Move Workloads

to the Cloud
Your Platform for flexible migration.

Insights from an independent global survey

of 730 senior IT professionals revealing
organizations enjoy a significant positive
impact on their business as a result of migration.
 Introduction: Enhancing Innovation
and Competitiveness 2

Introduction:
Enhancing Innovation
and Competitiveness
What to move, how to move it, and when? The minority of organizations that have fully executed
cloud strategies go further. More than seven in 10 of
For organizations migrating their enterprise these organizations say that moving their applications
workloads to the cloud, strategy and sound and workloads, and incorporating the cloud as part of
execution are key. their DevOps efforts, are integral to their organization’s
competitiveness.
Whether they’re looking to the cloud to meet specific
operational goals (such as reducing dependency on the
corporate data center) or to scale and accelerate innovation Key benefits of moving applications
(by accessing resources on demand), organizations often and workloads to the cloud
worry about whether the public cloud will meet the enterprise
requirements that sit behind their production and mission-
37%
critical applications. 32%
30% 30% 29% 29%
Companies considering moving enterprise workloads to the
cloud should be encouraged by the findings of the Longitude
survey: the majority of organizations report a significant
positive impact on their business as a result of migration. This
was particularly pronounced—in application performance,
governance and integration—among the 12 percent of
organizations in the survey that are cloud mature.

Reduces Accelerates Improves Better Provides Improves

costs business/IT archiving business better data business/IT
innovation analytics security team
collaboration

What were/are the key motivators driving you toward

conducting data management in the cloud?
Respondents selected up to three out of 10 possible
motivations. Chart above shows most frequently-
selected responses.

*All the respondents in the sample who were qualified to answer this question.
 Migration
Motivations 3

Migration
Motivations
Each business moves its workloads The cloud provides fast, easy access to scalable database
resources, which companies can use both for production
to the cloud on its own, terms and and as sandbox environments for further analytics or big data
for a range of reasons. projects that are designed to monetize data.

Among all organizations in the survey, these were the top five
motivations, chosen from a possible 12:
“Among cloud-mature firms*
• To save on IT costs (33 percent) the main motivations for
• To improve IT resource management (32 percent) moving workloads to the
• To update IT infrastructure (27 percent) cloud are to accelerate
• To improve the speed of innovation (25 percent) innovation and improve IT
• To improve customer/client interaction (24 percent) resource management.”

Among cloud-mature firms (those with, on average, 70 percent

Organizations such as the National Health Service (NHS) in
or more of their applications in the cloud), the main motivations
the UK rely on good access to data and insights, as it can help
are to accelerate innovation and improve IT resource
with the services they provide, the costs incurred and, more
management, which reflects a core shift in strategy rather than
importantly, patient outcomes—as Alistair McDonald, chief
a tactical decision based on costs.
executive of the NHS Business Services Authority, explains.
Databases that are partly in the cloud and partly on premises
“Data is hugely important to the NHS—it needs to understand
do not run effectively, so it is no surprise that priority workloads
where all its datasets reside. And we need to start sharing data
for migration are data-related: databases
more across the NHS,” he says. “We aspire to move up the
(55 percent for all organizations and 77 percent for
value chain. We want to use our data and analytical capability
cloud-mature firms), and data warehouses (52 percent and
to save money in the wider NHS. And we’re starting to do that,
64 percent respectively).
but our real aspiration is to make a difference in patient care.”

Chart showing motivations for cloud migration (cloud exposure**)

41%
33% 34% 33%
30% 30% 28% 26% 26%
22% 21% 24% 24% 24%
18% 20% 18%
16%

Improve IT Improve speed Improve Improve speed Optimize Save on

resource of innovation customer/client of delivery organization IT costs
management interaction structure

High cloud exposure Medium cloud exposure Low cloud exposure

*Those with, on average, 70 percent or more of their applications in the cloud.

