. Your industry and level of data sensitivity will determine your compliance requirements. Not exploring this could lead to incompatibility with government mandates.

Inability to Scale With Organizational Growth

If your organizational plan includes growth, you need to have cloud infrastructure that grows with you. Cloud readiness should also include a scope and a vision – where are you now and where do you plan to be in a few years? Can your cloud migration plans get you there?

Strategies for planning and implementing scalable solutions in the cloud need to take into account which resources are scalable already, and what autoscaling services and solutions may need to be brought in. Developing architecture based on microservices can also scale smaller pieces independently. Businesses may also want to look into infrastructure as code (IaC), infrastructure provisioning that can make it easier to scale infrastructure in a consistent, repeatable way.

Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

The type of cloud service – Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), or Platform as a Service (PaaS) – will determine what level of security the cloud provider is responsible for maintaining. But don’t forget, security will also be a combined responsibility between you and the cloud provider. Not knowing, or preparing, can lead to serious and costly data breaches and lawsuits.

One of the most important ways to protect workloads before, during, and after a cloud migration is through data backup and recovery. By creating copies of your data and storing it in a location separate from your main site, you greatly improve the ability to recover your data in the event of a disaster. This might look like creating regularly scheduled full backups, updated incremental backups, or continuously capturing your data. Moving to the cloud also provides the perfect opportunity to consider cloud-based backup and recovery services.

Failing to Plan for Complexity

These issues can be complicated in larger organizations that lack a cloud adoption strategy or where a hybrid cloud adoption is already underway. Migrating to multiple cloud providers or to a hybrid on-premises and cloud environment requires interoperability and, often, integration between the different environments.

Cloud Readiness Assessment Tools

Cloud readiness assessment tools serve as useful counterparts to a comprehensive checklist. Some of the tools TierPoint uses with clients to evaluate cloud readiness include:

• Azure Migrate: This tool by Microsoft Azure explores and assesses your on-premises resources and offers an easy interface for end-to-end tracking and insights. It also includes insight into Azure cost optimization opportunities.
• AWS Assessment Tool: AWS offers a prescriptive model that grants insight into where an organization is at in its cloud journey, discovers gaps, and identifies strengths and weaknesses.
• Cloudockit: Cloudockit is a documentation tool that generates technical documentation and architecture diagrams so organizations can better visualize their cloud environments.

Cloud Migration Assessment

Going beyond a cloud readiness assessment, a cloud migration assessment serves as the first step for organizations on their way to cloud migration, and timing is critical. This assessment provides greater detail into determining what should stay, what should move, and how much needs to be changed for each application, which brings us to the 7 R’s.

If done right, a successful cloud migration strategy will abide by the 7 R’s of cloud migration: Refactor, replatform, repurchase, rehost, relocate, retain, and retire.

1. Refactor: Refactoring, or re-architecting, involves moving and modifying application architecture in a way that capitalizes on features and abilities that are native to the cloud. Doing this can improve performance, enable scalability, and boost agility.
2. Replatform: Replatforming also involves moving an application to the cloud, but the lift in the cloud is less than refactoring – some optimizing will be done but it won’t include a full modification.
3. Repurchase: Move from purchasing one tool to another that works better in the cloud.
4. Rehost: Without changing anything, move an application to the cloud for the benefits of cloud capabilities.
5. Relocate: Infrastructure can be relocated to the cloud without making too many changes, like purchasing new hardware, changing operations, or adapting applications.
6. Retain: Some applications may need to stay in their current environment because the refactoring that needs to be done is too burdensome for the time being. There also might not be a good business reason for migrating a legacy application.
7. Retire: Applications that are no longer needed in either your current or future environment can be removed, or “retired.”

How TierPoint can help plan your digital transformation

Planning a seamless cloud migration to just one environment can involve a lot of moving parts, and that doesn’t even take into account the complexity that can come with hybrid and multicloud strategies. Managing cloud services and providers holistically, instead of viewing them as stand-alone purchases, is essential. The best way to plan your move to the cloud is with the right cloud assessment tools and cloud partner.

At TierPoint, we can help define a transition plan that will get you on the road to a cloud enabled digital transformation without too many pit stops or potholes along the way. Contact us to learn more or download our Journey to the Cloud eBook for other key components to consider before you begin your cloud migration.

FAQ’s

What is a Legacy Application Migration?

A legacy application is a software tool that has likely woven itself into the fabric of your organization. The application may support critical processes but has either become outdated, obsolete, or unreasonable to maintain via an on-premises data center. This realization will lead a business to consider migrating the application to a cloud provider.

Migrating a legacy application to the cloud, when done right, can help with application performance, compliance, cost, and security. Even if it seems like migrating a legacy application is the way to go, understanding the steps involved to do it right will help determine its actual importance.

Is Legacy Application Migration Important?

Whether there are people at your organization who can’t possibly imagine using another tool, or you’re worried about the effort it would take to move critical business processes over to something new, it may feel like migrating a legacy application is the only option, making it an important step in your digital transformation journey. This is a situation where feelings may outweigh the real costs and benefits to cloud migration. To better understand the importance of this potential move, your business should perform a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to a given approach, in this case, migrating a legacy application to a cloud provider. Here are some examples of each:

• Strengths: Moving to the cloud offers benefits such as improved scalability which enables organizations to easily meet increased demand, cost savings from the elimination of investing in and maintaining on-premises hardware, and access to advanced features such as machine learning or artificial intelligence.
• Weaknesses: Depending on how old and outdated the application is, it may be incompatible with current cloud provider configurations. This can make the migration process more complicated requiring custom configurations and coding to try and keep the application from breaking or malfunctioning.
• Opportunities: By migrating a legacy application to the cloud, businesses can innovate faster due to access to new cloud-based technologies and tools, improve customer experiences with the added reliability of the cloud, and enhance communication and collaboration between internal employees, customers, and partners.
• Threats: The main threats to consider revolve around privacy and security. When considering a migration to the cloud, ensure you’re still able to meet regulations and compliance requirements. Additionally, since the cloud is a different type of technology, it has different security needs than on-premises. With that, security must be handled properly.

9 Steps to Avoid Pitfalls in Your Legacy Application Migration

1. Choosing the Wrong Cloud

This first common cloud migration pitfall is especially an issue when you’re using the lift and shift approach. If you’ve got a legacy application that was built in the mainframe days, although Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure have mainframe options, a private, hosted cloud may be your best option. A private cloud, over a public cloud, can more closely resemble an application’s native environment and allows you to keep the greatest control over both the environment and application.

2. Migrating When You Should Refactor or Replace

Lift and shift often looks like the path of least resistance compared to refactoring or replacing. Nevertheless, it still takes effort, and you may not be taking full advantage of cloud services. If your legacy applications are a legacy in every sense, it may be time to at least consider an upgrade or replacement. It’s hard to see organizations devote time and effort to migrating an application that’s an albatross around their neck simply because “it still works.”

