Episode Summary

iland Director of Cloud Market Intelligence Brian Knudtson is joined by guests John Grange, Emad Younis, and Clint Wyckoff for a conversation around the concerns customers have with the actual process of migrating to the cloud. They discuss the common pains associated with cloud migration, why individuals express more concern than the companies they work for, and, of course, the all-important planning process. Migrations are like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike.

Panel

Cloud Conversations

Topic 1

[03:43] There have been many stories of customers abandoning a cloud strategy because the migration process was too painful. I’ve actually seen this first-hand. Is this a common story and should it be something that gives customers hesitation?

Topic 2

[12:29] In my polling, individuals seem more concerned than the company as a whole. What might they be seeing that they think their companies are missing?

Topic 3

[22:19] Planning is a key element of any successful IT project. Shouldn’t that eliminate this concern?

Cloud Bites

[01:49] “What a cloud might be to one customer is different from another customer and how you get there in that journey may differ along the way.” — Clint Wyckoff 

[04:29] “What I see companies do really often that I think generally leads to failure is picking the wrong initial workload for the wrong reasons. And oftentimes that workload is something that is a big major application.” — John Grange

[07:19] “I think taking that holistic view and breaking it up into segments will definitely get you into the right direction. Otherwise, you do wind up in areas where you didn’t consider something and now you may have to migrate those workloads back.” — Emad Younis 

[10:00] “I feel looking at doing refactoring is a good approach to take there, if that meets the timeline and the strategy that you’re looking into.” — Clint Wyckoff

[10:53] “There are ways to get to the cloud right away and then think about refactoring.” — Emad Younis 

[14:50] “There’s just so much involved when you’re looking at this cloud migration that I can see that individuals could have this concern where upper management may say, ‘hey, migrate to the cloud, it’s going to save us money.” — Emad Younis

[16:14] “It’s the people on the ground that are the hands on keyboards, if you will, that are actually having to implement these things that see ahead of the reality of what it takes to get this stuff done.” — John Grange

[21:20] “Maybe it’s a personality type, but there’s a lot of resistance internally from people that have the ability to be just really top shelf kind of cloud engineers, and that’s always kind of surprising.” — John Grange 

[22:47] “I think the planning for a cloud migration, in my opinion, begins even before the word cloud comes into the mix.” — Clint Wyckoff 

[27:01] “So much of the key elements of planning a cloud migration project, or even just planning the overall cloud strategy, is nailing down, ‘hey, how are we going to handle the scale as it happens?” — John Grange

[29:01] “You may run into an issue, so you may have to go back and say, ‘OK, well, this didn’t work. We need to go back and replan and redo.’” — Emad Younis 

[30:48] “I think some people don’t consider that these things need to be in place day-of when data is migrated.” — Emad Younis 

[32:06] “Relying on a consultant to come in and do all your planning is … Yeah, they can help. But at the end of the day, it’s the hands of the customer in the environment — that knows their environment — and they should be the ones who are providing input and making sure that that plan is solid.” — Emad Younis