**The research analyzes the proportion of respondent organizations’ applications that are currently in the cloud—their “cloud exposure”.
 Get
Selective 4

Get
Selective
As James Stewart, an independent Jeff Wittich, director of Intel Corporation’s Cloud Service
Provider Business says that the company looked at 20
consultant and former deputy chief categories of workloads and rated them against both business
technology officer for the UK government criteria as well as four specific technical criteria: performance,
points out, it is tempting to migrate every security, integration, and data volume. After answering
specific questions about each workload—for example, “How
workload in a “big bang” approach in order important is latency?” and “How much data is stored in each
to get the maximum benefits straight away. application?”— Intel recommends a migration path (public or
But this is not practical. Instead, companies private) corporations should take for different workloads.

should answer critical questions that will Every business is different. For Deutsche Telekom, usage is
determine their best starting point. the key consideration. “Volume of usage is very different over
the year, over the seasons, and also on a daily and monthly
They should evaluate the complexity, criticality, age, and and weekly pattern,” says Michael Schlitt, VP service and
relevance of each workload. Was it specifically developed operations management at Deutsche Telekom IT. “We’re
for an on-premises environment? Is it virtualized or not? asking how we can use the elasticity of cloud infrastructure
Then, they should ask how quickly they want to migrate to make sure that at any given point in time, we only use and
those workloads. pay for the infrastructure capacity that we really need.”

The only way to do this is to measure the performance of

the data, apps, and user experiences on premises, and
ensure these levels will be achievable in a cloud or hybrid
environment—with the goal of improving performance. This
way, organizations can make adjustments as they move
workloads to the cloud.
 Management, Security
and Complexity 5

Management, Security,
and Complexity
Part of the planning and exploratory Cloud migration is not a checkbox exercise; it must be
seen as a huge business change that is not restricted to
process is identifying a leader within the the IT department. Support from other C-level executives
organization who can establish the goals of is essential: only by working together can the senior team
migrating workloads to the cloud, and the come up with a timeline for the migration process and
clarity on how each department will be affected.
strategy to get there. Crucially, businesses
need support from management— The migration process could also be declined or derailed
particularly as different divisions within because of a lack of understanding of what the move to
cloud computing means (a quarter of firms with lower cloud
the company will have to coordinate their exposure point to a lack of skills to migrate to the cloud as
plans, and may need budget to do so. Each a challenge) and uncertainty around costs and return on
division’s plan is likely to affect others. investment (a quarter of all organizations cite lack of visibility
and control of the process as a potential barrier).
Barriers to cloud migration
It makes sense to migrate machine data and the applications
31% 32% and security around it to the cloud, for a variety of reasons.
First, since logs are voluminous and organizations require
25%
significant computing power to efficiently explore them,
20% 21%
19% cloud is the best way to store this data so that it can be
18% 16% analyzed for operational and security reasons.
10%
Second, while log data has been in use for some time, user
experience and application configuration data is harder to
collect and analyze, due to a need to change application
Lack of visibility and Gaps in regulatory Lack of code. However, next-generation systems management
control of the process compliance when management support
migrating solutions have solved this issue, and are able to apply cloud-
based machine learning to the entire dataset across logs
and other data sources.
High cloud Medium cloud Lower cloud
exposure exposure exposure
The benefit is that organizations can connect user activity
Compared with the cloud-mature companies, a higher to application activity and transactions—right down to
proportion of firms with lower cloud exposure cite lack the infrastructures that support them. Ultimately, this
of management support as a barrier to migration. This is results in faster root-cause analysis and troubleshooting
unsurprising: to become cloud mature, a company would of both operational and security anomalies. Machine
have needed that support from the outset—unless, of course, learning can also help organizations make better forecasts
they were a “born-in-the-cloud” company. about operational performance and availability, or security
vulnerabilities and future threats.

