In a previous blog post, Solving cloud migration challenges with control, automation, and governance, we shared some of the insights we learned in our 5 ways to make your cloud migration faster webinar with AWS and Slack.
The expert panel consisted of:
- Marcus Wildsmith, Chief Product Officer, Cutover
- Kieran Gutteridge, Chief Technology Officer, Cutover
- Ron Melanson, Global Lead, Control Services Field Enablement, AWS
- Richard Whitehurst, Senior Solutions Engineer, Slack
This week, we’re sharing more insights on how good visibility and communication can make all the difference when it comes to migrating to the cloud, with examples of how Cutover, AWS, and Slack have helped solve problems for their customers.
Visibility
During a cloud migration, it is very important to be able to monitor status and have visibility in real time of how the migration is going. This can be challenging when there are so many moving parts and people involved in the usual cloud migration project. However, a lack of visibility can cause significant delays and even lead to migration failure.
One aspect of visibility is helping developers and others involved in the migration understand the dependencies they have on each other and the relative importance of each task they have to perform. Without this kind of visibility, it can be difficult to prioritize tasks, leading to delays in migrating the most important applications.
What visibility do you need for developers?
- The relative importance of different features/apps and the dependencies between them
- Real-time and automatically updated data (Configuration Management Database (CMDB) systems can quickly become out of date)
- Structured (clearly defined and searchable) and unstructured data (stored in its native format)
- Real-time, dynamic data rather than a snapshot of a single point in time
For those running the event, visibility at a higher level means seeing an overview of how the migration is going to enable for more flexible planning and removing roadblocks as they occur. Readily-available visibility, rather than having to chase up statuses with various teams and stakeholders, also means fewer interruptions for people doing the work, enabling them to focus on the task at hand and move faster.
Communication
The past year or so has shown that great things can be achieved with a remote or partially-remote workforce - but doing things remotely does require excellent communication to ensure everyone is kept in the loop and still working as one team. According to Richard Whitehurst from Slack, “the most fundamental thing our teams do is communicate and if you can change and shape the way people communicate, you can change anything - culture, process, or even the agility of an organization.”
A lot of the time with cloud migrations teams are receiving structured communication from lots of different systems of record, so providing visibility into those systems is extremely valuable. Team members need to be able to have conversations about projects, make decisions, and get work done, no matter what time zone they are in or what hours they work. People should be able to leave and join but have all the information readily available to them in a searchable format.
In the context of a cloud migration, ensuring all the teams are joined up and have clear lines of visibility and communication between them is vital to keeping all the moving pieces working together and ensuring there is no failure or delays.
For more insights, watch the "5 ways to make your cloud migration faster" webinar to discover our top five ways to speed up your cloud migration, and hear migration experiences and anecdotes from Cutover, AWS and Slack. Or download our white paper The journey to the cloud: Lessons learned from working with major organizations for real-life examples of how our customers are managing their move to the cloud.