Article Four considerations to give ISVs a flying start in the cloud
By Insight UK / 10 Mar 2021 / Topics: Cloud
By Insight UK / 10 Mar 2021 / Topics: Cloud
More and more customers and end-users want to acquire their software 'as a Service', that is, in the cloud. For Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) with a public or hybrid cloud strategy, there are golden times ahead. After all, the cloud is the place where you can market applications as SaaS. But how do you proceed? What steps should you take and what decisions should you make?
The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a step-by-step approach for planning, building and managing a successful and profitable cloud strategy in a greenfield environment. The combination with Microsoft’s WAF (Well-Architected Framework) improves the quality of your workload by focusing on a set of common architecture principles for operating in the cloud.
Once you have planned which workloads you want to migrate to the cloud and how, the next phase is to actually build the environment in the most reliable and predictable way with both CAF and WAF. These four considerations are essential parts within the frameworks. If you give these some serious consideration, you will get off to a flying start.
The traditional business model for ISVs is based on the sale of software licenses and service agreements in the physical environment. The cloud, however, turns this business model around: the focus shifts from keeping the lights on (physical assets) to ensuring consistent operations (digital assets). This shift also requires to change the operating model to a cloud operating model that is cost-effective, optimized for your specific situation and avoiding unnecessary spend due to inefficient set-up.
The cloud is the ideal place for ISVs to offer applications as SaaS solutions, without having to worry about the underlying IT. By optimizing or even offloading infrastructure management to the cloud, and using its capabilities such as PaaS, AI services or serverless coding, ISVs can focus on their core business: developing applications that deliver great value to their customers in a SaaS model that is lucrative for both parties. CAF and WAF helps to align the business to this new model.
Operational excellence is high on the agenda of ISVs when migrating workloads to the cloud. After all, cloud applications run remotely with little or no control over the infrastructure; different from an on-premises implementation. Therefore, you need to consider which monitoring and diagnostics processes need to be in place to run applications in a reliable, predictable and efficient way. Also look at what can be automated, especially around scaling.
For the majority of ISVs the cloud is a way to be more agile, innovative and more responsive to customer needs. Opportunities for innovation offered by the cloud will improve their business value and their market position. New developments follow one another quickly. Think of building and running serverless applications, the potential of AI and machine learning for Code as a Service, or the use of Kubernetes for rapid scaling. The ability to innovate in and with the cloud brings with it new technical skills and offers many new ways forward in a competitive world.
At Insight, we have been working with ISVs like you across Europe for many years, providing valuable time, knowledge and support in many (hybrid) cloud scenarios.
As a multi-vendor software licensing, workload and platform specialist, we can guide you through all stages (Plan – Build – Manage) of your strategic cloud journey with a series of workshops, assessments, services and best practices. From the first exploration of cloud or hybrid opportunities and benefits to support and optimisation after migration. No matter where you are in your journey, we help you to find new ways forward and accelerate your business.
If you’ve already decided on what you need to do or started migrating already, we can help you to migrate, set up and optimize your chosen infrastructure.
Contact us to find out how we can support you in your cloud adoption strategy.
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