Article in The New Stack for Kasten by Veeam
Modernizing enterprise applications to a cloud native architecture is not an endeavor for the faint of heart.
The decision to start orchestrating containerized microservices using Kubernetes is only the starting line for a long relay race that requires extensive team coordination and troubleshooting as new interdependencies are brought to light.
Though many organizations struggle to complete K8s modernization projects, mid-sized companies start out particularly disadvantaged. They are caught in the danger zone of having to scope out the migration of a number of existing systems and data sources, while not having ramped up enough in-house IT expertise to finish projects in a timely fashion to meet customer needs.
Directly hiring Kubernetes experts isn’t a feasible option either. Acknowledging a severe shortage of experienced talent, recruiting costs would be prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, the acquired team wouldn’t have a known shared history of success working together.
That’s why companies look to hand off many aspects of modernization to partners — value-added service providers and global system integrators who have run this race before.
Enablers with a Track Record
System integrators, value-added resellers and managed service providers grant themselves a natural head start over in-house teams through hard-won experience. The best partners have already completed multiple serious migration projects for different clients, and some of their resources may have stepped in to work on several in a given year.
In-house team members may have only completed a handful of such projects, or maybe even none at all, depending upon their roles.
This is not to say in-house teams aren’t motivated, or that they are incapable of completing a difficult project, it’s just that it’s very risky to change the core architecture of an operating business. The company often keeps employees on revenue-connected work, while slow-pedaling on modernization projects for years.
Partners are advantageous for organizations that want to get modernization plans out of the starting blocks and into action. Here’s why:
- Technical knowledge. Their people have used many of the leading open source tools and commercial platforms, and are often trained and/or certified as experts by the vendors themselves while maintaining a sense of impartiality to help customers apply the right mix of technologies for them.
- Situational awareness. Veteran consultants know what it looks like when a project is turning out successfully and can spot leading indicators for when it isn’t working. This is not to say strong partners have a “crystal ball” to predict and prevent failure with certainty, but they can draw on a wealth of previous decisions and outcomes.
- Core competencies. Partners can establish Centers of Excellence and peer working groups to serve customers even better than expected within the needs of a vertical industry, or across specific horizontal technology specializations and practices, such as cloud computing, security and compliance, or fault tolerance and disaster recovery.
The most advanced partners with proven track records will usually be in high demand with low availability, which can present a great opportunity for an up-and-coming firm to work smarter to prove itself. But however great all these benefits sound, it is important to remember that not all services firms will make good modernization partners.
There will always be some shops that rotate in less-knowledgeable staff who choose the path of least resistance. For instance, the firm may just lift and shift a legacy architecture directly into the cloud, rather than rethinking the environment for cloud native deployment and resilient operations on Day 2 and beyond.
Read the entire BrainBlog on The New Stack here.
