Issue 1 1 CAUTIOUS ITERATION – The technique to expose the hype and CAUTIOUS ITERATION – The experience the reality of Cloud Abstract: technique to expose the hype and Introduction experience the reality of Cloud Relative maturity of enterprise’s cloud journey Cautious iteration The domains of caution Four steps to iterate Abstract: cautiously Cloud is all-pervasive and is transforming the Conclusion way business is conducted. Processes, systems, 7 Research from Gartner: applications and data are now all cloud enabled Hype Cycle for Cloud and available on-demand. A majority of the Computing, 2018 workload across enterprises is adapted to move to the cloud. Industries worldwide are adopting 56 About Wipro best practices to embrace and reap the benefits of cloud computing. Many a new-gen businesses have seen their inception in cloud technology and are enjoying the advantage of agility and speed that come with it. Traditional enterprise customers are wanting to make the transformation to mimic the early success experienced by newer Introduction companies. However, delivering business In their 2018 Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, success on cloud requires careful planning and Gartner states that, “…’cloud first’ is becoming proceeding with caution in iterative mode. a common description of enterprises’ strategies, as cloud adoption becomes mainstream At Wipro, we enable end-to-end cloud lifecycle (approaching “new normal” status), including solutions for customers by automating processes support for production applications and mission- across the discovery, assessment, plan, design, critical operations.”1 Any technology reaches build, migrate, manage and optimize phases. mainstream when about 20-30% of the market These phases deliver success on cloud using has taken serious steps to adopt the technology. Wipro’s automated processes and industrialized Cloud is a mix of hype and reality. The extent solutions like Wipro Cloud Studio, Enterprise of hype vs. reality is enterprise specific. For Digital Operations Center and HOLMES. Wipro enterprises who are nimble, operating in a is able to leverage these services and offerings highly competitive market, adopting a “fail- in a plug-and-play model to protect customer fast-recover-fast” approach to most of their investments and ensure uninterrupted business applications; cloud is the default denomination. continuity while delivering much needed change However, enterprises with complex infrastructure with a roadmap for future scalability. and operations and technical debt, operating 2 either in legacy mode or bimodal, are still technology on business success depends on a weighing the net benefit of cloud for each of their variety of factors such as industry vertical and application services. Cloud provides multiple geo-political environment. Hence, we always options that multi-speed IT is now bridging the refer to the phrase “relative maturity” as against going beyond the stricter two mode norms. absolute maturity. Cloud technology offers a great platform for Hype Victims: They are bold and willing to experimentation of new services and business take risks. Going by the risk-reward equation, models and enables organizations to be more they can potentially be disrupters. They don’t agile and nimble. However, it is important to pull back or withdraw after laying out their remember that cloud is more of an enabler for strategy. While they occasionally disrupt the business than a time-bound necessity. Press- whole industry, in most cases, they fall victim friendly terms like “all in cloud”, “cloud-first”, to the hype. Customers who announced an “All “exit datacenters” etc., are noteworthy but should in cloud by 2020” as early as 2016 are half way be applied in context. It is important to make through their journey. However, they are realizing a calculated and informed decision on cloud an unforeseen spend variance and panic due to adoption and there is absolutely no rush! organization wide shake-ups that accompany the transformation. Relative maturity of enterprise’s cloud journey Cautious Adopters: They actively observe The maturity of an enterprise’s cloud journey technology changes and trends and conduct due need not always reflect on business success. diligence on the applicability of each technology The speed and agility of a plane is immaterial to in their own business environment. They have a someone who rarely crosses his town’s borders, balanced view on emerging technology. A large and an “all commute by plane” strategy will media distribution company could have started not work for him. The quantum of impact of any off in the cloud when they began their business. FIGURE 1 Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2018 Source: Wipro 1 Gartner Inc., Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2018, 31 July 2018, G00340420 3 But they started with their own datacenter, to manage change can be challenging as well. closely watched cloud technology mature and During Execution, organizational inertia often adopted it slowly in the best possible way. tends to veer processes away from the norm while addressing inefficiencies, circumventing Followers: Followers watch their industry traditional approach with a new model including segment’s adoption of cloud technology. They addressing pushbacks, application myopia, and adopt changes yielding to market forces and tools selection. dynamics. They seek to understand “who has done it before and how”, before even looking Invisible dependencies into the applicability of a technology to their The enterprise IT landscape is a mesh of business. dependencies and a mass of information. It is impractical to have a 100% accurate CMDB Laggards: This segment is change-averse. They with all the dependencies captured. What often are characterized by huge complexity, disparate works is a two-stage discovery process. An toolsets, federated and autonomous processes. initial enterprise-wide discovery which maps Fear of change is higher and, in some cases, application services with nodes and the inter- change could be detrimental to the current mode app dependencies, and a subsequent discovery of operations. specific to the application during the actual migration process. Cautious iteration Cautious iteration is a methodology adopted Hidden costs of change to implement a change engine that enables least-disruptive, ongoing, incremental changes Most TCO calculators for cloud take into within the enterprise. The characteristics of this account an apple-to-apple comparison of the IT methodology are: components running an application service. They do not take into account the following costs of 1. Greater focus on execution as against strategy change: 2. Atomize “change packets” with a. Business assessment and planning costs implementation time less than a quarter – This includes tools and services costs for discovery, analysis, readiness assessment and 3. Cost-benefit analysis for every change packet planning a cloud migration. 4. Fail-fast-recover-fast model and iterative b. Control platform design and build costs – It is processes essential to integrate the operational control layer with the different cloud provider targets 5. Holistic change management across people, even before production applications are process, technology and data moved to cloud. Additional tools and services may be required to establish the integration. 6. Success measurement and course-correction every quarter c. Migration costs – This includes tools and services cost for migration efforts. The Program management and governance for migration costs vary based on the disposition technology programs in the past have always decision for each application. revolved around waterfall methodologies for planning and execution. Cloud transformation i. Rehost – Lift and shift migration tool and programs provide the flexibility to adopt an services cost iterative agile methodology. Iterating with smaller chunks is better than taking a big-bang approach. ii. Revise/Re-platform – Upgrade or re- platforming costs The domains of caution Any major cloud journey involves changes to iii. Refactor – Code refactoring costs based on technologies, processes, people and the data complexity ecosystem. There are multiple areas that we need iv. Rebuild – Code rebuild costs based on to be cautious about, at different stages of the complexity program. During Planning, there are invisible dependencies and hidden costs of change v. Replace – Evaluation, licensing and data including bandwidth and mindshare of leadership migration costs to adopt and drive change. New skills necessary 4 d. Training and enablement costs – People Four steps to iterate cautiously have to be trained and enabled to adapt and These are four useful steps to adopt while support a hybrid environment. executing cloud transformation projects. Execution of the steps necessitates careful e. Execution lags and course correction costs planning, leading change with a successful – In many cases, the difference between example, expanding on the success and carefully planned execution time versus the actual measuring success metrics against targets. execution time introduces new dependencies in the environment, and the business case Form the tiger team planned earlier may be obsolete by the time The tiger team consists of the champions of the actual execution happens. Any such lags change. The most common mistake in enterprises add up costs and additional costs would is that the tiger team or the cloud COE team is be around course correcting the remaining limited to the organization