A practical guide to cloud transformation

A practical guide to cloud transformation

Migrate

Optimise

Discover

A roadmap for success

The adoption of cloud is now accepted as an integral part of public sector transformation. It is not a case of if, but rather when, which and how fast cloud services will be adopted.

Collaboration, typically through Office 365, is now commonplace with more

advanced organisations starting to join up data sets, applying deep analytics

and using bots to provide better insights and improved decision-making to

positively impact frontline services.

Cloud migration is a highly involved project with many considerations and

obstacles along the way but the rewards for success are significant. Organisations

need to navigate the complexity of planning, migrating and operating in a multi-cloud

environment, without compromising existing services.

Drawing on our experience of implementing successful cloud solutions for over

35 public sector organisations, we have developed a cloud roadmap that offers a

practical guide to cloud transformation. The roadmap helps you to navigate through

the three phases of the cloud journey: Discover, Migrate and Optimise, presenting a

methodology, checklist and key insights at each stage. Read on for tried and tested

strategies to make any cloud migration a success.

www.agilisys.co.uk Cloud transformation guide 3

Discover

The Discover phase involves understanding the options and developing a plan that aligns to your organisation’s vision and objectives.

Cloud Discover is arguably the most important stage of an organisation’s journey to the cloud.

The more an organisation invests at the beginning of the process, the simpler and more cost

effective the project becomes. By understanding the available options and developing a plan that aligns

to your vision and objectives, organisations can more effectively define the scope of the project

and deliver cloud services that meet the desired outcomes.

Discover

Phase 01 Phase 02 Phase 03

Goals

Map goals to IT strategy and

technology implementation.

Plan the journey from

current to future state.

Win the support of the

IT team, senior leaders and other

key influencers for the cloud

transformation strategy.



Stage 02 Undertake a Technology Assessment, and define the target architecture

The first stage in the Discover phase is focused on establishing how cloud services will enable and

align with your organisation’s vision and mission.

AUnderstand the drivers and required IT enablers to support delivery of the organisation’s vision.

BUnderstand the different cloud platforms, services and providers; specifically, know which will

provide the right model to enable the organisation to achieve its objectives.

CBe clear how and when the benefits of cloud services will deliver desired outcomes.

DArticulate the above in a cloud strategy that is aligned with and delivers against the business

strategy. Set the direction for the next steps in shaping the cloud journey.

Stage 01 Define Cloud Strategy

Next, it’s time to take a look inside the organisation. How does your current IT estate align to and enable

your objectives?

AAnalyse your current IT estate (infrastructure and applications):

• Server volumes, utilisation, performance and network etc.

• Current storage volumes, information categories and Information Management (IM) policies.

• Applications.

BIdentify risks, gaps and opportunities in your IT:

• Document capability gaps in the current architecture to support the strategy.

• Discover opportunities to standardise, rationalise and consolidate servers, storage

and applications.

• Record risks and single points of failure that can be improved in a future cloud architecture.

CDevelop your target architecture:

• Define future-state architecture.

• Define cloud workload destinations based on application and platform suitability.

6 Cloud transformation guide www.agilisys.co.uk


At this stage, look at your current operating model and how cloud services will impact areas such as processes,

responsibilities and skillsets. Doing this will will help support your business case by identifying process

improvements, cost savings and the level of investment needed.

AReview current processes and identify changes required:

• Analyse the limitations of the current operating model.

• Identify the impact of cloud migration.

• Define the target operating model.

BReview current responsibilities and identify changes required:

• Identify changes in responsibilities that will impact operations and behaviour.

(e.g. tasks that will pass to the cloud service provider).

• Identify how running services in the cloud will impact your compliance model (e.g. contact points

for alerting or escalation).

CReview skills gap and identify changes required:

• Define change in skillsets by role and area.

• Identify training requirements and priorities to ensure the effective roll-out of new capabilities.

