Over 70 percent of cloud migrations are driven inconsistently across application silos, warns New York-based software firm CAST in a new report today, with decisions to move a given application to the cloud often made “on gut instinct and ad hoc surveys with application owners” rather than a joined-up strategy.
The findings, based on a recent survey of IT team leaders across the banking, fintech, insurance and telecoms sectors, reinforce a key emphasis of the company’s report: that without a central cloud migration core, opportunities to synchronise a firm’s modernisation efforts, investment priorities and benefits (target and captured) are lost.
CAST suggests “evolving to a cloud centre of excellence (CoE) approach will enable firms to evaluate architectural styles and migration paths per application and domain.”
Barely One Third Assessing Application Readiness
Fewer than 35 percent of technology leaders meanwhile use freely-available analysis tools to assess the underlying application readiness for cloud migration, the company claims.
Greg Rivera, VP CAST Highlight at CAST, commented on the findings, “Pilots going into storms turn to their instruments. If you run headfirst into a cloud migration without objectively assessing your applications, you’re flying in the dark.
“Even one small change to an application has a ‘butterfly effect’ on the rest of the code set, so a disruption as big as cloud migration has detrimental effects including IT outages and loss of business.”
“More than 40 percent of software leaders are yet to define a class based approach to application modernisation” the report notes.
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“Heavily legacy process firms tend to rehost apps, while rehosting, or so-called ‘lift-and-shift’, benefits apps with up to three years before end of life. However, existing and continuously evolving apps should be re-platformed and restructured during cloud migration. To successfully complete migration first gather intelligence and actively assess applications objectively.”
As a result of failing to take a well architected and carefully planned approach, legacy process institutions typically realise just a third of their target benefits for cloud migration, the company concludes.
Companies can start to measure cloud readiness in part by judging underlying access to legacy systems, any recoupling required and volume of transactions, experts say. Having stateless applications creates the best chance to move to cloud native architectures.
