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 Adoption, Migration and Acquisition Cost
Customization
Uncertainty
Cost of Data confidentiality and availability loss
System(s) documentation
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What is the current cost of maintenance of the system?
How customized is the current application?
How frequently do the application requirements change?
Current HA, backup and business continuity plans (most likely these don’t exist)
Is there documentation, on network topologies, architectures, code, applications, databases, schemas etc If not you need to do this first |
What is the cost of set up, subscription and maintenance of the cloud system?
Can we move customized systems to the cloud – how much refactoring etc?
If updates are infrequent, we don’t need CI/CD
HA, DR, cold backup
Relevant documentation which explains the architecture and OSI stack |
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Complexity of current systems
Compatibility with current Systems
Scalability
Availability and Accessibility
Security
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Is the complexity of the current systems high? If yes, is maintenance taking too much of IT resource time?
Are the current systems very tightly integrated or modular?
How easily can the current system grow and scale with respect to the business needs?
How critical is the application in terms of its need to be available and accessible?
What kind of redundancy measures does the current system have?
What parts of the current security measures are physical and location based?
What is the expertise level of the current IT staff in terms of dealing with security threats? |
Will the cloud be able to support the complex systems in place?
Will the cloud be able to seamlessly interface with the other legacy applications that are not on cloud? Or do we need a middleware platform?
How easily can the cloud vendor /platform scale?
HA, reliability, accessibility – how and at what cost?
Cloud should improve security across the OSI stack including encryption, password/key management, access control
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| Top Management Support
Firm Size
Skill of IT resources
Employee Buy-in
Innovative Culture |
Is there an IT and business need for change?
Does the current system adequately support the current firm size and its requirements?
Current skills and resources?
Users satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the current systems?
What is the level of technical expertise for the users for the current system?
Is the company silo-based, or innovative and flexible
How often does the organization experiment with newer ways of doing things?
To what extent is the organization tolerant of failure?
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How knowledgeable are the top executives in terms of the benefits and risks of moving to cloud?
Is there at least 1 top Executive ready to be the project sponsor?
Cloud skills and knowledge?
How skilled are our IT resources in dealing issues related to cloud-based application?
Employee impact and user impact?
How will the Cloud change the org and its culture? |
| Industry Adoption
Competitor Pressure
Regulatory concerns
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How does the organization’s current system compare to systems being used in the industry?
How does the organization’s current system compare to its leading competitors?
Do the current systems need to pass legal or regulatory audit
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How far has cloud based application use penetrated into the relevant industry?
Have the organization’s important competitors already adopted cloud? Are they seeing benefits?
Will the cloud based system pass all regulatory and audit checks |
| Vendor Expertise/ Availability
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Cultural fit with the organisation
Skills, resources, deployment models (on vs offshore)
What are the terms and conditions in the service level agreement with the current vendor?
Industry and cloud expertise which is proven |
References within the industry or in the particular application?
Can the current terms and conditions be replicated or assured by the cloud vendors?
Resources, scale, management capabilities |