3. Forgetting to Review Application Licensing

While you’re focusing on the technical aspects of cloud migration strategies, it’s easy to forget about your application licensing. You’ll want to review the fine print to ensure there are no issues with the way you’ll be accessing your application via cloud computing. If you’re thinking of upgrading your legacy application to a cloud-native version, you’ll also want to review the way the application is priced. Newer, cloud-native applications often have a very different pricing structure than their on-prem predecessors.

4. Not Sunsetting Applications

Every organization has applications they’ve invested in that have become obsolete or are rarely used. Culling those applications can simplify your migration process. Start by doing an inventory of your applications and evaluating their value to the organization. Of course, you’ll want to get your business users involved in this process, so you don’t inadvertently sunset any applications, no matter how old, that are still vital to the business.

5. Forgetting Interdependencies

Mission-critical business applications often allow for easy integration with point solutions and custom development, but that results in workload interdependencies spread across servers. If you migrate one without the other, you can break those connections and end up with extended downtime. This common cloud migration pitfall can be addressed with a tool to evaluate interdependencies and help to group workloads and servers into successful migration phases.

6. Migrating Messy Data

If you’ve ever moved from a home that you’ve lived in for a while, you know how quickly old documents can pile up. When a colleague helped her parents move recently, she ran across tax documents from the 1960s! Your historical business records can pile up just as quickly, and some of them are just as useless. As with sunsetting applications, you can streamline your migration by cleaning up your data and archiving whatever doesn’t need to be migrated.

7. Not Factoring in the Amount of Data When Choosing Your Migration Method

Your connectivity and bandwidth can create problems when migrating a lot of data, leading to excessive downtime. I had one client with so much data it would have taken months for them to migrate with the bandwidth they had available.

8. Underestimating Your Human Bandwidth

For most organizations, migrating legacy applications and data centers to a cloud-based environment is no small undertaking. It takes time and a whole lot of planning, usually by people who already have a full plate. Furthermore, the migration itself tends to be done at night and on weekends. Often, our clients engage us in their migration efforts, not because they don’t know how to do it, but simply because they don’t have the human bandwidth to get it done right.

9. Failing to Plan for Disaster Recovery

This cloud migration pitfall is twofold. First, you need a plan for what to do if the migration goes awry. An up-to-date DR plan that follows the essential disaster recovery testing best practices is a must-have. Then, before you migrate a single workload, you’ll also want to update your DR plan to include your new environment as well. That plan should kick in as soon as the first phase goes live.

How to Successfully Migrate Your Legacy Applications

Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Before taking any concrete steps toward cloud migration, a business should first conduct a SWOT analysis. As detailed above, this analysis can help identify the benefits of migrating a legacy application, as well as factors that may affect a migration’s success.

Choose the Right Cloud Platform

After conducting a SWOT analysis, consider which type of cloud (i.e. public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud) will work best for the legacy application(s) you’re migrating. Some of the key factors to consider when selecting a cloud platform include technical compatibility, performance and scalability, and security.

Analyze Your Environment

When reviewing your environment, identify the application (or applications) you want to migrate, what the current infrastructure looks like compared to the infrastructure where the application is moving, the compliance requirements that need to be met in this new environment, and potential security vulnerabilities that will need to be covered post-migration.

Plan Your Migration Strategy

Create a detailed migration plan that outlines the strategy you will employ and how everything will run. Common strategies include:

• Lift and shift: Moving the legacy application to the cloud without making any changes to the application.
• Replatforming: Changing the legacy application to make it more compatible with the cloud, which can include changing the underlying infrastructure, application code, or both.
• Refactoring: Restructuring and improving the architecture or code of an application to modernize it, improve efficiency or enhance cloud-native features like serverless computing.
• Rewriting: The most time-intensive process, rewriting involves completely starting from scratch. While it’s the most complex method, it improves the overall flexibility of the application, which makes it easier to use in the cloud.

The strategy should also include a proposed timeline, budget, the resources needed to migrate, potential risks and pitfalls, and how you will work to mitigate them.

Run a Pilot Migration

Before moving the entire legacy application to the cloud, migrate a portion of it to see if any issues surface. This is a great way to test out the migration before going full force. Collecting feedback from a cross-section of users during this time can also help you identify things that aren’t working or functioning differently than expected.

Migrate Your Legacy Applications to the Cloud

Once you’ve tested and planned, it’s time to conduct the migration. Help anyone who might be affected by the migration understand what to expect: Will they experience downtime? Will the migration be phased by department? Is there a period of time when access will be limited or prohibited? The more you manage expectations upfront, the easier the migration will go.

While the hope is that everything goes off without a hitch, there is a chance that something unexpected will happen. It’s important to have a backup plan, which could look like having a copy of the application on the old platform or planning to restore the application from backups.

Conduct Ongoing Cloud Optimization and Management

Once the legacy application has been successfully migrated, the work isn’t over. There may be additional legwork your team or an outside provider needs to do to make the application perform better in the cloud. Users may also find issues that weren’t previously identified.

Legacy Application Migration Done Right with TierPoint Managed Cloud Services

There is no one-size-fits-all IT infrastructure solution. At TierPoint, we’ve helped clients with the cloud migration process, cloud hosting, cloud security, and more. We’ve managed countless legacy workloads in a variety of different environments, including hybrid cloud environments.

If you’re unsure about taking your legacy data center and migrating to the cloud or want assistance with planning or execution, the experts at TierPoint are here to help. Download our Journey to the Cloud eBook to discover the full benefits of migrating your applications to the cloud and learn more about our managed cloud services today.

FAQs

In this blog post, we’ll examine the obstacles preventing many organizations from launching an SAP S/4HANA migration, especially when migrating from an existing system on-premises to the cloud. 

SAP S/4HANA in the Cloud: What’s Holding You Back?

Migrating workloads to the cloud lies at the heart of the digital transformation strategy for many enterprises. The latest Cloud Computing Study from IDG found that 81% of organizations house at least some applications in the cloud. 

By late 2021, 59% of enterprises plan to house the majority or all of their workloads in the cloud. Only 5% plan not to leverage any cloud-based resources. Given the importance of digital transformation to business processes and today’s digital business models, we’ll see how long this tiny minority can hold out.

The study didn’t report on which workloads were still on-premises for these organizations, but it’s a safe bet many of them involve heavily integrated ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems. In a corporate fact sheet dated August 2020, SAP claimed that 77% of all business transactions worldwide touch an SAP system. 

With so many touchpoints throughout the enterprise and into the supply chain, migrating to a cloud-based ERP software system is one of the most challenging digital transformation initiatives an enterprise can undertake. It’s understandable if SAP users haven’t yet jumped at the opportunity to migrate their core ERP to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud.

Also read: How SAP S/4HANA Fuels ERP Digital Transformation 

Here are three obstacles that often cause business and IT leaders to think twice about moving SAP S/4HANA workloads to the cloud.  

1. Platform launch-related delays

SAP S/4HANA was first released in 2015. Early on, confusion regarding the migration path created some hesitancy. SAP also said they would be discontinuing support for SAP ECC, the predecessor to S/4HANA, in 2025.  

Later, the date was changed to the end of 2027, with the option to pay higher maintenance premiums to receive support through 2030.

