On Cloud Migration. Q&A with Chetan Mathur
Q1. According to the 2022 survey you recently did, 66% of companies surveyed still haven’t migrated to the cloud. Do you have an explanation why?
Despite the many benefits of cloud computing, most cloud instances are ‘greenfield,’ meaning the customer is building a new application on the cloud. Few customers have actually migrated existing on-prem, legacy workloads to the cloud. The reason is that cloud migrations require specialized tools to automate the translation of legacy code and data. It can take years to complete the migration when done manually (meaning rewriting each line of code). In addition, most companies lack visibility into their legacy applications; these tend to be extensive applications with many data hops, generating hundreds of reports. Customers are hesitant to move massive applications because they are afraid of the costs of the migration and the extensive time to re-test these applications, most of which are mission critical.
Q2. Moreover, in your survey 48% of them are concerned about a lack of automated tooling that would expedite the translation and migration of code from on-prem to cloud. What is the problem exactly here?
Automated tools are essential to migration legacy applications to the cloud. Without automation, legacy migrations can take years, costs millions of dollars and often negate the impact and benefits of moving to the cloud. Translating complex stored procedures and ETL platforms to modern cloud architectures requires unique tooling to handle these challenging workloads.
Q3. Then 48% are also afraid of moving all workloads to the cloud without determining which ones needed to be moved and which ones needed to be retired. Is this a valid concern?
It is absolutely a valid concern. I call this “spaghetti factor” – legacy environments resemble a seemingly bottomless bowl of spaghetti with long, intertwining strands. Identifying interdependencies between applications is the most critical consideration when moving workloads to the cloud. This is also where large corporations struggle. In our experience, over 40% of data pipelines and applications that are earmarked for the cloud can be retired. When we take look closely, we find these date pipelines are not being used. Most companies don’t have visibility into which applications are in use and by whom – their legacy environments have been built over decades, with little documentation. In addition, companies don’t know the order to migration their applications, which is essential to expedite the testing and cut over, as many applications have intertwined dependencies. I wrote an article for Forbes on this very topic: To Begin Your Cloud Migration, First Untangle The ‘Spaghetti’ (forbes.com)
Q4. You just announced SHIFT Cloud. What is it and what is it useful for?
On January 24, we launched the next generation in code translation software, SHIFT Cloud. Now, customers can upload, analyze and translate their entire legacy code base, including SQL code and ETL pipelines, to the cloud target of their choosing in a self-service capacity. SHIFT Cloud eliminates the guesswork and frustration from the cloud migration process, giving customers a reliable and simple method to translate complex legacy workloads, in their entirety, to leading cloud targets. Migrate to Cloud Faster | SHIFT™ Cloud | Next Pathway Inc.
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Chetan Mathur, CEO Pathway Inc.
Chetan Mathur is the Chief Executive Officer of Next Pathway Inc., the Automated Cloud Migration company, named Canada’s hottest cloud start-up by the Globe and Mail in 2019. Mr. Mathur is responsible for providing senior leadership and counsel to ensure the company is at the forefront of the ever-changing technology landscape.