New research released by Trustmarque, part of Capita plc, reveals that the majority (91%) of UK CIOs and IT decision makers want to migrate their on-premise apps to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS clouds within the next three to five years. On average, they are planning to move at least almost half of them (48%) within this period. The report also shows that this figure is significantly greater for CIOs in the public sector with over half (55%) versus those in the private sector at only just over two-thirds (40%).
Driving this surge in cloud app migration are several key business benefits. The report finds that the biggest one for almost two-thirds (61%) of CIOs is the cost savings to be made from migration. This is closely followed by almost two-thirds (60%) of them citing the advantage of scalability, with just over half (51%) stating improving their businesses ability to deliver projects and new requirements quicker is the driver. Further, almost half (49%) reveal that retiring existing infrastructure and the need to add new features and updates more frequently (48%) drive migration.
James Butler, CTO at Trustmarque, said: “Cloud-based models of IT delivery have a wide range of benefits that cannot be fully unlocked without transforming the architectural and IT organisation, which is never trivial. Simple lift and shift projects are not enough to do that and may struggle to achieve a good return on investment. These projects may create new technical debt and uncontrolled cloud sprawl that needs to be unpicked sooner rather than later. It’s vital customers put in place both the underpinning foundations for the new controls and operating model that are common across clouds, along with a holistic strategy that covers new innovation as well as the pre-existing IT estate. With those in place they can safely build and deliver the application roadmaps to move to the cloud. There is no one-size-fits-all or silver bullet to cloud adoption and application migration.”
James continues: “CIOs and IT decision makers do clearly appreciate the benefits for their businesses from effective migration. However, many are wary of the potential pitfalls and challenges to migration. The latest report shows that more than half of CIOs do still feel that the complexity of their existing infrastructure can slow down adoption, plus a third recognise that their own in-house expertise may not on its own be enough, while nearly three-quarters see the process of modernising these apps as slowing their journey to the cloud.”
Despite benefits to the IT function and the wider business, cloud app migration remains a resource-intensive task requiring highly skilled practitioners. The report suggests several factors make it increasingly important to seek out a trusted third party to help with the process and provide all-important subject-matter expertise.
According to James: “We see customers grappling with legacy application modernisation at the same time as investing in innovation, building microservices, using PaaS and exploring concepts like serverless and immutable infrastructure. Alongside the core technology, they have to change their information governance model and financial controls to ensure they can safely unlock the value of cloud. There is a real need to simplify these and other key challenges that CIOs face in app migration.
Many are likely to seek advice from trusted experts to help them navigate the minefield which is where we come in. Trustmarque can provide this expertise alongside a range of services specifically designed to help CIOs in their quest for effective migration. We help build the right cloud adoption strategy and governance for each of our customers, then deliver the resulting roadmap by helping with app migration and the creation of new Cloud Native Applications, with a mixture of tailored and packaged services. We invest in building solutions where we see gaps in meeting our customers’ needs, for example our AzOps prescriptive framework for DevOps in Azure and our Trustmarque Cloud-ESP platform as another great example, that provides a simple way to measure, control and cross-charge spend on Microsoft Azure and other cloud services such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365. The research shows that it is clearly time to embrace the cloud and unlock its full value for businesses, but, it needs to be done right.”