*The research analyzes the proportion of respondent organizations’ applications that are currently in the cloud—their “cloud exposure”.
 Management, Security
and Complexity 6

A skills minefield. For many, it will mean moving data centers from the US
to the EU. According to Conny Björling, head of enterprise
Migrating to the cloud is a highly technical move. architecture at Skanska, this should be easier in the cloud,
especially with vendors that have the necessary presence.
It doesn’t just require a skill set that’s based on the actual act
of migrating; it also demands knowledge of which workloads This benefit comes from a broader strategic partnership
should be moved to the public cloud, and which should remain between customer and vendor, which Björling advocates.
on premises. But these skills aren’t readily available. Many IT “They [the vendor] can’t just meet you once a year and sell
professionals are attuned to the machinery of their company’s you some licenses,” he says. “You have the opportunity
own IT infrastructure—its own hardware, software, and tools. to work much more closely with them—to influence their
roadmap and fully understand their approach to security.”
“Now, when you look at cloud, many of those systems don’t
translate, or you have to do the same operations through a This is just one factor for companies to consider when they
different set of tools, provided by a different vendor, that requires choose a cloud provider. In addition to the compliance and
you learning from the ground up,” Tom Bressie, vice president, support areas, businesses need to consider the service-level
Oracle Cloud. agreements offered by the vendor, as well as security.

For example, transferring a workload using a “lift and shift” may Lack of visibility and control over the process can cause
be unsuccessful if the underlying environment won’t support security issues. Without knowing where data lives, it may be
the application as it was originally written. Avoiding this rework harder for enterprises to identify when a breach has taken
requires extensive knowledge of the workload itself, the new place, or how secure it is at any particular point. Nearly a third
cloud environment it’s intended to be run on, and the processes of C-level IT decision-makers (32 percent) consider this to be a
involved in migrating and maintaining it once it’s migrated. key challenge.

Even many of those who do have cloud knowledge may not

have been involved in the migration process itself. Companies
are tasked with finding both staff with the skills to migrate “For many, it [EU GDPR
workloads, and project managers who understand the process. compliance] will mean moving
data centers from the US to
Just under a third of organizations say that costs for training and
consulting are a barrier to migrating workloads (along with the the EU. According to Conny
costs of cloud-specific tools). But this is a necessary investment Björling, head of enterprise
if a company wants to avoid wasting resources in the long term. architecture at Skanska, this
Security concerns. should be easier in the cloud,
Cloud computing inevitably sparks a conversation about security,
especially with vendors that
compliance, and regulation. have the necessary presence”

The upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

gives companies even more reason to make sure they’re A third way.
compliant with regulations. So it comes as no surprise that this
is one of the biggest concerns for respondents—particularly When they are ready to migrate to the public or private cloud,
those in financial services and cloud-mature firms—when they companies should be aware of a third option: some workloads
migrate to the cloud. and applications can stay on premises, and others that may
be more complex to migrate can be worked on after the initial
workloads are migrated.

This approach demands sufficient deployment choices,

compatibility between on-premises and cloud systems, and
enterprise-level management capabilities. Organizations will
have to carefully consider a vendor that can help them to
migrate traditional workloads to the public cloud. Ideally, the
cloud service provider will offer centralized monitoring and
management tools that incorporate both on premises and
cloud—thereby eliminating the need for specialized skills
and training.
 Conclusion:
No Standard Approach 7

Conclusion:
No Standard Approach
The benefits of migration are hard to
ignore. But that doesn’t mean there’s
a benefit to migrating every workload
or application.
Organizations have to undertake thorough analysis,
considering cost, risks, security, control, usage, and
performance for every workload or application.

Those with an intelligent, selective, long-term migration

strategy, informed by the right expertise, will be able
to divert more of their investment and resources from
managing infrastructure on premises to what really matters:
growing and developing their businesses.

For further information,

visit: oracle.com/goto/yourplatform

Try Oracle Cloud today

Source: Cloud Insights survey, Longitude Research, August 2017