True Partnership Drives a Successful Cloud Migration

AWS Consulting Solutions

Executive Summary

A leading global medical solutions provider recognized that public cloud services would be critical to the success of its digital transformation journey. The internal IT team knew a different approach to technology would enable the company’s nearly 40,000 employees to drive innovation and recognized that they couldn’t do it on their own. Changing its IT operating model required experienced, strategic partners, who evaluated their needs holistically.

The company selected Involta and AWS to provide strategy, oversight, and guidance to create an effective cloud migration process. As an AWS Advanced Partner, Involta worked with company leadership to define a new IT governance model, create a cloud center of excellence, drive organizational change, establish a repeatable approach for application transformation, empower IT employees through tailored learning plans, and build foundational automation to fuel the company’s cloud migration journey.

About the Client

  • Innovative, global medical technology company dedicated to improving patient health

  • Industry leader for many decades

  • Committed to advancing medical science, improving patient outcomes, and decreasing the cost of healthcare for all.

The Challenges

Company-Wide Digital Transformation

Beginning a cloud migration journey was essential to the company’s continued growth, but with tens of thousands of global employees, orchestrating a company-wide digital transformation was (and continues to be) a huge undertaking.

Individual departments had engaged various cloud vendors to create solutions but ran into challenges when trying to connect back to the company’s architecture.

Internal IT Team Bandwidth

The client’s internal IT team was hard-pressed to meet each department’s needs and consolidate efforts to access cloud infrastructure. In trying to become experts in all things cloud migration, the team was forced to take a reactive approach. Instead of building cohesive cloud solutions, they were struggling to piece together the half-architected attempts.

Left unchecked, the company could have had dozens of cloud service providers, each with separate contracts and offerings – none of which would have been scalable for long-term growth.

The Transition

Why AWS?

After exploring several solutions, the client chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their primary public cloud provider because its incredible breadth of services could be tailored to meet the diverse needs of a growing global organization. As a leader in the cloud space, AWS offers services, scalability, and reliability that simply cannot be matched.

“AWS was a partner from the beginning,” continued the Technology Services director. “They worked closely with us to ensure we had the appropriate frameworks and people. That support was paramount to our success.”

The internal team wanted more than a vendor. They sought a long-term partner ready to collaborate on innovative solutions.

Strategic Cloud Partner: Involta

With the right cloud service provider in place, the client engaged Involta, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, to realize its digital transformation. Not only did Involta come equipped with an experienced team, but they also offered expertise in healthcare security compliance and automation that was essential to the client’s business needs.

Involta weaves people, process, and technology into the fabric of its solutions to help clients design a framework and services that target several key areas. First, Involta took the time to understand the client’s business, so deliverables made sense for diverse internal needs. Second, Involta helped build a new IT operating model that was easy for the Technology Services team to implement and changed the way it served internal customers. Lastly, Involta worked side-by-side with the internal IT team to build automation and demonstrate the ability to deploy secure, scalable, performant, and cost-optimized services to the cloud.

“The true partnership between this client, AWS, and Involta was a driving force behind this successful cloud journey,” said Scott Evers, Involta Enterprise Architect. “AWS understands and supports how important people and process are to the cloud journey, and that isn’t necessarily the case with all hyperscale providers.”

The Outcomes

Governance Workshop

  • In addition to the technical capacity required to build the client’s AWS architecture, Involta provided the right team to tackle several key initiatives.
  • Involta hosted a three-day Governance Workshop designed to help establish an internal Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) focused on business, technology, and security.
  • The Involta team spent six weeks working alongside the client, preparing internal leaders to take on management responsibilities and oversee workshops once the CCOE was up and running.

Process Automation Prioritized

  • Next, Involta helped the internal team understand and prioritize process automation. Involta led several on-site planning and design workshops to examine and rethink internal processes. Security corrective controls, for example, could be automated to catch and fix anomalies in the infrastructure.
  • After the workshops, team members had the skills necessary to formalize all processes, from provisioning to decommissioning.

Application Transformation Planning and Automation Workshops

  • With more than 800 applications in this client’s portfolio, Involta was critical in developing a ‘get started’ roadmap and process for moving essential applications to the cloud.
  • Involta led Application Transformation Planning and Automation Workshops that brought the client’s Core Technology Services architects together with Involta’s architects to evaluate an application, determine how to move it to the cloud and estimate realistic projected costs.

Results and Benefits

Working with Involta enabled the client to change the culture of its IT organization and think differently about what it takes to drive successful cloud migration. This strategy, coupled with Involta’s expansive service offering, led to the selection of AWS as the primary cloud provider. Involta’s immersive consulting practice and processes enabled the client to adopt a proactive approach and conduct powerful conversations concerning business value and total cost of ownership.

Today, the client performs pared-back, high-level assessments of applications to determine whether they should move to the cloud. With each assessment, the team becomes more skilled in asking the right questions, identifying business risks associated with migration, and analyzing key indicators in determining the next steps for a possible move.

“Involta’s work helped elevate our team’s expertise and positioned us for success within our organization,” continued the Technology Services director. “The work we did together confirmed that we were approaching migration the right way. Because of the partnership and work we’ve done, we are much more capable of moving applications at scale.”

“Lift and shift” approaches to cloud migration could cost upwards of 30% more if a company runs on-premise efficiently. When an evaluation shows little benefit to moving an application to the cloud, the client immediately deprioritizes it so others can take precedence. Taking this more thoughtful approach to migration is showing true business value and strengthening the Core Technology Services brand within the organization.

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