Stage 03 Understand impact on target operating model



To determine the financial feasibility of your cloud project it’s important to build a detailed and realistic

business case. Examination of the following areas will help you to prepare a watertight business case.

ADevelop a comparison of cloud services and define:

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and programme costs.

• Functional attributes.

• Service comparison.

BCollect and prioritise key assumptions and dependencies:

• Define standardised costs such as power, staff grading, floorspace, maintenance, cost

of money, etc.

• Record Management requirements and SLAs.

• Estimate staff training costs.

CReview commercial models:

• Evaluate approach to capital or operational expenditure (Capex vs Opex).

• Assess most effective procurement route e.g. government frameworks.

DRecord and review benefits and saving opportunities. This should include the following:

• Evaluate benefits of estate consolidation (including the divestment of redundant facilities).

• Consider technology and service standardisation.

• Calculate how the deployment of modern cloud capabilities will reduce TCO – particularly

around business continuity and data protection.

Stage 04 Define the business case



The final stage in the Discover phase is the development of a high level migration plan that will enable

your organisation to sign off your cloud strategy.

ADefine the migration approach:

• Describe how the migration will be executed.

• Document the team involved (by role), governance and use of third parties.

BDefine the migration pre-requisites and dependencies:

• Select the tools required for the migration e.g. application mapping.

• Ensure network bandwidth is sufficient to cope with migration in addition to supporting

day-to-day operations.

• Document the skills and resource availability.

CCreate a schedule of work:

• Provide an overview that enables the team to understand how the timeline and

deliverables will progress.

DConsider the impact and dependencies on other projects and programmes:

• Document how the programme needs to align with other programmes and projects.

• Explain how successful cooperation will be achieved and detail any governance requirements.

EDetermine success criteria by stage and outcome:

• Use the ‘SMART’ framework to define the successful exit criteria for each stage of the plan.

FPlan to decommission data centres:

• Although your goal may be to move as much as possible into cloud services, there will

probably be some services that cannot migrate. Maintaining legacy hosting for a small

number of services is likely to be uneconomical.

• First look to migrate outstanding loads into specific hosting facilities (e.g. high SLA virtual

environments or co-location) then into physical decommissioning of the sites.

• Property divestment can be a significant positive benefit in the business case.

• For premises that cannot be divested, consider how to recover the space for wider

organisation use.

Stage 05 Develop migration plan



Don’t model like for like

In the early stages of evaluating cloud options, it is common to hear feedback that a cloud service is more expensive than an existing service.

More often than not, this is a misunderstanding arising from modelling existing infrastructure like for like in a

cloud service. Whilst an understandable approach, it’s not the right one. Some common corrections are:

Provisioned Capacity vs Needed Capacity: For a variety of reasons, it is well known that on-premises

infrastructure is usually over-provisioned. By contrast, a core tenet of cloud services is to only use what’s

needed and add or release resources rapidly to minimise costs. As a consequence, the accurate pricing

comparison should be all on-premises costs vs only the cloud resources required.

Avoid unnecessary spending: Almost every authority has infrastructure supporting non-productive

environments and services that are not needed out of working (or extended) hours. If run in the cloud, these

can all be suspended out of hours to save money. The savings can be material – nine hours of use on working

days is just 27% of a full year.

No asset can be sweated forever: With perpetual usage rights, cloud subscriptions (Windows 10 with Office

365, for example) can look expensive. Given that security concerns are now making some of these upgrades

mandatory, perhaps your business case should highlight the related investments differently, potentially

separating them from the return on investment analysis applied to discretionary spending.

01

Assume savings from rationalisation

One London Borough commented to us, ‘We never realised how much we didn’t turn off’.

Without the intent and tools to measure usage and charge the costs back from IT to users, it is unsurprising

that the applications and services in use expand over time; new services arrive and old services fall out of

use, but aren’t retired. It is amazing what an audit and spring clean can do to reduce the complexity of the

application landscape with a natural, positive impact on reducing the number of databases, servers and

storage required. The borough that made the comment above reduced all three elements by 50% or more.

