Accelerate Data Centre Decommissioning

Move all your existing applications out of your data centres and onto the cloud in under 5 years

Executive Summary

  • Your enterprise is looking for a cloud service model that offers install and run existing applications in the cloud. 

  • That is significantly cheaper than as administered by your existing teams. 

  • That takes advantage of automated system administration available in cloud without the costly and lengthy activity of rewriting your applications. 

  • Google Cloud IaaS is a workload-optimized portfolio of services that addresses the needs of both digital-native and traditional enterprises. 

  • Whether you want to modernize the operations of your existing applications or develop new ones. 

  • You can also leverage Google's expertise and innovation in AI, machine learning, data analytics, and distributed computing to gain a competitive edge in your industry. 

  • Seamus Birch is a cloud acceleration expert, with extensive experience in improving the operational processes of technology teams, working in various banking and non-banking sectors, and delivering value to financial services firms including Scotiabank, RBC, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital. 

  • He has a proven track record of delivering successful technology operations modernisation programs for various organizations, reducing IT operational costs, increasing customer satisfaction, and enhancing business agility and resiliency. 

The Challenge

Migrating existing applications and data to the cloud with minimal disruption and downtime 

  • Ensuring the security, privacy, and compliance of their cloud infrastructure and data 

  • Managing the performance, availability, and scalability of their cloud resources and applications 

  • Optimizing the cost and efficiency of their cloud usage and avoiding overprovisioning or underutilization 

  • Training and upskilling their IT staff to adapt to the cloud environment and leverage its full potential 

Why us?

Seamus Birch has a proven track record of delivering successful cloud migration programs for various organizations, both in the banking and non-banking sectors. His approach to the cloud migration program is based on four principles: speed, quality, risk reduction, and cost optimization. He uses these principles to guide his decisions and actions throughout the program, ensuring that the organizations achieve their strategic goals and objectives. Here are the main steps of his approach: 

  • Volume: He sets a target of migrating 1.2 teams (6 apps) per day, based on his previous experience at DB UK. He uses program governance to align on the speed of the program and monitor the progress and performance of the migration teams. 

  • Governance: He splits governance between those that can accelerate the program and those that are impacted by the program. He creates a steering committee composed of senior executives from the organization and cloud vendors, who provide strategic direction, oversight, and sponsorship. He also creates a working group composed of representatives from Security, HR, finance, global sourcing, and other relevant stakeholders, who provide operational support, coordination, and communication. 

  • Dedicated Cloud Ops Team: He builds a dedicated cloud operations team of 60 people, who are responsible for the migration, maintenance, and optimization of the cloud applications. He works with HR to recruit, train, and retain the best talent for this team, ensuring that they have the skills, tools, and incentives to deliver high-quality results. 

  • Prioritize the Easy-to-Operate Apps: He works with Security to identify the applications that consume the least support effort to keep running, and prioritizes them for migration. This allows him to achieve quick wins, reduce operational costs, and free up resources for more complex applications. 

  • Offer User Migration Options: He works closely with the architects to ensure that duplicate systems are encouraged to retire rather than move. He also offers users the option to migrate their applications to the cloud themselves, using a self-service portal and a standardized migration process. This increases user satisfaction, adoption, and ownership of the cloud applications. 

  • Allocations: He works closely with finance to agree on a process for the regular rebalancing of allocations as applications move to the cloud. He ensures that the cloud costs are transparent, predictable, and fair, and that the savings from the cloud migration are reinvested in the program or other strategic initiatives. 

  • Vendor Contracts: He works closely with global sourcing to review vendor contracts regarding dedicated hardware to ensure that the organization is not penalized for moving to the cloud. He also negotiates the best terms and conditions for the cloud services, leveraging the organization's scale and reputation. 

  • Windows 365 Cloud PC: He moves everyone associated with the acceleration to be using Windows 365 Cloud PC for their desktop environment. This enables them to access the cloud applications from any device, anywhere, and anytime, enhancing their productivity, mobility, and security. This also requires his team to offer "cloud desktop support" to the users, ensuring that they have a seamless and consistent user experience. 

Your Benefits

According to the IDC white paper, the organizations that migrated to Google Cloud IaaS realized significant business value and a 318% five-year return on investment (ROI) by: 

  • Lowering infrastructure costs for running business-critical enterprise applications 

  • Enabling IT infrastructure, security, and applications-oriented teams to work more efficiently and effectively 

  • Minimizing productivity and revenue losses associated with unplanned outages 

  • Increasing employee productivity levels to improve business results and annual revenues 

These benefits were derived from the following improvements that Google Cloud IaaS delivered to the interviewed organizations: 

  • 51% reduced cost of operations over five years 

  • 57% more efficient IT infrastructure management teams 

  • Nearly 3X more time of IT staff time spent on innovation and other activities 

  • 34% more effective IT security teams 

  • 75% faster deployment of new application features 

  • 6.3 hours of additional productivity gained per end user 

  • $3.23 million additional revenue gained 

The IDC white paper also revealed that the interviewed organizations were able to achieve these benefits by leveraging the following features and capabilities of Google Cloud IaaS: 

  • A simplified portfolio with an emphasis on cloud services that are optimized for specific workloads, such as compute-intensive, AI, and machine learning 

  • A fully integrated VMware experience that allows customers to migrate apps, tools, and processes without any changes 

  • A managed service for object storage that includes features like automatic storage class transitions, dual-region buckets, and SLA-backed replication 

  • A high-performance, scalable load balancing service that includes multiregion failover, with software-defined flexibility and seamless autoscaling 

  • A content delivery network that features universal support for any origin or back end, in-depth security, fine-grain cache controls, and route matching 

  • A distributed denial of service (DDoS) defense service that features adaptive protection, support for hybrid and multicloud deployments, pre-configured WAF rules, and bot management 

  • A distributed cloud service that can extend applications on-premises and in hosted environments to support edge computing and digital sovereignty requirements 

Next Steps

As you can see, Google Cloud IaaS and Seamus Birch are the perfect combination for your cloud migration needs. You can lower your infrastructure costs, improve your IT efficiency and effectiveness, enhance your business resiliency and agility, and increase your employee productivity and revenue. You can also take advantage of Google's innovation and leadership in AI, machine learning, data analytics, and distributed computing to gain a competitive edge in your industry. You can also benefit from Seamus's skills, experience, and passion to lead the cloud acceleration program at your enterprise, and deliver the best possible outcomes for the organization. 

We are confident that you will not find a better offer than this in the market. We are eager to discuss our proposal further, and explore how we can add value to your team and your business.