Migrating to the Cloud? Consider the “5 Rs of Rationalization” 

Migrating to the cloud has been a hot topic these past few years as the benefits can be substantial towards growing your business.  

The cloud can increase staff efficiency by up to 55% by managing less resources while in the cloud and can help save on operating costs by up to 24% over 3-years of administration. These factors can help increase your yearly revenue by ensuring your applications can scale when in high demand.  

However, customers often ask us how they accurately decide what to move to the cloud and how to do so effectively. What type of questions should be asked while rationalizing workloads? 

Fortunately, cloud providers such as Microsoft and VMware suggest using the “5 Rs of Rationalization” as key points when reviewing your workloads.  

The “5 Rs of Rationalization” include:  

• Rehosting 
• Refactoring 
• Rearchitecting 
• Rebuilding 
• Replacing 

Let’s dig into each point to learn how you can optimally evaluate your workloads for your cloud journey. 

Rehosting 

Rehosting, or lift-and-shift, is a tried-and-true method of moving a current state asset to the targeted cloud provider, such as moving VMs in vSphere to Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS, VMs. Most businesses utilize rehosting because it’s a low-effort migration method to achieve rapid ROI and it reduces the need to change the asset to be cloud compatible.  

It is important to think about the following factors when thinking about rehosting your workloads: 

• VM size and specifications 
• Network traffic dependencies 
• Tolerance for change 
• Critical business events 

Refactoring 

Refactoring involves changing the code to enable the application to deliver on new business opportunities such as the need to increase efficiency, move code around easily, or deliver faster and shorter updates to customers. Cloud providers offer Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS, options to facilitate these common drivers.  

It is important to evaluate the following factors when considering refactoring your workloads: 

• User traffic metrics and thresholds 
• Development platforms and patterns 
• Bursting options or timelines 
• Business process dependencies 

Rearchitecting 

As businesses look at their current estate, they may find legacy applications incompatible with the cloud. This is due to the architectural decisions made when the application was first developed. Rearchitecting the application will help save on costs due to unexpected conditions and results of running the application in the cloud. 

It is imperative to note the following factors when deciding to rearchitect your workloads: 

• Application and database size and specification requirements 
• Network traffic and user traffic loads 
• The growth of business investments 
• Potential feedback loops and DevOps investments 

Rebuilding 

Like the above two rationalization methods, a workload may be rebuilt when the changes needed to make the application cloud-compatible are too large to justify the investment. In this case, building the application from the ground up to be cloud-native may be the best choice. It will position your company to accelerate innovation, build applications faster, and/or reduce operational costs. 

Factors to consider when deciding to rebuild your workload include: 

• Development platforms in use by the business 
• Delta changes and level of effort 
• Declining end user satisfaction 
• Potential cost, experience, and revenue gains 

Replacing 

As business processes shift dramatically, there will be circumstances where a legacy application can no longer be used. The application and its dependencies can be shifted directly to a Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, option which can provide all the necessary functionality. We typically see this with ERP or Sales related applications. 

If you note the following factors, it may help you decide to replace your application: 

• General operating cost reductions 
• Retiring assets 
• Cost benefit analysis of the current architecture versus a SaaS solution 
• Business process maps 

Next Steps: How Can Arraya Help Your Migration? 

Arraya Solutions is a certified CSP and MSP with architects and engineers who can help you with rationalizing your workloads. We offer workload assessments and provide comprehensive documentation to aid your business in moving to the cloud. When you feel comfortable with the results, we can assist with the migration process from beginning to end.  

Reach out to one of our Account Executives today to discuss our assessment options. 

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