This gave users a little breathing room but also a reason to delay data migration planning. Still, experienced SAP administrators know the clock is ticking. Migrating to a new version of SAP can be a multi-year proposition. To go live before support ends, they will need to kick off a migration planning project soon. 

2. SAP Cloud concerns

SAP solutions include a SaaS version of S/4HANA. This can be deployed in an SAP single or multitenant cloud. While SAP is the undisputed leader in ERP solutions, not every business or IT leader is ready to trust them with their cloud environment. For example, those organizations that leverage multiple clouds might have concerns about connectivity and latency between an SAP-managed cloud and dependent solutions running on AWS or Azure.  

SAP’s cloud offerings have also created some concerns over control of the environment and applications. In an SAP cloud, the vendor maintains control over when new releases and upgrades are implemented. This can create concerns for enterprises when they have non-SAP business systems tightly integrated to their ERP backbone. Without the time to test the impact of a new release, they could find themselves scrambling to restore these connections. 

3. Gap in talent and resources

SAP S/4HANA can also be deployed in a hyperscale cloud environment, like AWS, or in a proprietary cloud. However, these options require the enterprise to have both application, user experience, and environment expertise. It’s rare to find an in-house IT team with those skill sets, especially for an ERP system that’s been completely rearchitected.

Businesses often ask themselves: Has my team migrated an SAP instance before? Can my team manage a Brownfield or Greenfield deployment? Would my deployment require a third-party provider’s assistance?

In addition, unless using a third-party data center, a proprietary cloud deployment carries with it the same overhead burden as any other on-premises deployment. Most organizations migrate to the cloud to reduce or eliminate costs such as facility maintenance, investments in hardware, and staff expenses. 

Brownfield vs. Greenfield: What’s the difference?

SAP S/4HANA migration projects typically fit into one of three types: 

• Greenfield approach – This is one in which the organization is migrating from a non-SAP ERP application.  
• Brownfield approach – A brownfield migration refers to a migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA in which existing datasets are migrated. 
• There is a third option that goes even deeper called Selective Data Transition. This usually refers to a migration in which the company is an existing SAP customer (like SAP HANA or ECC), but the SAP implementation is fresh. In this migration path, only select data sets are migrated.  

Also read: Top 5 SAP ERP Challenges for IT Organizations 

Plan for and overcome SAP migration risks

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA requires planning, and application, and environmental expertise. Unfortunately, many organizations that provide SAP migration services focus on one or the other. Working with a managed service provider helps organizations overcome many of the risks of an SAP migration and ongoing management of their production environment. Providers work closely with your internal team to help overcome bandwidth issues and skill set gaps.  

List of questions to ask for your SAP S/4HANA migration

During your migration planning phase, you need to answer these vital migration questions:

• Is this the right time to upgrade?
• Do we have the right system architecture for a smooth implementation and adoption?
• Will our data migrate as is? Or do we need to scrub/recreate some data sets?
• Should the migration be completed in phases?
• How long will it take to complete, and what are the milestones?
• How much downtime should we expect? How can we minimize the impact on business operations? 
• How will we keep our data secure during the migration? How will we keep it secure once we go live?

By nature, ERP migrations are a project that involves many different individuals with unique skill sets from across the organization. Ensuring vital responsibilities are covered and assigning people to the right roles is essential to an effective, surprise-free transition. 

TierPoint’s SAP Managed Services for S/4HANA offering is an innovative and comprehensive solution for the modern enterprise that combines a best-in-class, high-availability private cloud platform with SAP Managed Cloud expertise. Managed SAP S/4HANA provides the benefits of the cloud (converting CapEx to OpEx, lowering overhead, reducing IT burden, real-time monitoring, etc.) combined with greater flexibility and control over your environment as well as expert SAP and cloud services.  

To learn more about Managed SAP S/4HANA and our other managed services offerings, visit us on the web. You can also download our Managed SAP S/4HANA fact sheet and schedule a consultation with one of our SAP migration specialists. 

How cloud migration helps control cloud spend

These best practices are designed to help you avoid issues that can drive up cloud costs. They are focused on the kinds of missteps I see most often in cloud migration projects. 

1. Identify infrastructure issues early

My most memorable example of an infrastructure issue was with a customer in Europe that wanted to migrate workloads to our data center in New York. They had planned out exactly how they wanted to get it done and by when. Unfortunately, they hadn’t considered the lack of connectivity and the slow internet speeds in their geography. They would have been transmitting data for months (well past their target go-live date) had we not intervened to suggest a better way.

2. Assess your skillset honestly

Since migrating workloads to the cloud has become easier, many business leaders just assume their in-house staff can manage the project. Maybe they can, but if they’re new to a platform or don’t have the bandwidth, augmenting internal resources with external expertise saves everyone from a lot of headaches.

Also read: How to Assemble Your Cloud Strategy Team 

3. Look at applications realistically

Is your ERP system really ready for a private cloud or public cloud services? Or does it need to be refactored or replaced to ensure data security, performance, and compatibility with platforms? Are you able to move to an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) model? 

Migrating a monolithic, data-intensive, and mission-critical application like ERP is challenging enough. The last thing you need is to decide mid-migration that the application will create more problems in the cloud than it’s worth. This is especially a big concern for businesses using ERP for supply chain management. 

Also read: 5 Decisions to Make Before Moving to the Cloud 

4. Plan for the migration holistically

So, you’ve decided to leave one of your legacy applications on-premises while you migrate more cloud-ready applications. Make sure you understand the interdependencies between applications, so you don’t break any essential connections during the move. When we work with migration customers, we use a special tool to assess interdependencies and then group the migration project into phases to ensure nothing gets broken in the process.

5. Factor in the human element

One of the costs that I see underestimated time and time again is the human cost. Generally speaking, planning a cloud migration strategy is a big job that can last for months. Depending on their role, staff can find it challenging to do their “day job” while also working on the migration project. And, because the actual migration work is often done on nights and weekends, it may not be feasible for some to work the extra hours. 

6. Create a cloud governance framework

Ignoring your cloud resources can create all kinds of headaches – cost, performance, security, compliance, unplanned downtime, cloud sprawl, etc. A cloud governance framework covers the policies and practices you will use to ensure your cloud continues to meet your objectives.

Cloud Readiness Assessments augment cloud migration best practices

A well-planned migration project can help you control migration costs, as well as ongoing monthly costs. A Cloud Readiness Assessment is the first step. 

The readiness assessment can help you control costs in many ways. Here are just five: 

Uncover unforeseen obstacles

Easily the most dangerous obstacles in any migration project are the ones you don’t see ahead of time, and therefore, can’t plan for. These obstacles often require you to backtrack the migration, redo work already completed, and sometimes even start from scratch. The Cloud Readiness Assessment looks at people, business processes, and infrastructure to ensure that everything is in alignment. 

Align IT to the business

What are your cloud migration objectives? When we ask this question of IT and business leadership, we often get very different responses. This can lead to poor decision-making, not because those involved didn’t know what they were doing, but because they had different end goals in mind. Gaining alignment is a core goal of the Cloud Readiness Assessment.

