Public, Private, Hybrid or Multi Cloud?

Flexibility, speed, cost efficiency, high availability: The benefits of using cloud services cannot be denied. But how should you find your way in the mass of providers and cloud models? With the help of the Cloud Transformation Framework we determine which cloud solution is the right solution for you and which provider best suits your individual requirements.

Our consultants will guide you through all project phases, which will be completed by a review. In this way we ensure at each stage that we achieve the goals we committed to.

Five steps on the strategic path to the cloud

The 5-phase process developed by DextraData provides guidance when transferring your IT services into the cloud. It is based on the experience that solid planning and design are the "nuts and bolts" of a sustainable cloud strategy. On the way to the cloud solution, which best fulfills your individual requirements, the following process steps have proven to be successful:

Step 1: The workshop

In a one-day workshop with the company's managing directors, IT managers and IT architects, we will first give an overview of the various cloud models and deployment scenarios. The advantages and disadvantages of Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud as well as the offers of different cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware vCloud Air, Virtustream, Softlayer) are considered. In addition, the cloud expert discusses the following topics: SaaS, IaaS, PaaD, DaaS, BaaS and Microsoft Office 365, service providers, colocation and SDDC. The workshop creates a basis and identifies our customer's requirements.

Step 2: The assessment brings clarity

If the workshop reveals that the company has not yet defined a reliable sourcing strategy, the Service Readiness Assessment can optionally be preceded by a Sourcing Readiness Assessment.

Sourcing Readiness Assessment: The following aspects amongst others are considered in the Assessment: Strategic Business Requirements for IT; Importance of IT for the business model; perceived IT service quality; Maturity of the IT organization and IT processes; Architecture and efficiency of technology; Benchmarking of costs and performance of IT. Based on the selected depth of detail for the assessment - helicoptering, short study or study - the following topics are the results of the assessment: Identification of optimization potential, high level definition of a service portfolio that can be sourced, planning and prioritization of the improvement measures.

The sourcing strategy defines whether and, if so, which services should be provided internally or externally by one or more service providers on the basis of costs, business benefits and corporate strategy.

Service Readiness Assessment: If the decision is to use a cloud solution, an as-is analysis of the IT services in focus and their dependencies will first take place. The cloud consultant also determines service details such as utilization, data usage, licenses, contracts and expenses. Moreover they determine the service requirements together with you. This includes requirements for Support & Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Governance, Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) as well as archiving. Finally, a Cloud Service Ready categorization identifies the services that are suitable for migration to the cloud.

Step 3: Solution design

A solution design is now being developed for the defined cloud-ready services. As part of a value benefit analysis, the services are compared with the degree of fulfillment of the different providers in order to determine the most suitable cloud provider. At the same time, the cloud expert develops a migration path for the services to be implemented and then defines a service operation model. This includes cost calculation and offer preparation. Moreover an exit strategy will be defined before the start of migration in order to respond to changing market conditions by switching to other public or private cloud operators.

Step 4: Implementation of Cloud Services

Based on the solution design of the previous phase, detailed planning for the initial operation and the migration to the cloud will take place. Depending on th individual requirements of our customer and the desired target environment, cloud services are implemented as public, private or hybrid environment. In addition, the consultant accompanies the start-up of cloud services and ensures the service operation (transfer of "legacy" IT services into cloud services).

Step 5: Managed Services

Finally, the transformed services are transferred to the operational phase. Optionally, DextraData supports the ongoing operation modularly and according to your individual wishes.