You have read and heard us talking about cloud computing multiple times. It is not a surprise that Lancom believes in the power of public computing systems to help businesses achieve more, faster. Whilst some of our success stories testify to this, this piece is dedicated to discussing in detail the process businesses go through when migrating to cloud.
To discuss this topic we invited our CEO, Waruna, who is known for making complicated things... uncomplicated!
In this video, Waruna gives away his thought leadership and Lancom's behind the scenes step-by-step approach to cloud migrations.
Transcript:
Hi guys. Welcome back. Another Lancom TV episode. I'm sitting here with Waruna. Hi Waruna.
Hello. How are you?
Waruna is joining me today for the second time. I'm great, thank you.
Thanks for having me back.
He came here, we talked about apps last time, and today we're talking about cloud, because we love the cloud, as you guys know. We have talked a lot about the benefits of cloud computing. If you're watching the Lancom TV, if you have read our blog posts, and all the information we've put out there. Today, we are going to take a look behind the process of moving to the cloud. So this video is essentially for those people that have worked out that they want to go to the cloud, somehow. And we are going to pick Waruna's brain on what should happen, right? So I've got a few questions, as usual, Waruna.
Yeah, sure. Go for it, yeah.
So, for those people that realized that cloud is the way to go for their organization, what does the process look like from that realization moment up to the point, I suppose, that they actually get some, sort of, cloud services?
Yeah, of course. I mean, generally what happens is, like you said, there's a lot of material out there about why you should move to the cloud, and the benefits of the cloud. And I think we've covered this, like you said, in other videos and blog posts and things like that. So, for us, really what we're talking about is, once you've decided, what's the next step for them? But working in the cloud is quite different to working on premise. So, what you need to, kind of, work out for yourself is that, how would you work on the cloud for your staff, as opposed to how they would normally work on a day-to-day system. So, the first to do is that we would run through a workshop, that would actually find out how do you currently work in your work environment, so that we can take some of those workloads, and the way that they interact with those, and translate them to how they would work in the cloud. So that workshop is really important, whichever provider that you're working with, that they understand how you work before you try and move them to the cloud.
It's not just, "Let's bring everything that's in here, and put it in there. And now you work out, dear Mr. Customer." You walk away.
Exactly right.
So having that initial engagement and understanding the business is good. Okay.
Exactly. And then the second part of it is really doing an assessment around, "Are you cloud ready?" So, what's really important to figure out is that is your internet connections up to speed, in terms of moving to the cloud?
Yeah, very basic, but very important, isn't it?
Exactly right. So your internet connection becomes very important to you when youwant to move to the cloud. Because everything is sitting on servers in the cloud in a data center, and you're dependent on the internet connection as well as the redundancy that you have, so failover as well. So if your internet connection fails...
What's gonna happen?
Can you go to 4G? Can you go to a secondary connection, all those other things? So the assessment is very important to figure out, have you got the... There are certain operating systems as well that you require. So if you're moving to Office 365 to use some of their bigger features, you Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows Professional. So you just need to run through that assessment to make sure you're cloud ready.
And that is happening all before you're even there guys, so there's a lot of work that happens in advance.
Exactly right.
And so we've done the workshop. We've done the assessment. What would the next step be like?
And then, from there I suppose it's back on the implementation partner, who basically goes and does a design, and then the implementation. And then the final step is to go and manage what you've just implemented, and help out the customer in terms of, once they're in the cloud, when they have issues, how to resolve those as well as just telling them how to get productivity out of what they've just moved to.
That's right, and educating the staff on how to live with some of those new tools that potentially they've got, isn't it?
Exactly right, yes.
Right. So, obviously, that's a really great framework. And we follow that at Lancom. And everyone else that's watching here today, you should be looking for those traits in the organization that you're engaging for your cloud migration. But every business has, probably, differences in terms of how they move to the cloud, right? So do you want to talk us through a little bit about that, Waruna? I suppose there are people that do a big bang and they just wanna go with everything and anything that they've got, but there are others that are probably a little bit more cautious. So is there an optimal way of migrating?
I mean, it is different for every business. Sometimes the circumstances that are around them moving to the cloud might be different as well, so...one of them being a lot of our customers we find that they no longer wanna buy their hardware or renew their hardware or something catastrophic has happened that they wanna move to the cloud. They don't really have the time to be able to run through workshops and change their entire staff to work in a different way, so they would do something called lift-and-shift migration, which is everything that you currently have they would move it to Azure, or Amazon Web Services, and basically from there, they'll try and implement exactly what they have currently.
Don't change the way we work, we just literally wanna change the back end.
A small shift in the way they work, as opposed to a big change.
I get it, okay.
Some of the other circumstances is that, you don't wanna move everything. You wanna move on particular...
Workload?
...workload to the cloud. So it might be a line of business application, or it might even just be their email or an exchange service that they're starting with. So, you know, you move piece by piece, or they might wanna move just a department. So the marketing department, for example, or they might wanna move to the cloud and use Teams, and use SharePoint and use Portal and use OneDrive and all sorts of other things, as opposed to having the entire organization move.
I guess the moral of the story being that, whatever you are wanting to do, there is a different way of going on about the migration. It has to align with your business objectives. It has to align with what are you're actually trying to achieve at the end of the day.
That's right.
No one has to move entirely to the cloud.
No.
There has to be a process of thinking behind it and understanding what the outcomes are.
And it's also important really not everything will be able to go on the cloud.
Correct.
Yeah, you shouldn't really be thinking that you should move everything to the cloud. There are certain things that just can't work that way, and you have to have a hybrid, kind of, scenario for that.
Yeah, which brings me to the last question for today, thanks for sticking to us, guys, so my last question is what would you look for if you were considering a provider to get you to the cloud today? What are the traits we should be thinking about when we are in the hunt?
Yeah, I mean, it's really important that the provider that you're trying to work with understands your business, and takes time to understand the business. Because the technology is there...anybody can implement it for you. But it might not be right for your business. It might not bring any more productivity, and it might not bring any more, kind of, benefits to you, because, at the end of the day, you've shifted all of your stuff, are now going, working in a different way, and you actually lose efficiency and productivity.
Yeah, it can get in the way.
So, getting the right partner that understands how these workloads fit into the cloud and which ones to use, there are thousands of cloud applications that are out there...
Yeah, so many clouds out there.
...and which combination works for your business, is really important. So I think that would be the number one thing, and then also a partner that fits your segmentation in the business. There's no point engaging an enterprise-based cloud partner...
If you're an SME, yeah.
...if you're a small-to-mid market enterprise, exactly right, because the level that they work with just doesn't scale down to your industry. So that's really important. And then the last thing is just the support mechanisms and being able to communicate with your staff, and actually have a conversation with your staff about how to get efficiencies and productivity out of what they've just moved to in the cloud, and also to be secure. Security is a...
Huge deal.
...big topic, probably another video. But it's really important that your users are being educated in terms of out to be secure as well as get productivity out of it.
So if we had to summarize, that provider should be understanding your business. You should be looking for one that matches your size. Don't try to go too big or too small. And also, a partner that is prepared to educate your business and your staff members on how to adopt the new systems that you are just moving into. I think that sums up for today. Thank you so much, Waruna.
That's it, yeah, great, no worries. Thanks for having me back.
Appreciate your presence here today. And we'll catch up with you guys again later. See ya.
See you. Bye for now.