Build a better business case

Our Cloud Readiness Assessments typically include a cost/benefit analysis to help you build the business case for your cloud strategy. A natural benefit of this data-driven analysis is an estimate of migration costs as well as monthly costs. 

Identify cost savings opportunities

During the Cloud Readiness Assessment, we’ll work with you to evaluate your cloud usage and validate your choice of cloud platforms. As part of the assessment, we’ll also help you identify specific cloud features, like edge computing, that can help with cost optimization.

Create cloud visibility

Visibility isn’t a cost savings benefit, but it can help you budget appropriately for each phase of the migration. Laying out the roadmap during the Cloud Readiness Assessment helps ensure everyone knows what to expect and when. 

We can help you with your cloud migration

Even if you plan to handle every aspect of your migration project in-house, it helps to work with managed services provider, like TierPoint. Because we’ve managed hundreds of migration projects, chances are good we will spot pitfalls your internal team can’t see. Learn more about Cloud Migration services. Not ready for a cloud assessment? If you’re looking for insight to help fine-tune or validate your cloud strategy, consider a complimentary cloud workshop. 

Cloud technologies are everywhere. A Deloitte report predicts cloud services revenues will grow at or above 30% annually through 2025. Surveyed executives cited innovation, cost savings, and organizational agility as their top three motivations.  

Unfortunately, many cloud migration strategies fail to achieve their goals. A Unisys survey of more than 1,000 IT and business leaders revealed that 37% of American businesses have failed to realize major benefits from cloud adoption. However, of those companies who made cloud adoption a major or core part of their business strategy, 77% reported tangible business benefits.

Only 23% of companies that made cloud adoption a minor aspect of their strategy achieved benefits. Clearly, to achieve success with the cloud, it must be a central component of an organization’s competitive strategy. 

At the same time, however, 41% of business leaders were extremely or very concerned about their competitors innovating faster, with 30% saying that their organization had already been impacted by a competitor’s cloud innovations. One-third said they were afraid this competition might even put their companies out of business. 

Reasons why cloud adoptions fail

One common reason for failure is the lack of a pre-planned cloud adoption strategy. This ad hoc approach means different departments and workgroups may subscribe to their own cloud application or storage service, with or without IT’s knowledge. These impromptu deployments (especially those who proceed without building a business case) often lead to major headaches for IT and complicate efforts to achieve an integrated, cross-enterprise cloud infrastructure. 

Another common mistake is neglecting the interdependencies between the various applications and data sources, especially in multicloud and hybrid environments. A single migration project may involve multiple cloud platforms, services, and providers, all selected based on the unique needs of an application and its users. However, IT managers must migrate interdependent applications that share data or processes at the same time, while ensuring they’re integrated and able to interoperate in the new cloud environment. 

The Unisys reports hints at a third major reason for failure: 59% of respondents handled their cloud adoption internally. This often means they did it without sufficient expertise to manage the critical details of cloud selection, workload sizing, deployment, security, or management. 

An unsuccessful or underachieving migration not only wastes resources but may discourage a company from pursuing future cloud development, thus inhibiting its ability to innovate and compete. A thorough cloud migration strategy can help ensure that your cloud adoption efforts succeed and achieve the company’s goals. 

Six key components of an effective cloud migration strategy

We’ve covered the many decisions that need to be made before a cloud migration. Here are six components needed for your cloud migration strategy: 

1. Selecting the right cloud environment

Because IT environments are complex, no single cloud environment or deployment model fits every need. A cloud migration strategy requires careful selection of the cloud platforms, deployment models, and platforms. 

There are three basic cloud environments: public, private, and hosted multitenant (a  privately hosted environment with a public cloud’s multitenant architecture). 

Most companies today have multicloud or hybrid IT environments. Multicloud includes a mix of public cloud services and, possibly, private cloud or multitenant hosted cloud. A hybrid environment is usually a mix of multicloud and non-cloud applications. Hybrid environments allow each application to have a setting that will optimize performance and best meet end-user needs.  

When deciding on a cloud environment and model of deployment, an IT manager may consider factors such as regulatory requirements, licensing issues, scalability, accessibility for distributed workers, the computing needs of the workloads, or a desire to keep existing investments in hardware or software. 

With a private cloud, you own the hardware and software, whether you manage it in-house or have a hosting company manage it for you. The private cloud’s single-tenant architecture usually provides more reliable and consistent performance because the company doesn’t have to share the IT resources with others. 

A private environment is a good choice for high-performance and high-security applications or legacy systems that aren’t suited for the public cloud. However, while you have full control over the hardware, software, security, etc., you also shoulder the entire cost of the environment, which can be very expensive.  

Public clouds use a multitenant architecture that customers share, along with the cost. It’s cheaper than building your own private cloud infrastructure. One of the most common reasons to move to a public cloud is to reduce capital expenses in favor of operating expenses. Using a public cloud also gives you greater cloud scalability to sudden changes in demand for compute power, memory, or storage. 

Also read: Six Tips for Controlling Cloud Spend in a Migration 

Because public cloud services are paid by subscription, the expense is more predictable and affordable than upfront capital investments for private cloud or on-premises legacy applications. Finally, the public cloud offers accessibility to remote workers and branch offices, a huge benefit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Avoid these legacy application migration pitfalls during your cloud migration. 

Public cloud service models

When buying public cloud services, you also must decide how much infrastructure support you want from the provider. There are three basic public cloud services models to choose from: software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS). 

2. The cloud readiness assessment

First take stock of your existing IT environment and resources, as well as your company’s goals for the migration by conducting a readiness assessment. A readiness assessment will include an inventory of a company’s software, hardware, data repositories, security solutions, cloud services, and IT employee skillsets. 

The assessment will also spell out an organization’s current IT needs and future goals. Understanding your organization’s IT assets, resources, and goals will greatly reduce problems during the migration. 

A readiness assessment may also include the security requirements for cloud and non-cloud applications, projected workload needs, and a map of the dependencies between applications. The plan will also include a migration plan with options for different cloud platforms or possible hybrid deployments. 

Many managed services providers offer pre-migration evaluations. TierPoint’s Cloud Readiness Assessment, for example, provides customers with a customized cloud roadmap, an estimated TCO and ROI, and a phased migration plan based on IT dependencies. 

3. Metrics

What do you hope to achieve from a cloud migration? Will it improve response times for remote users or reduce IT operating costs? 

Metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) help measure progress from the migration. KPIs can also help prove the need for cloud migration to upper management and gain support and resources for the project. 

Some metrics that may be used to measure migration progress include: 

• network throughput 
• network latency
• application response rates and availability 
• error rates 
• memory usage rates 
• CPU usage 
• storage costs 
• monthly downtime 

The key is to select metrics that are most important to your business, and which best illustrate the need for, and value of, cloud adoption. There are many cloud migration tools available, such as automated discovery tools for quickly identifying IT assets, application dependency mapping tools, and cloud sizing tools. Those can help you evaluate your environment and identify the right metrics to measure success. 

