Enterprise CIOs & Modernization Choices

I shared my thoughts on the migration vs modernization debate in my previous article. In this article, let us understand and analyze the cloud modernization choices considered by CIOs of large enterprise companies.

So, what are the popular modernization options available?

Below is a high-level process flow of a typical application modernization exercise.

Step 1: Conduct application modernization assessment

A detailed application modernization assessment process might need about 4 weeks to complete the analysis and prepare a modernization journey for the application. But one should not set sail without knowing the destination. Hence it is important to brainstorm on the modernization appetite of the organization before starting the assessment process. This will help save a lot of time and effort in preparing the modernization plan for the selected applications.

Tip: Modernization of applications, ideally, should only be considered after exhausting the possibilities of adopting enterprise saas platforms which could do the same job.

Step 2: Choosing the desired modernization technology stack

To choose the right modernization stack, we should first understand the objectives and business case that recommends application modernization. Below are some of the popular business cases that enterprise companies consider for modernizing their applications.

1. To compete with new-age technology startups and improve the user experience for customers.
2. To bring down the management overhead of infrastructure support by moving to managed scalable infrastructure.
3. Move away from legacy application code and adopt modern technology to leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities.
4. A modern application architecture will support faster release cycles and hence faster go-to-market

Based on the modernization business case and availability of resources like budget, time, people skills, processes, application use case, and cloud platform capabilities, CIOs choose the right degree of modernization that suits their organization.

In a recent consulting gig, I worked closely with the CIO of a global manufacturing company in defining their application & infrastructure modernization strategy. Below were the degrees of modernization that we arrived at after an 8-week long study and several rounds of ideating.

1st Degree: Upgrade the application stack to the latest versions of OS and Database releases and upgrade server rooms in manufacturing plants with Amazon Outpost (on-premise IT)

2nd Degree: Adopt managed cloud platforms like Amazon RDS (for databases), Amazon EFS (for file sharing), Amazon ALB (for load balancing), which would need minimal or no code changes to the application.

3rd Degree: Adopt containers platform (Kubernetes) to containerize the applications, and this process again involves minimal or no code changes to the application.

4th Degree: Explore cloud-native and cloud-only platforms like Amazon Redshift (for data warehouse), Amazon Fargate (elastic container platform), Amazon Lambda (microservices) to enhance the application performance and scalability.

The above model worked very well for the customer, and we were able to achieve milestones as planned. This was only possible since we were able to come up with a practical modernization journey for their applications portfolio after careful consideration of the influencing parameters - budget, time, skills, processes, and desired use-case.

What are the different types of modernization journeys adopted by Enterprise CIOs?

Based on hundreds of conversations with Global Enterprise CIOs, I can confidently say that the CIOs adopt 4 popular types of modernization journeys. These are self-explanatory.

1. Modernize the applications in the on-premise setup and then migrate to the cloud
2. Migrate (Lift & Shift) applications to the cloud and then modernize on cloud
3. Carry out modernization while migration without major changes to the application codebase (re-platform)
4. Rebuild applications to be cloud-native which involves code changes to the applications (re-architect)

How do they fare against each other?

Lessons learned from failed cloud adoption initiatives

Based on my observation and lessons learned from failed cloud adoption projects, I would not recommend the first and the last option. You could choose either of the below two based on your cloud modernization objectives.

1. Migrate (Lift & Shift) and then Modernize: You could choose this model if data center exit is of high priority and/or if there are cloud adoption budget constraints.
2. Modernization with Migration (Re-platform): If you wish to achieve a balance between migration and an acceptable degree of modernization, then this re-platform will suit your needs

That's all for now. See you soon with another topic of discussion.