When hybrid cloud environments emerged in the early 2010s, there was a general sense that businesses would quickly and easily move applications and workloads to the cloud. A decade later, many organizations are still struggling with cloud migration. The reasons are various, but they include the lack of a migration strategy, skills, resources, and tools.
By now, we should have cloud migration down to a science. What’s preventing so many companies from completing a successful cloud migration? For many, the answer is complexity. Though most IT departments have made great strides in terms of utilizing new tools and following best practices, the cloud migration landscape has grown extraordinarily complex.
According to a recent study, 48% of organizations plan to migrate at least half of their applications to the cloud in the next year, and 20% intend to move all of them. Such a large-scale migration seems doubtful, given the typical length of cloud migration, from conception to finish – but it can be achieved with the right strategy.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past decade, cloud migration is not one-size-fits-all. Every industry is different, every business is unique, and every department contains a different level of complexity. Too many companies fall into the trap of attempting to solve that complexity without external help. The thinking typically goes: We know our business best, right?
Many businesses know now what they didn’t know 10 years ago: To be successful, you need experts who can adapt best practices to different environments and challenges.
In the United Kingdom, a large investment bank followed this advice. The bank was divesting from its parent company and needed to vacate its co-location data centers (co-lo DCs) within a tight two-year timeframe. It needed to design and implement a flexible hybrid architecture that could scale up to meet the bank’s changing demands, and it also needed to comply with the region's stringent security and regulatory requirements.
The bank embarked on what seemed like an impossible journey: 350 applications needed to be migrated and modernized without disruption to the business. It turned to Google Cloud and Virtusa, hoping that the Google-Virtusa partnership would set the bank on the path to success.
The Google-Virtusa team accomplished the design and development of the cloud foundation in only 90 days, significantly faster than the industry average, and laid the groundwork for a robust and scalable Google Cloud environment. From there, the bank adopted a factory-based approach, streamlining the migration of remaining applications using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) blueprints and patterns. By embracing automation and Virtusa’s Engineering First approach, the bank realized the full potential of Google Cloud, emerging compliant with divestiture mandates and as a trailblazer in harnessing the power of cloud technology for future innovation needs. The bank’s unique circumstances required experts who could adapt and modify according to changing demands.
There’s a reason that so many businesses use Google Cloud for seamless cloud migration. For one, it’s scalable, with services like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Bigtable, which ensure that applications, databases, and resources can effortlessly scale to meet evolving demands. Google Cloud is founded on the robust technology behind Google's search engine, and it boasts a global infrastructure and a remarkable 99.99% uptime service level agreement (SLA), guaranteeing resilience under even the most demanding workloads.
Virtusa's cloud shift approach distinguishes itself as a tool-driven strategy that emphasizes re-hosting and re-platforming, thus simplifying migration. This approach provides a seamless transition of applications and data to Google Cloud, preserving the integrity of the architecture, data flow, and authentication mechanisms. Cloud shift also adheres to the Google Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), which aligns with best practices and methodologies. It’s a reliable and compliant choice for businesses embracing Google Cloud for their cloud migration journey.
In essence, combining Google Cloud and Virtusa with a cloud shift empowers businesses to keep pace with the evolving technological landscape and to surge ahead, achieving new heights of efficiency, innovation, and achievement — no matter how unique and complex the environment.
Spending on cloud computing infrastructure is expected to increase, and businesses should not shy away from migration because of fears surrounding complexity. Embracing complexity is essential to business growth, and the right partners are key. Google and Virtusa can accelerate your cloud migration and enhance your digital transformation for years to come.
Schedule time with our Google Cloud experts to get started.