On-premises, they couldn’t release this as a saving; in the cloud they could.

02

Insights and Advice



Test assumptions about application migration

Be sceptical when you’re told an application or service cannot move to the cloud. By now, most public sector organisations are running virtualised infrastructures.

The three building blocks of a virtual infrastructure are compute, storage and networking, and these are

also the foundations of any hyperscale cloud provider. Moreover, there is extensive, well proven tooling that

enables the migration of virtual servers to the cloud and recreation of the networks they sit within. As a rule of

thumb, anything running in a Microsoft or VMware virtual infrastructure is a candidate to re-platform into the

cloud.

Confusion can arise when an application or service isn’t ‘cloud native’. That is, it may not be built on APIs,

cannot auto-scale or doesn’t use a loosely coupled architecture. Whilst these are desirable goals, they are not

the defining criteria for testing whether a cloud migration is possible – those decisions come from far more

subtle business drivers.

03


Migrate

Goals

A safe and assured migration

of infrastructure into the cloud.

Any organisation moving its infrastructure into the cloud will have concerns about the potential disruption, the risk to data and the overall cost of the migration.

In the early days of migration, inexperience meant that the planning and overhead to minimise risk was

considerable. However, cloud migration methodologies and tools have evolved considerably over the last

few years and these migrations now take place consistently, more safely, without an impact on business

continuity and within constrained timescales.

The Migrate phase of our cloud roadmap outlines key steps in the preparation for a controlled, low risk, fast

and effective cloud migration and the transformation of applications and services.

Migrate


A structured process for testing,

acceptance and handover into

operational support.

Minimal disruption for

your organisation during

the migration.


The first stage in the Migrate phase includes a lot of planning (outlined below) which is valuable but also

hard work. There is a real risk of losing momentum because of the heavy focus on paperwork and process -

therefore it is imperative to work on maintaining enthusiasm and ownership of outcomes.

AUndertake programme initiation:

• Mobilise the team.

• Share the relevant outputs from the Discover phase.

• Establish and share migration goals.

BData gathering and validation:

• Supplement the Discover phase output with detailed information. For example,

this might be enriching a list of servers and services with the location of physical hosts.

• Confirm that assumptions made in the Discover phase are valid.

• Identify blockers or risks and document mitigation.

CDevelop the detailed migration plan, test plan and designs:

• Granular detail based on the plans and designs from the Discover phase.

DTake core design and test elements through sign off using the governance developed

during the Discover phase:

• Detailed plan approval.

• High level design approval.

• Low level design approval.

• Test and acceptance plan approval.

EResource plan and sourcing:

• Use the detailed plans and designs to identify all resourcing requirements.

• Build an availability plan allowing for lead times and dependencies (both internal

and external).

FEngage with providers:

• Identify third party relationships.

• Agree management model – separate strategic relationships with management

relationships and transactional supply chains managed via procurement.

GPlan to decommission data centres:

• Develop the detail that will allow the small amount of non-cloud resources to be migrated

into a more appropriate environment.

HDevelop a training plan:

• Identify training required by the migration and operations teams to implement

and run the new services.

Stage 01 Detailed design and planning




Stage 02 Rationalise and consolidate

Rationalisation and consolidation is a key part of any cloud migration. Our experience tells us it’s better

to do this before the migration takes place. This makes management easier and, as there is less to

move, time and risk of migration are reduced. Of course, context is critical and in some cases it may

be better to do so after the platform migration.

AOperating System (OS) upgrade:

• Migrations will be significantly simplified if servers are running on a common operating system.

• Some cloud platforms demand a modern OS to ensure effective support and management.

BSystem standardisation:

• Migration will be significantly simplified if the systems, applications and databases are

standardised on common versions and management standards.

CRationalise applications and data:

• It should already be clear which services are migrating to what platform. Based on that,

undertake detailed work to de-duplicate and clean up in a manner that makes the subsequent

migration as simple as possible.

