Maximizing the potential cloud computing benefits in a migration

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.

Almost half of all cloud computing projects are rated as being at least partially unsuccessful by internal or external auditors after launch. In two-thirds of all cases, benefits promised by the cloud migration were deemed real but not realized by the cloud project. To secure your own cloud benefits, establish explicit target benefits and link each target benefit to a specific step in the process, then audit benefit realization status at each project milestone and take prompt steps to record what you’ve promised. There will, however, be hurdles along the way.

Establishing target benefits

The biggest problem with benefit loss is lack of any organized benefit set. You can’t chase benefits you never really had under control, and control starts in the cloud project planning phase. A cloud computing project audit showed that projects that expended less than about 20% of their time in the planning phase were twice as likely to have benefit problems as those that spent 25% to 30% planning. Even though extensive planning and review seems to waste project time and opportunity, it pays off in accurate identification of costs and the creation of sound project controls to monitor critical assumptions…

First calculate total ownership costs for a current application in-house and for that app in the cloud. Address the capital cost of hardware and software, maintenance charges, facilities costs, network costs and support in both of your analyses. The second step, perhaps most critical, is to record the assumptions associated with each source of savings projected for the cloud. Under what range of conditions will these savings be available? The goal of your benefit managing process is to ensure that these assumptions will be met. Your cloud project must manage the variables associated with each assumption and take prompt action if something changes…

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