4. Cloud migration team

If you plan to rely on in-house staff for your migration, you’ll want a team with experience in cloud services, cloud development, cybersecurity, and cloud deployment. Key migration team roles include: 

• A migration architect: Oversee the planning of the migration and development of the cloud infrastructure. refactoring of applications, and application deployment. A cloud architect will ensure project goals are translated into a migration plan, keep track of resources, oversee the integration of applications into the cloud, and interact with cloud specialists and business stakeholders. 
• Executive leadership, such as the CIO, CTO, or COO: Support from the top-level executives is critical to attaining company buy-in and resources. 
• IT security and compliance specialists:  Ensure that cloud data and applications are protected and in compliance with government regulations. Hybrid IT and multi-cloud security can be complex, so you’ll need someone with security expertise in the platforms planned for your future IT environment. 
• Stakeholders: Department managers or others who represent the interest of end-users are important team members. They ensure that the needs of business users are met. 
• Outside experts: To fill in gaps in your own staff expertise, consider seeking out experts at your cloud services provider for help in planning, deployment, and management of the migration. 

Also read:  How to Assemble Your Cloud Strategy Team 

5. Migration strategies

When migrating an application to the cloud, there are typically three basic options: re-hosting, re-platforming, or refactoring. 

• Re-hosting: For legacy applications, the lift-and-shift or re-hosting model is most common. Re-hosting may require few or no changes to the code – it just needs to run on a cloud version of its operating system. 
• Re-platforming: This involves adapting the application to the chosen cloud platform. While it doesn’t require you to re-architect and re-write the application, it does mean changing elements of the code to make use of some common cloud services, such as load balancing. 
• Re-factoring: Also called re-architecting, this process involves rewriting and containerizing the application so it can interact with the full range of cloud services. For instance, Microsoft’s Azure cloud services include mobile development tools, content delivery services, digital rights protection, disaster recovery, and AI services for developing AI-based applications. 

6. Managed services providers (MSPs)

To reduce the strain on in-house IT departments, companies often get help from an MSP (or cloud provider) that offers data center and managed services–to help with the migration. An MSP such as TierPoint will conduct a cloud readiness assessment, provide cloud migration and platform options, develop a migration plan or roadmap, and help with the implementation. 

MSPs can also help manage customer portfolios of cloud services and platforms. Just as internal IT systems are managed as an interdependent environment, so cloud services should be managed as a single environment. 

Because MSPs typically partner with other cloud technology companies, they can offer an array of cloud services and technologies, including multiple networking options and cloud platforms. TierPoint, for instance, has partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Nutanix, VMware, Zerto, and many other leading technology companies. Partnerships broaden the number of cloud solutions and types of expert services available to customers.   

Cloud migration can be a complicated undertaking, so it’s important to plan carefully and seek outside expertise. A well-planned migration will ensure the maximum availability of applications and minimize the impact on employee productivity. 

Your Journey to the Cloud starts here

Migrating to the cloud is tough. It requires businesses to build a business case, choose the best platforms for migration, and then conduct the migration. Many businesses do not have the internal expertise to conduct a cloud migration from end to end. Choosing the right cloud migration partner and undergoing a Cloud Readiness Assessment is a great place to start. 

At TierPoint, we can help with your digital transformation needs, whether you’re adopting the cloud for the first time or looking to migrate more to the cloud. Reach out to us  for more information. 

Read our Journey to the Cloud eBook to understand what else you should consider before a cloud migration

The major challenges businesses face when managing SAP ERP

Enterprises choose SAP because the product has the functionality they need for business operations. This is borne out in Software Review’s April 2021 Data Quadrant, which classifies SAP S/4HANA as a product innovator, thanks to its high ranking for product features and customer satisfaction. What keeps SAP S/4HANA from being classified as a Leader in Software Review’s April 2021 Data Quadrant is its fairly low rating for vendor experience and capabilities. 

This underscores an undeniable truth anyone who’s ever implemented an ERP system, like SAP S/4HANA (or SAP ECC previously), knows ERP functionality can only take you so far. Eventually, the capabilities of the implementer/service provider – whether that’s SAP or a third-party – have a significant effect on the success of the implementation. Here are five challenges we see most often in our work hosting instances of SAP S/4HANA: 

Challenge #1 – The instance of SAP is not customized for the enterprise

Just because you can customize an ERP application doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. This is especially true of a functional leader in the ERP space like SAP. In fact, the more customizable a solution is, the easier it is to misconfigure it, which can lead to application failures and IT security issues. And once configured, the system may need to be recalibrated to the needs of the business with every release of a new version or enhancement. 

Challenge #2 – SAP requires specific skills to architect, implement, and optimize

A mission-critical SAP business application will test every element of your IT from infrastructure, to application architecture, to cloud services, and beyond. It’s highly likely that your SAP implementation also includes other application dependencies, such as a third-party CRM or supply chain planning application, that will need to be accounted for during implementation and with every upgrade. 

Challenge #3 – SAP requires too many IT resources for day-to-day management

ERP systems have a lot of moving parts, and SAP S/4HANA is certainly no exception. Keeping up with the technical requirements of SAP S/4HANA can be a full-time job in itself. Then there are the day-to-day application requirements. For example, the very nature of the data housed in an ERP system makes it an attractive target for data thieves as well as other types of cyberattacks, including ransomware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).  

Implementing patches as quickly as possible is one element of a defense-in-depth IT security strategy. Unfortunately, with so much on their plate, it’s easy for ERP systems administrators to delay patching while they’re handling “more immediate” challenges. 

Challenge #4 – Hardware obsolescence has an impact on SAP performance

Hardware plays a significant role in solution performance. Unfortunately for many enterprises, it’s challenging at best to gauge capacity requirements. They don’t want to tie up capital by overinvesting in hardware, but an IT team that’s stretched thin may not notice when SAP performance begins to degrade due to capacity issues. Just as detrimental to the business, your organization may not be able to scale up IT infrastructure fast enough to take advantage of a sudden, unexpected market opportunity. 

Challenge #5 – SAP doesn’t operate in a vacuum

When a mission-critical SAP system goes down, the company goes down. However, unplanned downtime isn’t always a function of the application or the vendor. It can be caused by the environment, such as when a provider loses connectivity, or an untested disaster recovery plan fails just when you need it. 

Managed SAP S/4HANA: The best of both worlds

At TierPoint, we have the skills and infrastructure to help you address all five of these challenges. We teamed up with NTT DATA Business Solutions, an SAP Global Platinum Partner, to provide an even deeper array of managed services for our enterprise customers. With the TierPoint and NTT DATA Business Solutions  Managed SAP S/4HANA solution, you’ll get: 

• A high-performing, secure private cloud environment
• Expert assistance implementing and configuring SAP to meet the needs of your business
• Ongoing monitoring of your SAP environment and instances to ensure optimal performance and availability 
• IT architectural expertise and regular hardware refreshes so you don’t need to worry about hardware-induced performance issues
• Day-to-day management of your SAP environment and instances (e.g., patching, updating, maintenance) so you can focus on more strategic IT initiatives 

To learn more about how our Managed SAP offerings can help your IT organization, reach out to one of our service representatives.