• Consider rationalisation of database servers to reduce licensing costs.

DAfter spring-cleaning applications and data, undertake resource consolidation:

• Rationalise applications and data to reduce infrastructure requirements and streamline the

administration of the migration.

• Assumptions will also have been made during the Discover phase about the levels of

rationalisation and consolidation possible. Use real world data to update the plans and

business case.



It is now time to build the cloud environment, including connectivity and supporting technical services.

Ensure the environment is fully tested and signed off before commencing the move of customer data.

AConfigure and test connectivity:

• Most customers will buy dedicated connections into critical cloud services.

These often have a long lead time.

• VPN connections are a convenient means to establish links and services during

commissioning.

BBuild out the new cloud environments:

• Build out each environment’s functionality, with minimum resources, and only provide full

capacity in the later stages.

• Most public cloud platforms have functionality for non-productive use which limits the

hours of use and sets cost thresholds for test environments. Documenting and implementing

these against agreed baselines is best practice.

CTest, test and test again:

• Testing is a critical function and builds confidence that the subsequent migration

will be successful.

Stage 03 Build and test



Migration is a major milestone, but much of the challenging work should already have been done. With the

correct preparation, the migration itself should be more of a logistical exercise.

AEngage with stakeholders:

• Make sure all stakeholders are fully aware of the plans to migrate services.

• Communicate continuously, on a service by service basis, about the migration so the

organisation can manage any remaining risks and unexpected disruptions or changes.

BShare the governance plan:

• Be clear about who is responsible for what, escalation and any critical decision making points.

• Play out outcome scenarios so that agreement on specific courses of action has been tested,

revised and documented.

CProvision the target service environment:

• Having built and tested the target environment, make sure that any preconfigured

resources are live (e.g. starting pre-built but stopping VMs) and ramping up any resources

to production capacity.

DMigrate:

• Execute the plan.

ETest everything:

• Technical testing.

• Functional testing.

• Operational readiness reviews.

FDecommission data centres:

• Repeat this stage but focused on the small number of services that were unsuitable

for migration to the cloud.

Stage 04 Migrate

Handing over into operational support usually runs in parallel with the migration activity. The migration

teams work with the operational teams to enable the take on of each migrated environment.

ATraining delivery:

• Train the operational teams on the cloud platforms and services being deployed.

BKnowledge transfer:

• Plan the scope, documentation and delivery of knowledge transfer. This is a multi-stage activity

because, whilst much can be planned, the migration will throw up unexpected lessons.

COperational sign-off into business-as-usual:

• Use the Acceptance Plan to validate programme outcomes.

Stage 05 Handover into operational support



Spring-clean your IT

Every cloud journey raises the question of when to transform the IT estate: before or after migration?

Many public sector organisations are understandably keen to ‘lift and shift’ IT assets to the cloud as quickly

as possible, since switching off on-premises equipment brings immediate savings. However, this is almost

always a false economy.

Most organisations will be running on-premises systems that have grown incrementally by service and

exponentially by capacity over many years, resulting in a complex, tangled technology stack. While such

technology debt makes it difficult to shift legacy systems into the cloud on a like for like basis, driving IT

transformation in situ also reduces risk, since it’s possible to back out or revert a change when necessary.

Even more importantly however, ensuring existing IT is fit for purpose, correctly sized and still required will

substantially reduce the cost of cloud migration, while also making the process faster, safer and simpler to

manage. One London Borough working with us reduced its existing servers from 915 to just 236, while also

downsizing its application footprint from 1250 to 240 – ultimately, upfront IT spring-cleaning made the cloud

migration significantly less complex.

Fail into the cloud

Cloud providers have invested heavily in tooling to enable the integration of on-premises infrastructure, migration into the cloud and business continuity.

