Migrate, Innovate, Accelerate: 5 Learnings

We had fantastic morning at London’s F1 Arcade yesterday exploring how we could help businesses accelerate their migrations to, and innovation in, Microsoft Azure ???

Talks from 1E’s David Todd, our very own Jon Moore and Microsoft’s John Iveson gave attendees great insight into the art of the possible within Azure, and left them with plenty of information to take away. So much so, we’ve picked out five key bits for you too! ??

What are you waiting for? ?

Gone are the days of deciding between remaining on-premise, or moving to the cloud. “You already have a cloud footprint,” David said, exploring the idea that businesses in 2024 are already inextricably linked to the cloud. Whether it’s part of your data, the services you use, or the suppliers you engage with, your cloud journey has already started to some degree. There’s no need to hold off developing that presence, optimising your environment, and reaping the rewards of operating in the cloud.

Know your starting position 1??

Starting, or rather accelerating your cloud journey effectively requires you to know your starting point. You should understand how you currently use the cloud, what services or operations would benefit most from migrating, and how this change will affect the business. This is where Microsoft’s Solution Assessments come in, giving you a crystal-clear view of the As Is, and To Be states.

The Five Rs ??

From there, you should know how you want to migrate your applications. Microsoft’s Five Rs framework simplifies this, asking whether you want to rehost, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild or replace your application, though David was eager to add that he sees room for a sixth R – retire.

The importance of tagging ???

To build a fully optimised Azure environment, tagging is your best friend. Amongst a whole host of other things, tagging allows you to closely track and allocate spending to regions, departments, projects, process – or whatever you find useful. But rather than just introducing it to your team, David has seen the benefit of enforcing it as a policy. Tagging is now mandatory within 1E’s Azure environment, and they’re reaping the rewards.

Time to upskill ???

Jon Moore provided a really clear outline of the need for your teams to upskill when moving to, and making the most of, the cloud. His diagram laid out which skillsets would need to adapt, and what they’d need to adapt to, including Network Data Centre Engineers becoming Cloud Architects with edge or wireless networking skills, Developers and Testers taking on DevOps capabilities, and Solution Managers becoming Relationship Managers, Business Architects and Process Engineers.

Want to know more, or catch up on yesterday's event? Drop us a DM ??