Costly mistakes can be avoided by having a sound cloud migration strategy that includes planning, assessment, testing, piloting, and validation. This article focuses on the assessment phase before migrating Oracle Workload data to the cloud. Read on to learn more…
What is a TCOT assessment?
First, let’s define total cost of ownership, or TCO: It is the sum total of DIRECT and INDIRECT asset costs over time. With so many IT assets to manage and maintain these days, organizations typically spend the majority of their budget on day-to-day operational challenges (OPEX), which tends to overtake any investment in strategic initiatives and/or business transformation (CAPEX). When it comes to promoting large CAPEX projects, like migrating your Oracle Workload data to the public cloud, the challenge is to demonstrate it can be done in a cost-effective manner and without disrupting normal business. Common considerations are the expense of license compliance, infrastructure updates, and technical/functional support. Traditional assessments have been to identify the current state and imagine the future state to help justify and aid in the implementation of a viable cloud migration strategy.
A more specialized type of assessment can be run before migrating your Oracle Workload data to address all the above areas of concern, so you are better equipped to design a data-driven, validated, and optimized strategy. We’re talking about a TCO transformation (TCOT) assessment, which generates a report on the following information based on your unique business situation:
- Oracle licensing – proper licensing, readiness for the cloud, and how to lower cost
- Workload priority and selection – workload-first matching, sequencing, and consolidation
- Cloud architecture mapping – cloud resources, persistent vs elastic, and geo-specific considerations
- Migration and deployment – supportability, tools, expertise, and on-time/on-budget results
Assessment insights and why they matter
Most importantly, the TCOT assessment process delivers valuable insights into the feasibility and affordability of migrating complex Oracle Workload data to a public cloud. Assessment results illuminate risks and costs, identify efficiencies, and ultimately accelerate migration. Without a disciplined, analytic approach that brings understanding and manages the entire lifecycle of your data in the cloud, there can be no real cost containment or risk mitigation to speak of.
Impact on your enterprise cloud migration strategy
The TCOT assessment also serves as a roadmap to guide your Oracle cloud migration journey and is key to its successful outcome, both economic and infrastructure-wise. Once the right licenses, the right cloud, and the right services are identified for your enterprise via thorough analysis, you can get a handle on the cost of digital transformation and design the cloud migration strategy scaled to meet your needs—one that will gain CAPEX approval and be sure to lower your current TCO (even reduce your OPEX), while realizing a healthy return on investment.
Planning to succeed
Part of your project’s Planning phase should include looking at different cloud migration methodologies. One such option is Data Intensity’s Safe-SwitchSM TCO Transformation Assessment tool, which has the following built-in features to optimize your migration plan:
- Oracle Enterprise License Position (ELP) Report
- Oracle Workload Analysis Report
- Public Cloud Architecture Mapping
- TCO Impact Analysis
- Executive Summary Read-Out
Wherever you are in your digital transformation, you can gain a competitive advantage by strategically planning and migrating your Oracle Workload data to the cloud following a TCOT assessment for a successful outcome.
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Data Intensity’s Safe-Switch is a life-cycle approach to assessing, prioritizing, migrating, and managing complex Oracle Workload data on public clouds. For more information, download our TCO Transformation Assessment data sheet.