Indeed, in any practical sense, a failover into the cloud for business continuity is effectively a first step in

a migration – the only difference is that continuity typically prioritises mission critical services where a

migration needs to cover all systems and services. Microsoft has taken this to the logical conclusion and

Azure Site Recovery is now its migration tool of choice.

With the cloud offering an array of powerful new capabilities, it is easy to be tempted to build a sophisticated

new environment, but beware. Replicating retained existing IT systems on a like for like basis in the cloud

will make it far easier to find faults, validate systems or resolve other issues – minimising the time, cost and

complexity of the whole migration process.

02

01

Insights and Advice



Make the right moves

After all your hard work you should have established a clear order for cloud migration and all the elements should now be set up in readiness.

The goal should be to migrate as much ‘low-hanging fruit’ into the cloud as possible before tackling the

trickiest elements. With a timely, cost-effective and clearly ordered journey to the right cloud platforms,

your organisation can start saving sooner and bring services online faster.

From a security perspective, treat the cloud in the same way you would build a traditional data centre. Make

sure that each cloud service is built within your security perimeter to enabling closer integration, seamless

working and for your users to better prepare and exploit data stored across your systems.

In our experience, organisations should almost always approach migration in the following order:

Public cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS):

• Simply put – buy don’t build. SaaS will also continuously update application capabilities where installed

application stacks inevitably start to lag.

Public cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS):

• Whatever is left after adopting SaaS is a candidate for public cloud. Not everything has to be built like

for like; providers have platform services for common capabilities. On migration, these are ideal as the

destination for databases and identity services with exciting future service options.

Public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS):

• Whatever is left after adopting SaaS and PaaS that is running virtualised is a candidate for public cloud

infrastructure services.

Specialist Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers:

• There will be some specific services you may not want to move into public cloud. There are specialist

providers that can take this on.

Legacy hardware that can’t move to the cloud:

• There are still some line of business applications that have not been virtualised. Until they can be

modernised or decommissioned, external co-location is likely to be the best route to avoid a small legacy

requirement continuing to consume high fixed costs.

There is a trend for line of business application providers to offer their software as a managed service. Whilst

these can be attractive, they may also lock your data in inaccessible systems that prevent you joining it up to

deliver better insights and earlier decisions. Ask about access standards and costs before committing to them.

03


Optimise


Goals

Drive efficiency of cloud

services.

Unlike on-premises services where there are fixed overheads, cloud services can be improved with time and usage data.

The final phase of the cloud roadmap covers the

continual operation and optimisation needed to reduce

the cost of delivery, improve performance and unlock

new capabilities. The challenge is to achieve this without

wasting valuable internal resources on time-consuming

infrastructure management, instead freeing staff to

focus on the organisation’s ultimate goals.

Although the cloud enables modern applications to

scale and flex with demand, very few public sector

services have been developed recently enough to have

this capability built in. In place of this, a management

service comprised of tooling and rules works to replicate

as much as possible.

Rather than looking for short period changes in volume,

optimisation should become a continual improvement

process. At one end of the scale, the management

services will suspend unused services – like HR –

overnight or at the weekend. At the other end, systems

with a yearly cycle (finance, Council Tax) may run on a

reduced footprint for nine months and only be scaled

up around the year end. If an organisation takes the

decision to shut down services only needed during the

working day, it can save at least two thirds of the related

infrastructure hosting costs over a year.

Optimise

Embrace new, enhanced

capabilities.

Change operational mind-sets

to “just in time, and only what’s

needed” approach.



Improvement Area 02 Capacity

Operational management is the discipline that underpins all other optimisation activity. It’s about ensuring

essential services are fully operational, monitored continuously and that usage data is captured accurately.

ADevelop a governance strategy to ensure cloud resources are commissioned and managed

effectively as your cloud usage and capabilities grow.

BAudit and actively manage existing licensing and investments. Two key areas are:

• Optimisation - for example, Microsoft Hybrid usage rights offset Azure costs using

server licensing.