What should ask before moving workloads to the cloud

Here are five questions decision-makers should ask, whether the organization is migrating its first or its fifteenth workload to the cloud.

1. Should we continue to own our own equipment?

Many enterprises migrate workloads to the cloud and managed cloud providers, hoping to offload at least some IT infrastructure management responsibilities. Others cling tightly to ownership and management of all resources, from facilities to hardware, while simultaneously trying to implement resources in the cloud.

If you find your organization in the latter camp, the real question to ask is “why?” There are good reasons to own equipment or facilities, such as the desire to finish depreciating an investment. Decision-makers will need to decide whether the reasons justify the additional expense and risks of infrastructure ownership.

If you ultimately decide that they do, you’ll also want to look at whether these reasons are time-limited. For example, does it make sense to replace hardware as it reaches the end of its lifecycle or defer hardware ownership to a hosted cloud provider? Your cloud migration plan might include high-level plans for offloading the ownership of these resources and adopting an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model.

Learn more about Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

2. Do we have the skills/bandwidth to migrate and manage cloud workloads?

Given the ongoing shortage in IT talent and the expense of maintaining full-time experts, it’s tougher to have the in-house skills and bandwidth to self-manage a cloud migration and manage cloud resources after going live.

Also read: How to Assemble Your Cloud Strategy Team

To mitigate your risks during the migration process and after cutover, you’ll want to do a complete and honest assessment of your in-house talent and external resources. Your cloud migration plan should include details for how you will fill any talent or bandwidth gaps. You may also want to note whether these gaps are mission-critical, meaning the migration cannot proceed unless they are filled either internally or through external migration services resources.

3. Is my roadmap defined enough for comprehensive cloud adoption?

Some organizations are further along in their cloud journey than others. For example, in 2019, IBM commission McKinsey to do a cloud study, and they found that enterprises had, on average, only migrated 20% of their workloads to the cloud. Some of the reasons given, such as lack of relevant skills, are ones we cover here. However, the number one reason was unique workload needs.

If workload requirements are a factor, you first need to determine whether these requirements are real or perceived. In 2015, Gartner wrote that the cloud was perceived as being less secure. Even back then—practically the dark ages in terms of cloud computing—the research firm pointed out that most data breaches involved on-premises data centers. Nevertheless, the perception still remains, even six years later, in some corners of organizational leadership.

Application and data security, as well as other workload requirements like performance, can often be addressed by choosing the right cloud and migration methodology. That said, there may be more business-related reasons to hold off on migrating legacy workloads to the cloud.

For example, if you’ve been shelling out huge lumps of cash to maintain a mission-critical system you’ve never been really happy with, this is a good time to evaluate your alternatives. You may be able to find cloud-native applications that more cost-effectively support your organization’s business model and growth objectives.

4. How will the cloud support our BC/DR strategy?

Executive leadership typically owns responsibility for disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Disaster recovery is the IT component of that plan. Your cloud migration strategy should include details on how your team will ensure the recovery objectives of each workload continue to be met. There are many different cloud-based disaster recovery methods that can be deployed, and a knowledgeable provider can be an invaluable resource as you sort through them.

Also read: Top 3 FAQs About Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

5. How does the cloud impact our security and compliance risk profile?

Security and compliance are other vital elements of business continuity. A significant security breach can do irreparable damage to an organization by shutting down systems through DDoS or ransomware attacks. Likewise, compliance issues can be expensive and lead to long-term litigation that impacts the organization’s ability to conduct business.

Most, if not all, regulatory agencies and industry organizations have accepted cloud computing as a potentially compliant and secure environment. So long as cloud-based workloads are configured properly, they may be even more secure than your on-premise workloads. Nevertheless, migrating workloads to the cloud addresses some compliance and security risks while introducing others. A thorough SWOT analysis can help you mitigate any risks and strengthen your overall risk profile.

Is the cloud on your digital transformation roadmap?

Have you considered these questions outlined above? Your next step is to start mapping out your journey to the cloud. Here are some more questions to consider for your environment:

• What type of cloud platforms do you need: private cloud, public cloud, or a hybrid cloud?
• How do I build a comprehensive cloud environment for all of my cloud workloads?
• Do you need physical backups or cloud-based disaster recovery?
• Should you migrate legacy applications or rebuild them in the cloud?
• What type of security model should my business adopt?

Check out our infographic to understand some of those considerations before you start your journey.

Your next step in your journey to the cloud

As you may be starting to understand, every cloud migration involves hundreds of decisions – large and small. However, most organizations don’t perform them frequently enough to make cloud migrations a competency center. Choosing the right cloud migration partner may be the most important decision of all. Good cloud providers will conduct a Cloud Readiness Assessment to understand your infrastructure and goals and propose a customized solution for your needs.

At TierPoint, we understand that every business had different digital transformation needs. Whether you’re adopting the cloud for the first time or looking to migrate more to the cloud, we can help you. With our vast data centers and expertise in cloud, disaster recovery, and managed services, we can help you find the right customized solution for your business. Reach out to us  for more information.

Download our complimentary Journey to the Cloud eBook

We developed a guide to help businesses start identifying what they need in order to successfully move to the cloud. Whether you’re building your own cloud or going with a managed cloud provider, our guide will help you identify what you need to consider.

This interview explores the opportunities and challenges of SAP S/4HANA migration. In partnership with NTT DATA Business Solutions, TierPoint offers Managed SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud. Together TierPoint AVP for partner strategy and enablement Alvaro Gonzales and Bill Strasser, SVP for managed services at NTT DATA Business Solutions, an SAP Platinum Partner, explain what is S/4HANA, benefits of S/4HANA, what holds business back, and how to ensure a successful migration from an existing SAP deployment. You can read this interview or watch the video podcast below.

What is SAP S/4HANA?

Alvaro: What is SAP S/4HANA and how is it different from SAP ECC and other SAP solutions?

Bill: S/4HANA is SAP’s new engine, an intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that establishes the company’s vision of the enterprise digital core. S/4 will eventually replace SAP ECC. For years, SAP has directed all its new intelligent technologies into the S/4HANA platform, such as intelligent robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI). SAP brings it together in a cloud-based model with more embedded analytics and a better user experience to create a state-of-the-art ERP solution.

Why choose SAP S/4HANA?

Alvaro: For what reasons do businesses migrate to the SAP S/4HANA platform?

Bill: Our installed base of S/4HANA clients reveals five or six major reasons. The first is that S/4HANA has a new digital core foundation that leaves old baggage behind. The second is a performance improvement from much faster in-memory database computing.

A third reason businesses move to SAP S/4HANA is the new user interface and improved user experience. You’ll hear about Fiori, a set of SAP apps that work on any device anywhere. Fiori gives the user a single pane into S/4HANA, as well as all the solutions that go into it.

SAP’s cloud scenario is the fourth reason. S/4HANA can be hosted on-premises, in a data center, in a private cloud, or in a hyperscale cloud—wherever you want.

Simplification is the final reason. With ECC, disparate solutions plug in—supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM), for example—and sit outside SAP, because they can’t be absorbed into the ERP. With S/4, in contrast, SAP simplifies the underlying database, tables, and structures to create a solution that is much easier to run and manage.

