Why moving to the cloud requires a unified support strategy

In a recent blog, I outlined some of the main complexities to consider when moving to the cloud. This complexity creates a critical role for support. This challenges the vendor marketing that talks up the level of automation for managing traditional support functions such as loading patches and upgrades.

The cloud can significantly reduce capital expenditure, but is it right to assume that it can minimise the need for support? Unfortunately, such assumptions can lead to real problems for the business. For instance:

Customisations are allowed in the cloud: If a customer wants to bring in customisations from an internal environment, that will likely add to the support bill. Most Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) encourage customers to adopt vanilla versions of applications. The support team should evaluate the potential loss of functionality in a vanilla cloud application compared to retaining a highly customised in-house version.

No more upgrades: It is very attractive to believe that handing responsibility for upgrades to the CSP will ease the resource burden on the in-house IT team. However, upgrades don't go away in the vendor's cloud, what goes away is the choice of when and how you do them. Customers must still understand and plan around what is now a completely vendor-dictated upgrade schedule, and factor in the impact (and possible prolonged downtime) this may have on the business - one of the hidden costs of DevOps models which has to be controlled to avoid spiralling costs. Support must ensure the cloud does not add to the operational costs of running IT.

ERP is not the source of your competitive differentiation: If you are an existing Oracle HCM customer your application has probably been stable and functioning effectively for quite some time. So, will moving it to the cloud really deliver huge value? The support team can help the CIO understand which applications can be supported in their current form and remain perfectly functional, thus reducing the resource costs facing your business.

Suite vs best-in-class applications: Customers must understand the business value of moving applications to the cloud. Rather than be tied into a suite of cloud-based ERP applications there's a strong argument for evaluating best-in-class specialist SaaS applications relevant to the customer's specific industry. Given how hands on the support team is managing the application architecture, the team could help to assess the relative functionality of suite vs. best-in-class applications.

Scalability is easier in the cloud: One of the original benefits of the public cloud is managing ‘cloud bursts' or peak demand for access to computing power. However, such scalability comes at a cost, it is not uncommon for many ERP customers to either over-purchase and underutilize cloud resources or exceed their cloud usage limitations and pay a penalty. Support should be vigilant, so that operational expenditure remains under control.

Integration is automatic: The lack of agreed interoperability standards means each CSP has a different approach and uses different tools and APIs. Understanding, testing and maintaining these APIs can be a role that the support team plays to understand application interoperability.

Containers are simple to implement: Abstracting the operating system from the application layer is being heralded as a way to more rapidly spin up application instances. However, containers are still maturing as a technology and individual CSPs have different requirements for container images, which can make implementation more complicated. Any complication can lead to security flaws which could be exploited, so responsibility should be given to support to put the right policies in place.

Easier to automate the management of security: To assume automation will answer all the potential security threats is risky, especially since many ERP vendors simply apply the same security offerings they have used historically for applications in the data centre, despite the limitations and flaws of these approaches. The shared responsibility model of the cloud means customers are not absolved of their obligations as the owner of their company data. With so many potential causes of security vulnerabilities, support must become ever more sophisticated in its contribution to protecting data.

It would be dangerous to suggest that the cloud automates support to the point where it is no longer needed. The cloud makes the role of support more strategic within organisations, and requires a strong unified support plan focused on business outcomes.

IT admins must quickly get to grips with the fact that they will no longer control access to applications as they did in the traditional internal applications world. The skills and role they need in a multi-cloud world will be very different. They will need to understand application usage and the business challenges users are trying to solve, so that applications can be managed to respond to the needs of the business. As the days of ‘command and control' recede, the support team will also play the part of educator to help staff understand the cost implications of shadow IT and the dangers of not aligning application deployment with company security policies. Above all, though, organisations will need the reassurance of knowing that IT admin staff are constantly monitoring the performance of applications in the cloud, ensuring data can shift seamlessly between different platforms and that the data is protected as it shifts between different environments. This requires a unified approach to support, which creates a single view of application performance, management and usage requirements across the multiple cloud platforms being used.

This is framing the debate provocatively, but as an enterprise user you must avoid making assumptions about the cloud. By ending premium and extended support for existing applications CSPs are effectively saying your only choice is to move to the cloud, if you want to maintain full support from them for your applications. And yet, this is a Hobson's choice. If they want you to move what does it say about the level of investment they are putting into your existing support? Have you asked yourself what value you are getting through your existing support?

Of course, no one wants to be locked-in with one vendor, but if you shift your ERP applications to a CSP's platform you could make yourself incredibly reliant on that vendor's strategy. Can you risk that? And financially, when you come to negotiating your next contract, what bargaining chips does this give you?

Adopting a unified support strategy gives you options. You can maintain some or all of your existing applications in-house using third-party support. This will give you the time to plan out your future IT strategy and enable you to reduce your total maintenance costs by 50 to 90 per cent. These resources can be redirected to strategic investments in SaaS applications, which will drive value for your business. Over time, you can progress to adopting best-in-class SaaS applications from multiple vendors. When you reach that point your unified support strategy will enable you to control the complexity, maintain the value of your existing customised applications and benefit from the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.

Mark Armstrong is GVP and GM EMEA at Rimini Street