• Managing risk – for example running Oracle in a cloud environment.

CBuild a business continuity plan that includes regular testing of both individual services and whole

site failures.

DBuild a continuous service improvement process that encompasses capacity, performance,

pricing, security and modernisation.

Improvement Area 01 Operational management

Over-provisioning of services is the primary cause of complaints about the cost of cloud services.

Planning, monitoring and active management are critical tasks to ensuring you deliver against your

business case and demonstrate ongoing value.

AEstablish a “just in time, and only what’s needed” discipline because IT services are typically

easier to expand than reduce. In our experience, migrated systems are often over specified by

30% or more.

BDevelop operational dashboards and reports with published baselines to highlight under or over

utilisation of resources.

CProvide trend analysis to highlight opportunities for savings or planned investment.

DWork with the organisation to ensure that predictable changes in demand are planned for and can

use cost effective services (e.g. seasonal variations like the end of year).

EIdentify your long-term services and match them to the most cost-effective cloud services.



Improvement Area 04 Pricing

Performance management is directly linked to cost optimisation. Prioritise mission critical services

first to drive up service effectiveness and user satisfaction.

AImplement service analytics to monitor applications and resources to deliver on SLAs and identify

the root cause of any problems.

BBuild a resource planning capability to scale resources when needed. Initially this will be enabled

in the management tooling. As applications are modernised, auto-scaling should be built in.

CMonitor and review network consumption and resilience. Cloud specific networking capabilities

such as Microsoft Express Route or Amazon Direct Connect will enhance network performance.

Improvement Area 03 Performance

As your organisation becomes more reliant on the cloud and the number of services in use proliferates,

pricing can become complex so it’s important to make sure you’re not overpaying for your services.

ATrack the unit cost of resources vs performance to ensure you’re getting the required computing

power and services at the most competitive rate.

Note: the industry over-hypes the concept of ‘cloud-brokerage’ and moving workloads between

clouds to lower the cost of service. The investment to make this possible is rarely justified by

the marginal differences.

BAll providers offer reduced rates for committed usage. Transfer long term, stable workloads

to these cheaper services to benefit from cost reduction.



The cloud is typically the safest place for your data but the risk of a breach remains. A process of regular

evaluation and improvement minimises the risk and will be required to be compliant with any security or

privacy standard.

ACloud providers are constantly improving their security tools. Undertake regular reviews to deploy

updates that enhance your security.

BBest practice is for applications to be built with security in mind. Cloud services make pervasive

security significantly easier than on-premises. Add these capabilities to your build standards.

CThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has forced cloud providers to offer tools to report

and remove data that may never exist in legacy services. Consider if your compliance might be

improved by migrating sensitive services and data to cloud services.

Improvement Area 05 Security

Improvement Area 06 Modernisation

The relentless and accelerating rate of innovation in cloud services offers fantastic possibilities to improve

citizen services and reduce costs. Keeping up to date is a challenge in itself but there are some areas that

will benefit from regular consideration.

AJoining up applications and datasets offers improvements in insight, decision making, early

intervention, coordination and efficient service delivery. Track new messaging, middleware and

data consolidation capabilities.

BCloud providers constantly try to identify common patterns of use in infrastructure that could be

developed as a PaaS. Regularly evaluate whether these offer a better capability, cost or both.

CMigrate data to platform services that will improve existing capabilities and provide access

to modern solutions like Business Intelligence (BI), analytics and bots that will profoundly improve

citizen services.

DFacilitate a DevOps culture and adopt modern development practices to bring more agility

to the organisation and allow innovative ideas to be tested at very low risk.



Consider trading lock-in for higher quality, lower cost services

To truly optimise in the cloud, an organisation must evaluate and decide how important service portability is. The decision will be affected by an organisation’s desire to access capabilities unique to a vendor or consume services in a manner that significantly improves the quality of a service or cost base. 荀

Clearly both have their own requirements:

• Truly portable services require thoroughly modern application stacks that are loosely coupled, API driven

and, increasingly, containerised. These services are orchestrated and automated to enable redeployment

simply via configuration changes that might themselves be automated (e.g. a response to changes in

spot prices or demand).

