Ready, set, cloud: What is a cloud readiness assessment?

In order to understand why a cloud assessment is a crucial step in every cloud migration project, we must first have a look at the drastically changing cloud computing market. Statistics show that since its inception, the cloud computing industry has experienced rapid growth.

According to the IDC forecast report, cloud infrastructure will increase by 17 percent in 2022 to reach $88.9 billion, up from a 10 percent growth in 2021. According to estimates from a Flexera study, nearly all organizations have employed multi-cloud. By the year 2022, 89% of businesses will have developed a strategy for deploying a hybrid or multi-cloud solution. Therefore, businesses feel that learning more about the various ways to approach the cloud is necessary given the scope of the changes taking place in the market.

But, cloud adoption requires a number of adjustments that businesses must consider before proceeding:

• Individual business & organizational needs
• Budget and time restrictions
• Change of infrastructure
• Modifications to the operation model

As we can see, adopting the cloud calls for a strong foundation. Many cloud transformation projects fail to meet expected outcomes or budgets, which often results from poor initial cloud migration decisions.

A thorough cloud readiness assessment can be exhausting and time-consuming, but the work pays off!

So, let’s have a look at the definition of "cloud readiness assessment," highlight important aspects you should consider, and explain why a proper assessment is crucial when assisting your client to move to the cloud.

What is a cloud readiness assessment?

A “Cloud Readiness Assessment" is a process by which you examine your client’s data and applications to see if they can be easily moved to the cloud and check if the result will meet their expected business needs. Any organization moving to the cloud must first evaluate its current operations. More specifically, organizations must evaluate their business, people, processes, and technology for readiness to move to the cloud. Therefore, the primary goal is to provide an organization with the clarity of vision and concrete steps required to successfully adopt the cloud.

What aspects are important to look at?

People
One of the first aspects of a cloud readiness assessment to be looked at is the current staff. Everyone's tolerance for change, learning new things, and generally changing how we carry out jobs could be very different. This current staff review should include a high-level assessment of the following questions:

• Do the teams have the right skills?
• Do the teams have the time to focus on the migration?
• Are there conflicting priorities?
• Are they equipped with the necessary migration tools and technologies?

Business
Understanding why your client wants to move to the cloud is essential before developing a strategy for doing so. Another thing to keep in mind is getting agreement from the entire team on the business objectives to make sure that everyone understands the goal and comprehends the business rationale behind switching to the cloud. You won't be able to choose wisely along the way unless you have clearly defined and attainable goals. The following are some of the most common business goals for cloud migration:

• Avoiding the maintenance expenses associated with data centers
• Increasing scalability for high-demand or distributed services
• Shifting from a CAPEX model to OPEX for more IT infrastructure and technology agility and lowered system level maintenance.
• Modernizing for shorter time to market and competitive advantages
• Identifying new business models that are only possible because of cloud technologies

Security
Security has always been a top priority for most companies that are considering moving to the cloud. As a result, it is crucial for any organization to evaluate its current security measures and determine its security and compliance needs. A cloud readiness assessment helps you gain a high-level understanding of how many processes in your client’s landscape will be impacted. This is to ensure that they choose the right cloud platforms that adhere to all their needs. Some key items you should include in a security assessment checklist are:

• Common uses of identity and access management services
• Compliance requirements captured by cloud services and providers
• Disaster recovery and backup mechanisms
• DDoS protection, ADS, firewalls, endpoint security, etc., employed centrally and depending on workload requirements and criticality

Technology
The first step to understanding the potential benefits of adopting the cloud is to visualize what the current infrastructure looks like. It’s necessary to comprehend your client’s current technology stack, which includes applications, infrastructure, and data. You should have a look at:

• The technologies used (database servers, frameworks, software libraries, IT management tools, etc.)
• Applications, workloads and data that is transferable to the cloud
• How easily the applications can be modified
• Cost versus value to be associated with cloud service alternatives
• Integration capabilities and extensibility required to implement long term strategic roadmaps
• Interdependence between network, data and application

Some applications might be at or near the end of their lives, and others are simply outdated utilities that need to be replaced. A proper assessment helps identify and categorize the application landscape and supports your clients in making the right decisions. Additionally, it enables you to comprehend every component of the client's IT infrastructure and technological stack and, as a result, to more accurately estimate the cost and benefits of a cloud journey.

Best Practice Tips

The time spent performing a cloud readiness assessment will be some of the most valuable time in a cloud project. Based on the results of the cloud readiness assessment, you can support your client in deciding on the migration for each application in terms of:

• Migration strategy (Which of the 6R migration strategies apply for the applications? Retain? Rehost? Refactor? Which applications to consolidate, where to rely on cloud native services?
• Migration timing (Set a realistic timeframe for cloud migration, and easily track your project centrally, in all subsequent phases)
• Migration order (Lay out a migration plan that suits your clients’ situation)
• Cloud service approach (Which cloud provider or service offering fits your client’s needs in terms of cost, location and compliance requirements?)

Let’s sum up the success factors for your cloud assessment:

• Analyze your existing infrastructure in detail
• Evaluate applications from all dimensions (people and organization, business, technical, security, compliance).
• Identify low hanging fruits: Start e.g. by migrating applications that have a low migration risk, high benefit and high business value
• Automate this process with tool support to minimize your effort

The significance of a thorough cloud assessment has been emphasized throughout this blog article. The ultimate objective is to build up knowledge about a client's situation. It helps to understand metrics regarding the level of cloud readiness and to see potential paths early on to make the transition to the cloud a success. That’s where a software solution like Txture comes in handy.

Cloud Readiness Assessment with Txture

Txture is an end-to-end cloud transformation software platform. It supports you in automating and speeding up the cloud readiness assessment of your client engagements, offering a holistic approach to cloud transformation.

Txture provides an automated and standardized process for assessing large-scale application landscapes for cloud readiness, migration risk, and the cloud value of each application.

So, take the guesswork out of your assessment project, easily calculate migration effort, and rely on Txture’s assessment ruleset to make your client’s cloud migration a success.

Want to get our detailed cloud readiness assessment checklist? Download the poster here

Keen on more information or a personal demo? Reach out to my colleagues from Partner Management and have them show you Txture, the cloud transformation platform tried and tested by leading international consulting firms and system integrators!

Txture helps you to assess your applications for cloud readiness, cloud benefit, and risks. How? Have a look at this short demo video!