Oracle Releases a Set of Tools to Help Customers Avoid Cloud Migration Pitfalls

Oracle Cloud Lift Services helps its customers enter the cloud.

More and more companies are pushing at least some of their workloads to the cloud. IDC’s Worldwide Whole Cloud Forecast says that by 2024 cloud IT infrastructure costs could reach $105.6 billion and account for 62.8 percent of total IT infrastructure spending. Further, the global cloud computing market could surpass $1 trillion by 2025. Using the Gartner Glossary, Datapine explains what the cloud can do for a business and splits “the cloud” into three areas—software as a service, infrastructure as a service, and platform as a service. Several horror stories online discuss the challenges that companies face as they shift their computing resources to the cloud.

Cloud Lift helps customers transition to the cloud. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

Cloud Lift helps customers transition to the cloud. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

The most common mistake that management can make when planning a transition to the cloud, according to multiple articles, is to lack a clear and defined plan. A full and honest analysis of an organization’s current state and needs is the best place to start. Softweb Solutions suggests that companies should consider a comprehensive cost analysis, assessing current applications, mapping out those applications’ dependencies, creating a road map for migration, and identifying the cost and duration of downtime the migration will create. Other enterprises are concerned with their staff’s level of readiness and training for a cloud transition or are seeing the cloud as such a big problem that it leaves them not knowing where to start. When Forbes talks about the biggest challenges to cloud migration, it is quick to warn readers not to fall into the psychological traps that come with giving up control and transitioning to a new way of doing things. There may be issues with security, downtime, lock-in to a specific vendor, and budgets.

Oracle Announces Speed Lift Cloud Migration

Oracle recently announced that its new Cloud Lift Services are available to help customers move their systems to the cloud infrastructure. Vinay Kumar, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said that the Lift Services will accelerate customer success in the cloud. To help with planning and execution, new customers will now have a single point of contact for their migration. Oracle stresses that its Lift Services are a part of the cloud contract and occur after the sale but before a customer moves into the implementation phase. The Lift Services are a set of dedicated resources that will help customers to first identify what projects can easily or immediately be moved to the cloud and which resources will take time and require some maneuvering. The services are designed to supplement customers and guide them into the go-live phase of cloud migration.

Starting at the Architecture Center, customers have many choices for building their basic migration plan. They can look at references for architectures that are already in place, find standard implementation plans, and find a “playbook” that is already full of Oracle’s best practices. An extensive learning section lets users go at their own pace through a series of Oracle University training videos, from survey type courses working through definitions and terms all the way up to cloud certifications. The Architecture Center also identifies the different regions where cloud services are currently in place, as well as targeted future implementations.

Oracle Cloud regions. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

Oracle Cloud regions. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

After a customer has formulated the architecture and built the basic plan for migration, Oracle provides options between their own services and those of other providers. Migrating Oracle applications to the cloud is the easier side, with fully developed resources telling users how to make the move using Oracle E-Business Suite, or using the software suites of JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, Hyperion and Siebel. Each of these software options has a webcast and solution guide with additional learning opportunities for new users or experienced users who might be new to the cloud.

Non-Oracle workload services can use Oracle Cloud Native resources to run applications on any cloud or on-premises environment. Cloud Native is open source and open standards, a feature intended to give customers resistance to vendor lock-in. A good deal of the Cloud Native page is spent comparing to Amazon Web Services (AWS), using price and performance as the main differentiators. Use cases are also available for customers creating or modifying a container-based application, working with security incident management, implementing the Internet of Things, or streaming data for events.

Resources and Success Stories

Even though the Cloud Lift Service is new, there are already success stories demonstrating how companies can use this new tool to aid their move to the cloud. Ravi Ramineni

vice president, Soccer Analytics and Research, Seattle Sounders Football Club, says that the team took advantage of Oracle’s engineering team to build next-generation analytic models, which can be used to help the club both on and off the field.

Oracle Cloud. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

Oracle Cloud. (Image courtesy of Oracle.)

Terence Schofield, quantitative trading technology director, Cargill, said that Oracle’s Cloud Lift Service took his company from “zero to production.” Cargill’s focus was on security during the upload process, and the company was even able to launch new services once the operation was in the cloud. Infosys and Rice University also have satisfied customer testimonies on the Cloud Lift page, discussing the gains made during their migrations.

Setting aside the cloud migration assistance, Oracle’s website is already full of resources for current and prospective users. At the bottom of most pages in the labyrinthine website are four boxes of varying content. One box usually talks about cloud hosting pricing, with a huge menu of options, prices and different possibilities. An estimating tool takes the user to an interactive graphic user interface where different options can be popped in and out to give a snapshot of the cost for a specific use case. This estimate can also be shared with others, downloaded as a PDF, saved on the website, and exported as different spreadsheet file formats. The Oracle Free Tier is also linked in the bottom material, where users can take advantage of a space where applications can be built, tested and deployed in the cloud. Always present on these pages that discuss pricing and free pricing options are comparisons to AWS. It’s curious that AWS seems to be the big competitor instead of Microsoft, Alibaba, IBM or Google.

Pandemic living has changed much of the way we do business, but moving a majority of functions to the cloud was already a long-term direction for many companies. Oracle’s Cloud Lift Service is a way for its customers to take advantage of a set of best practices while performing this migration and making the best of a largely remote workforce. The benefit to customers is having a single point of contact when they make this large-scale move, which can feel intimidating and seem inevitable. The benefit for Oracle is that customers will be using best practices while making the transition. It’s assumed that this will make the cloud service more compatible with customer data, as well as embed the culture and methods into the way that customers run their cloud functions. Beyond this, the fact that Oracle offers these services for free is a hook that might get customers using other providers to come over to the Cloud Lift side of the street.