 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
If there’s something that I’ve learned in my career about the IT industry, it’s that change is constant and necessary. After all, you do not move through a journey by remaining absolutely still. If you think about it, all businesses are using technology to help them achieve their vision. Whether that vision is to successfully sell pizzas or to provide medical services, organizations not only use technology as a vehicle for delivering services, but also as a method for differentiating themselves among their competitors.
How do these businesses see and know the road to take? How do companies take existing applications run on platforms that are coming close to end of life and replatform to supportable standards? Forget just moving like infrastructure to like infrastructure—that’s challenging enough. In order to stay ahead, most businesses are taking advantage of the opportunity to modernize their applications as they move these services to a new platform. That is what allows them to lay the foundation for the future.
In my last blog entry, I talked about easing some of the headaches associated with replatforming Windows Server 2003 environments and shared the advantages of addressing the EOL challenge with the goal of modernizing your technology portfolio in mind. At EMC, we tell the story of the journey towards modernization, with the Windows Server 2003 EOL as the catalyst. Every journey starts with a single step, so let’s take a walk through what that path looks like.
Start by assessing where you are
If I’m a CIO, I’m thinking “OK, I have my IT guys running my company’s applications, which were built with Platform 2 services in mind, on infrastructure platforms that are no longer going to be supported by the vendor. How can we best tackle this EOL issue, and at the same time, set us up with a solid foundation to build from for future endeavors? How do we come up with a strategy for achieving that vision, with all of this risk in our environment?”
The questions above are all valid and are part of some very large discussions. To even begin answering the EOL-related questions, you need to understand the magnitude of what you need to replatform. You can do that by showing what exists where, and how it all fits together from an application and infrastructure perspective. Most businesses are moving towards cloud services—private, public, and hybrid—to give them the agility required to handle both innovation and disruption. And for that, you may well need expert help.
Create a strategy and the design to get you there
The next step you need to focus on is defining the strategy. You don’t need a computer team sitting in a back room somewhere reviewing reports and picking off servers to move after hours during a week. At EMC, we understand that you need a team of business analysts and architects, interviewing and working with your stakeholders to develop a blueprint of how we can help you achieve your vision. We need your input to know exactly how each application fits into the business and what role that application plays. You know your business better than anyone, which is why we base the strategy on your input.
Next, think of refreshing those Platform 2 apps here, if that makes the most sense for your business. We design the migration approach—using tools to automate what we can—after we have set the strategy with the future state in mind. And, we test it before executing.
Execute on your vision
At last, we’re at execution: the final step on our replatforming journey. After having performed all of our due diligence up front, from strategy and future-state design to creating the migration plan and testing it, we’re ready to bring the vision to life. By far, seeing this transformation of technology take place is the most exciting part of my job. I truly enjoy seeing growth in organizations, from both a technology and a people perspective. Ultimately, there are many small, but significant journeys which must be taken to achieve your vision of modernization. As we’ve discussed here, and as you see in our infographic, EMC Global Services professionals are here to help you along your path to replatforming and modernizing.