Letting Go

The Key to Migrating Apps to the Cloud

All organisations have applications that their users cherish. But to reap the full benefits of application outsourcing and cloud computing, they have to let them go.

By Chris Waite, Fujitsu

enterprise-cloud Almost every mid-sized and large organisation – whether in the private or public sector – has a spaghetti-like jumble of applications of varying degrees of usefulness.

Not only have these been accumulated over decades, but in many cases they have been reworked and augmented by mergers and acquisitions, changes in legislation, group re‑organisations and other structural upheavals.

Aside from a battery of homegrown code, most CIOs are overseeing a complex portfolio of packaged applications from numerous providers that typically involve expensive upgrade rounds and a supporting administrative infrastructure and help desk. Often the IT organisation doesn’t actually know the magnitude of that applications inventory, which items are being used and how frequently, whether they support the business effectively, and how much they are costing.