• Platform services reduce management overhead, improve security, are constantly updated and increasingly

integrate with cloud only capabilities like BI, analytics and bots. Once embedded in use, the role they

perform can be hard to move away from, although they typically integrate well with other cloud

capabilities.

The major vendors compete hard around core capabilities and pricing meaning the decision between them is

often either about commercial simplicity (existing agreements) or the alignment of your vision with theirs.

Managed services aren’t evil

While traditional on-premises infrastructure could be built, configured and forgotten, active management of the cloud is not only essential, but will pay for itself.

Careful management is required to prevent over-consumption of cloud services and the right expertise

is valuable to identify and implement the vast array of powerful capabilities the cloud offers. Of course,

organisations can develop teams and technology to address these elements. The benefit of a third party

should be in the cost effectiveness of the management and the way it leverages its experience and

investment across multiple customers. These have always been core elements to a service’s value

proposition. However, the difference today is that this service management capability is available discreetly,

outside complex and large outsourcing agreements.

01

02

Insights and Advice



03Don’t forget your users

The decisions made during cloud migration are based on hard, spreadsheet realities: the twin considerations of capabilities and cost rule. However, it’s crucial not to forget the impact these choices will have inside your organisation.

The most visible example in a cloud transformation is typically the update of end user devices and workplaces

to new laptops, Windows 10 and Office 365. To staff who have had the same Windows 7 desktop for many

years, this can be a jarring experience that causes a dip in productivity and satisfaction. Without training, the

productivity benefits sought from modernisation will also not be realised because the new capabilities are not

always immediately obvious.

Therefore, it is critical to make sure that your users are brought along. However, this isn’t just a case of building

a training plan; go further and consider how you can harness the culture inside your organisation to help users

embrace new technologies.

• A strategic and incremental roll-out of new software may be preferable to a ‘big bang’ launch, allowing

feedback from early adopters that improves the subsequent roll out and training.

• There are likely to be some stand out characters in your organisation – the trendsetters, the connectors

and the teachers – who you should take advantage of to create a soft landing for a big change programme.


Whilst the cloud’s role in enabling 21st century public services is widely accepted, some organisations are still hesitant to make the leap.

It’s true that planning, migrating and optimising cloud

operations without disrupting the day-to-day is no small

feat. However, cloud migration is now a path well-trodden;

there is a proven route to success. There are also many

providers across the UK that can help you make your cloud

transformation happen with minimal risk.

Final thoughts

Our final recommendations are:

01

02

03

04

05

06

Don’t delay: Cloud transformation is inevitable -

the later you leave it, the greater the pressure.

Know what you want: Develop a clear cloud strategy

and vision at the outset.

Achieve ‘buy-in’ for cloud transformation across

your organisation.

Look for a complete cloud approach: Beware the cost of

leaving infrastructure behind.

Right-size your cloud migration to reduce time,

cost and risk.

Choose the right provider: Look for those with the

right experience and capabilities who won’t just

sell you their preferred platform or solution.

Relentlessly optimise to continually improve

your services.07

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w www.agilisys.co.uk

Copyright © 2018 Agilisys. All rights reserved.

About Agilisys

Agilisys is a leading cloud implementation partner for the public sector. We have

helped over 35 organisations move in to the cloud benefitting 75,000 users and

enabling one million UK citizens to transact digitally.

We deliver success through innovation, working with our customers to transform

services that make a difference to millions of people across the UK. We have

earned a strong reputation and hold deep domain expertise in delivering

transformational services, particularly within public sector organisations.

If your organisation is looking to move to the cloud for the first time or optimise

current workloads, contact us for a free outline business case and we will help

develop your next cloud project with you.

Documents

A practical guide to cloud transformation