Microsoft Azure platform lead Siddhartha Gupta explains how migration creates value and rejuvenation
Elly Yates-Roberts |
This article was originally published in the Summer 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
Global enterprises are constantly challenged by new innovations aimed at changing the way business is done. The speed with which new ideas are getting translated into software across the globe is pushing even relatively modern applications and processes towards instant obliteration.
The established application landscape in companies, though technologically generally very outdated, is still servicing customers well. However, it is expected to evolve constantly to remain relevant to business, and therefore requires unreasonably high operational costs to remain available to service today’s ‘always-on’ businesses.
This is a double whammy, as it prevents enterprises from making new investments in growth avenues and simultaneously slows down technology changes that businesses need to retain their competitive advantage. Every enterprise which is at the fork of this decision is looking for balance. They want the benefits of modernisation and cloud native services to enhance their agility, but they need to rapidly exit out of their current setup fast to avoid costs.
Enterprise cloud migration initiatives are often seen as an opportunity to rejuvenate the applications landscape and create value for a business. This is the focal point of the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Cloud Migration Service, which is powered by the Intelligent Cloud Migration Continuum (iCMC) for the Microsoft Azure cloud. It starts with the broad business goals of the enterprise and then moves on to establishing principles which will meet those goals. This follows a surgical scrutiny of the enterprise’s application landscape and integration ecosystem which is then projected against the backdrop of the possibilities that Azure offers. It opens up many avenues of business value creation and optimisation which are then adopted against a business goal.
Many examples abound. An Asian insurance major, for example, is working at modernising its policy administration platform with the goal of simplifying its processes into a small number of independent business functions. These will encapsulate the common processes to build a unified policy administration process catering to the needs of its highly distributed market in Asia. At the same time, it decided to choose a low-touch migration for many of its legacy applications where it required savings.
A global consulting company, meanwhile, has started two initiatives: one to build native capabilities to digitise and automate many of its advisory offerings; and the second to quickly move out of its existing data centres through a lift and shift approach. Once again, the balance between the two initiatives is the ingredient to success. TCS is partnering with several global enterprises to achieve this with a goal of driving value within the business – this seems the best way for enterprises to progress towards the cloud now.
Siddhartha Gupta is a Microsoft Azure platform lead at Tata Consultancy Services