On top of that, S/4 has embedded analytics. With ECC, you potentially have a separate business warehouse solution with a different front end. How do you visualize it all? S/4HANA brings it all together with Fiori and embedded real-time analytics.

Alvaro: S/4HANA sounds like a big step forward. SAP is known for providing excellent information but at the expense of much complication.

Bill: Yes, it’s a big step. There’s a whole industry grown up around analytics for business warehouse and business objects. S/4HANA provides a simplified and thinner analytics view.

What causes delays in migration to S/4HANA?

Alvaro: Many businesses haven’t shifted yet to S/4HANA. What’s holding them back?

Bill: I’ve seen three major drivers of delay. One is that SAP allows companies to stay on ECC until 2027, even 2030, by paying higher maintenance premiums. Another was early confusion about the migration path to S/4 and what are the business cases, so businesses took no action. Now there are defined migration paths and defined business cases, and it is much easier to define your path to S/4HANA.

Alvaro: You mentioned the business case. Sometimes the issue is the hours and the resources it takes to migrate. There are lots of moving parts associated with new infrastructure. If the gear that SAP ECC runs on is not on end of life, a business might wait to sync up the move to S/4HANA with the move to new infrastructure.

Bill: Agreed. As part of the move to S/4, you have to think about the underlying infrastructure. Is it on-premises today? In a private data center? Or colo?

The shift to S/4 is not short term. It requires a long-term plan for where the ERP solution resides. Will it be a cloud services provider, like TierPoint? Hyperscalers want this business, too. S/4 infrastructure is a major business decision with a long view.

What roles do experience and hosting play in a successful S/4HANA migration?

Alvaro: You mentioned well-known paths to conduct the migration to S/4HANA. We at TierPoint know that data center migrations are straightforward because we have done hundreds of them. In comparison, an IT professional might do a data center migration once in their career. Is the migration to S/4HANA like this?

Bill: Yes, migrations are daunting and risky without expertise. For us, S/4 migrations are now lower risk and lower cost with shorter timelines. We have a personalized factory model, with every customer a little bit different. We take everything off the client as much as we can, so they are not bogged down. Migration to S/4HANA is starting to hit the mainstream now, whether from on-premises to a TierPoint data center or another option.

Planning a cloud migration in 2021? Download our new eBook: Journey to the Cloud: Maximize the Benefits and Minimize the Risks

Your first two steps to S/4HANA

Alvaro: To wrap it up, what advice would you give our readers about where to start?

Bill: Step one is to get the facts. Work with a partner like TierPoint or NTT DATA Business Solutions to find out what it takes, what is the path, especially if you don’t have the expertise. There are several steps in the journey, including prerequisites. Together you’ll build out a plan with your partner.

Step two puts business drivers behind the change to build the business case. More IT-centric discussions have less influence and leverage with the business, so engage the business and bring the benefit of S/4HANA into the discussion about the migration path and how you get there. This step tilts the business case and drives your project forward.

Alvaro: Thank you. Working with NTT DATA Business Solutions is enormously valuable for our clients because your experience is not just technical, you also help the business to plan, justify and understand what they should get out of this, and then execute the migration plan.

Learn more about SAP S/4HANA

At TierPoint, we have the skills and infrastructure to help you implement SAP S/4HANA. We teamed up with NTT DATA Business Solutions, an SAP Global Platinum Partner, to provide an even deeper array of managed services for our enterprise customers. Learn more about the TierPoint and NTT DATA Business Solutions Managed SAP S/4HANA solution.

This trend suggests we’re fast approaching an era in which Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) becomes the norm. But if you’re still not sure if a cloud infrastructure is right for your business, here are nine reasons our customers choose cloud computing. We’ve even thrown in a few tips and resources that can help you maximize your return.

Why cloud computing is top of mind for businesses

1. Cost-effectiveness

Virtualized resources remove the capital expense of procuring and maintaining equipment, as well as the expense of maintaining an on-premises data center.

In addition, cloud computing services deliver economies of scale and expertise for a faster return on investment (ROI). For example, did you know that data centers already consume more than 2% of the electricity consumed in the US? All of that power requires significant cooling. Larger data center operators have the bandwidth to invest in high-efficiency cooling systems that reduce power consumption and costs.

Also read: Six Tips for Controlling Cloud Spend in a Migration

2. Speed to market

These days, almost every organization is doing some sort of software development designed to enhance market position. Cloud computing allows the organization to quickly provision resources for development and testing across a number of different types of environments.

Once these applications are ready for rollout, developers can quickly transition code to a live production environment for a smoother product launch. Because these environments are highly scalable (see Reason #3), the organization doesn’t need to worry about inaccurately estimating capacity requirements for their cloud-based applications.

Working with a managed service provider like TierPoint to manage your live environment can also help you maximize uptime and performance for greater customer satisfaction. And while we’re focusing on your infrastructure, you can be focusing on creating killer cloud applications for your customers.

3. Scalability

Estimating data center capacity requirements is one of the most difficult tasks an IT leader faces. Overestimate and you end up sinking capital into capacity you don’t need. Underestimate and you end up crippling the business’s ability to respond to opportunity.

Cloud computing resources (compute, cloud storage, and network bandwidth) can be scaled up, down, or off to meet your current needs. Public clouds like AWS and Azure even provide for elastic computing, which automatically expands compute and storage to fit unanticipated capacity requirements.

4. Increased productivity

When your team doesn’t need to spend time maintaining equipment, they can focus on higher-value add activities like IT security and data analytics. Combining cloud computing with managed services gives your team bandwidth to work on other revenue-generating projects instead of day-to-day tasks.

Also read: What Are the Different Cloud Platforms (Public, Private, and Hybrid) and How Do They Work?

5. Innovation

Have a project on your to-do list that you never seem to get to because you’re too busy managing your infrastructure and fighting fires? By offloading infrastructure management and other time-consuming tasks to a managed service provider like TierPoint, your team can focus on the innovations that drive the business forward.

6. Improved performance

High-performance computing, faster internet connectivity, and local edge computing are among the many ways cloud computing reduces latency and improves performance.

Data center hardware and software can also quickly become obsolete, but many organizations try to get every last dollar they can out of their investment before they upgrade. Third-party data center providers typically follow a hardware refresh cycle that is far shorter than that practiced by on-premises data center operators. Newer hardware frequently means higher performance.

7. Data and cloud security

Third-party cloud providers have the bandwidth to focus on IT security 24/7/365. We’ve got our eye on emerging threats and the technologies used to combat them. We also have the resources to hire high-demand cloud security professionals and the expertise to implement best-practice controls and policies for cloud security.

Most on-premises data center operators can’t afford to expend this kind of effort on their in-house IT security efforts. Read our Strategic Guide to IT Security to learn more about cybersecurity and IT security fundamentals.

8. Availability

If you’re managing an on-premises data center, chances are you vividly remember the last time you experienced planned or unplanned downtime. It was likely not a walk in the park. Well-established third-party cloud providers have the resources to invest in redundant infrastructure, UPS systems, environmental controls, network carriers, power sources, etc., to ensure maximum uptime.

