By now, most companies have started to move their systems to cloud infrastructures, or have plans to do so in the short term. Moving IT to the cloud is an important decision, but before embarking on the change, it is necessary to understand what it involves, identify the challenges and find the best way to mitigate the risks. Consulting and Advisory services are key in this process.
The future, with digital transformation clearly accelerating, is cloud computing. Before addressing the migration of any system to the cloud, especially mission critical ones such as SAP, it is necessary to know all the implications involved in order to achieve the efficiencies provided by this model. It is for this reason that we dedicate this article to our Consulting and Advisory Services, which we call Advisory Services, which are decisive in successfully tackling a cloud migration project.
Through them, our consultants ensure that the deployment of an application or system on a cloud infrastructure is carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible, so that our customers can quickly see the advantages of the model in terms of performance gains, scalability, agility and cost control.
Broadly speaking, we try to ensure that the roadmap to the cloud goes smoothly, assessing the scope of the project, detecting potential challenges and how to solve them. This is what we call Migration Discovery.
It is also essential to define the processes at each stage of the migration, which we do through Assessment and Planning services, which follow the discovery phase.
Our migration services for SAP environments to the AWS public cloud are a proven model, based on best practices, with which we define the appropriate hosting model, the most appropriate architecture for each company, and design the path to follow, through the planning of all phases of the migration. In short, the goal is to offer our clients a solid foundation and guarantees a smooth transition to the cloud.
What are the Advisory Services: step by step?
We have structured our advisory services around three elements, coordinated with each other.
Migration Discovery
In the discovery phase, our experts, through different sessions, analyze the initial situation or starting point of a company and its objectives in order to define the optimal strategy. At the end of this stage, specific recommendations on the future hosting and migration strategy are obtained.
Migration readiness assessment
The aim of these services is to obtain an x-ray of the current state and the target image of the systems to be migrated. Thus, the project is planned and the necessary resources, both technical and human, are provided. The migration plan and a detailed business case takes into account factors such as the transfer of workloads and interfaces, integration with other systems, accessibility and operation of the migrated environments. A ‘migration factory’ is designed, generating the automatisms that will allow us to be much more agile in the execution of the initiative, but it must also be thought of as an element for subsequent operations.
Planning the preparation for migration
The final migration plan defines the future cloud architecture and operating model, as well as the tools to be used. Last but not least, a specific roadmap for the system transfer is proposed, preparing the company to be able to maintain the systems and make the handover from Project to Operations.
If you found this article interesting, we recommend that you find out more about cloud migration services and learn about the methodologies we use, such as SAP MAP.