9. Resiliency

Before cloud computing, enterprises needed to invest in redundant infrastructure to protect themselves in the event of a disaster. Cloud computing makes disaster recovery far more cost-efficient and effective by enabling replication and failover to an alternate location in the cloud.

Cloud computing also gives you the flexibility to choose the failover location and model that optimizes your RTO (recovery time objectives) and RPO (recovery point objectives). For example, many organizations are using the public cloud, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, for faster, more cost-effective recovery solutions.

Unfortunately, too many organizations don’t have the time, expertise, or bandwidth to do adequate disaster recovery planning. A Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution can help ensure you have the bases covered.

Thinking of migrating to the cloud?

The benefits of cloud computing are many but maximizing the return on your investment takes careful planning. A well-thought-out cloud migration plan can minimize downtime, ensure the safety of your data in transit, and help you maintain compliance and security throughout the process.

Don’t just take our word for it, see how our customer adopted the cloud for their ERP application to improve their non-profit operations.

Are you considering a move to the cloud? We offer a cloud readiness assessment that will help you create a comprehensive roadmap for migrating your data and applications to the cloud. Sign up today.

Originally published in May 2019, this post was updated on March 29, 2021, to reflect changes in stats and add more context around the benefits of cloud computing.

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There is growing evidence that 2020 may have broken the log jam of resistance that kept some organizations from whole-hearted cloud adoption. Deloitte predicts that revenue growth in the cloud market will continue to grow at a CAGR of greater than 30% for 2021 through 2025 as companies move more workloads to the cloud to save money, increase organizational agility, and drive innovation.

The outcome of your move to the cloud can have a significant impact on the organization and business strategy. A smooth, properly configured migration can put the organization in the position to achieve its business objectives and give them a competitive advantage over the competition. A poorly planned or executed migration can negatively affect the cost savings associated with the cloud, drive down revenues, and expose the company to security and litigation risks. IT leaders are understandably focused on assembling the best migration team they can.

Planning a cloud migration in 2021? Download our new eBook: Journey to the Cloud: Maximize the Benefits and Minimize the Risks

As skilled as your cloud migration team may be, they may not have the right skill sets or the bandwidth to manage your cloud environment. Furthermore, the team you assemble to manage your cloud environments will have just as much impact on your ability to achieve your objectives and minimize your risks as your migration team.

Skill sets required to execute a successful cloud strategy

If you host your own cloud, a greater percentage of the on-going management responsibilities fall on your shoulders. Some providers offer remote monitoring services, but generally speaking, those with on-prem data centers tend to be self-managed.

Also read: Our Strategic Guide to Cloud Computing

When you migrate workloads to a hosted cloud, whether private or public, there needs to be a clear division of labor between your internal staff and the cloud provider. Drawing up the responsibilities requires understanding your skills and limitations and choosing a provider that can fill in the gaps. Here are a few of the skill sets required for an effective cloud approach:

Cloud platform experts

Hybrid clouds are the norm. In late 2019, Carl Lehman, principal analyst at 451 Research, predicted 39% of enterprises will be running the bulk of their workloads in public clouds by 2020, while 35% will be running workloads in a combination of hosted and on-premises private clouds. The skill sets required to configure and manage each of these cloud technologies are often very different, so just having “cloud experts” on the team isn’t enough. You need experts for each platform you choose.

Cloud security and compliance experts

It’s tempting to assign cloud security and compliance responsibilities to your cloud platform experts, but that may not be the best idea. Yes, cloud platform experts need to be involved in the discussion, but IT security and regulatory compliance require FTEs (Full Time Experts) focused on the many different elements of each challenge.

Given the difficulties many IT leaders have in finding, developing, and retaining these individuals – and the risks involved in the cloud – cloud security and compliance is one of the most common areas outsourced to organizations like TierPoint.

Cloud performance and reliability experts

With so many employees working from home, many organizations are starting to recognize the role cloud performance plays in user satisfaction and productivity. Your cloud performance experts may not need to be an FTE, but someone must be accountable for cloud performance, including not just uptime, but also cloud responsiveness.

There are cloud performance management tools that can assist with cloud performance and reliability, but if you don’t have an expert that can interpret the results, they’re of little use. Once again, outsourcing to a provider with the right expertise can help.

Disaster recovery and business continuity experts

Disaster recovery is the IT component of a comprehensive business continuity plan. You’ll need an expert who can design – and manage – a disaster recovery strategy to meet the organization’s recovery objectives.

Disaster recovery is one of those areas where bandwidth is as much of an issue as skill set. Once they design a cloud strategy that they believe will meet their recovery objectives, they find they lack the bandwidth to test and maintain it. Disaster Recovery as a Service, or DRaaS, is an increasingly common offering used by organizations concerned with uptime and business continuity.

Facilities experts

If your cloud data center is owned and operated by your organization, you’ll also need staff well-versed in data center facilities management. Skill sets include physical security, power management, cooling systems, and connectivity. If you lack the skill sets or bandwidth to manage your own data center facilities (but decide you still need to own the hardware), colocation is a good option, where you can house your hardware in a facility owned and managed by a third party data center provider.

Hardware experts

Even though your data is in the cloud, it still resides on hardware somewhere. You can offload a significant amount of this responsibility by working with a hosted cloud provider. But, if you decide to host your cloud applications yourself, the responsibility for maintaining this equipment rests on your shoulders.

One final note on skill sets. We’re not using the term “expert” lightly in the list above. Given the importance of your cloud strategy to your overall business goals, you can’t afford to have anything less than expert go-to resources covering each of these areas.

Does your team have the resources to execute a cloud strategy?

Even though a strong majority of businesses say they lack some of the skills needed to execute their cloud strategy, bandwidth can be just as much of an issue as talent. These days, a lot of businesses operate 24/7, but even if yours doesn’t, your systems may be available around the clock. Someone needs to be monitoring them the entire time.

As already noted, there are cloud management applications that can help monitor your systems, but even with advancements in self-healing technologies, they can only do so much. With downtime as expensive as it is, waking someone up from a deep slumber to drive in and fix a network problem just isn’t an option. And addressing security breaches after the fact isn’t nearly as cost-effective as setting up a 24/7 security perimeter that leverages both human and artificial intelligence.

There’s also the nuts and bolts of executing your cloud strategy to consider. Automation is increasing, but many cloud management processes still include manual steps. We noted this above when we talked about executing your disaster recovery strategy, but this also applies to more mundane IT tasks like managing the help desk for your cloud users and ensuring patches are reviewed and installed promptly.

Your next step in your journey to the cloud

We developed a guide to help businesses start identifying what they need in order to successfully move to the cloud. Whether you’re building your own cloud, moving your cloud to a third-party colocation data center, or going with a fully-managed cloud provider, our guide will help you identify what you need to consider.

We can help you get there

TierPoint provides secure, reliable, connected private and public solutions as well as a deep portfolio of managed services. Reach out to us for more information on how we can help smooth your journey to the cloud and help you maximize the benefits of your cloud environments while minimizing the risks.