December 23, 2024
The strategies for modernizing workloads begin with cloud migration. The former cannot be achieved without the latter. Once in the cloud, clients can tap into native services and third-party software, such as IBM Solutions in the AWS Marketplace, to advance their modernization efforts.
Follow these steps to accelerate client adoption of the AWS cloud.
- Work with AWS Well-Architected
- Establish cloud resources and services
- Migrate workloads
- Modernize applications
Work with AWS Well-Architected
As part of your trusted advisor role, clients look to you to help them safely and smoothly transition to the cloud on their app modernization journey. AWS offers a free resource that codifies best practices for moving workloads in the cloud that are based on six main concepts called the Six Pillars.
Six Pillars
Each pillar aligns with an essential cloud infrastructure and management requirement that is important to any business.
Operational Excellence Pillar
Operations can be 98% of a solution's lifetime costs. This pillar focuses on how to run and monitor systems effectively and continually improve processes and procedures.
Security Pillar
This pillar focuses on how we can enable clients to protect their systems and data. Cloud security is a shared role and provides an opportunity for partners to offer guidance and add value.
Reilability Pillar
This pillar focuses on ensuring the workloads continue to function and are able to recover quickly from failure through distributed design, recovery planning and rapid adaptation to changing requirements.
Performance Efficiency Pillar
This pillar focuses on the structured and streamlined allocation of IT and computing resources and the processes of monitoring ongoing performance.
Cost Optimization Pillar
This pillar focuses on avoiding unnecessary costs by building in transparency and observability, identifying how to scale resources without overspending and prioritizing visibility into consumption over time.
Sustainability Pillar
Even if workloads are hosted, sustainability is still important and viewed by cloud providers as a shared responsibility. Clients need to understand the environmental impact of their choices and optimize their resources.
AWS Well-Architected Tool
To put the framework into action, Amazon offers the AWS Well-Architected Tool. It is freely available on the AWS Management Console as a mechanism to evaluate applications for workloads, identify high-risk issues and record improvements. Built to support the concepts behind the six pillars, it's a structured way to design for, assess and implement architecture decisions that meet requirements for a long-term, healthy cloud strategy.
Hands-on labs
Get practical experience and learn how to best use this tool through hands-on labs. Built around the core pillar competencies and cloud intelligence dashboards, these trainings include demos and exercises that will make you an expert.
Differentiate yourself — become an AWS Well-Architected Partner.
Establish cloud resources and services
Once the planning is complete and the architecture is ready, it's time to roll out compute (EC2), networking, storage and support services for monitoring and security.
IBM offers a broad portfolio of security services to protect and control access to AWS cloud resources and hosted workloads. These include:
- IBM Guardium Insights: A data security solution that can adapt as the threat environment changes to provide complete visibility, compliance and protection throughout the data security lifecycle.
- IBM MaaS360: A SaaS solution designed to manage and protect devices, users and data using a single console for comprehensive Unified Endpoint Management (UEM).
Top services off by setting up dashboards to monitor and control cloud costs.
Figure 1. Cost summary from the Cloud Intelligence Dashboard hands-on lab, demo section.
After the cloud environment is ready, it's time to migrate workloads
AWS Application Migration Service simplifies and expedites migrations to the AWS cloud. A highly automated lift-and-shift solution, it allows organizations to quickly realize the benefits of the AWS cloud with no changes to the applications. Once running on AWS, applications can be modernized quickly and easily. This no-change move to the cloud leads to a lower-risk migration, minimized disruption and the fastest time to cloud value. Then clients are free to modernize at their own pace.
Figure 2. Overview of migration steps with AWS Application Migration Services.
AWS offers a walk-through guide for migrating on-premises workloads with AWS Application Migration Service. While the use case speaks to a public sector example, the steps are essentially the same for any industry.
Modernize applications from AWS
Clients can optimize applications by applying custom modernization actions or selecting built-in actions such as cross-region disaster recovery, Windows Server version upgrades and Windows MS-SQL BYOL to AWS license conversion. They can also optimize for cloud by modifying or refactoring the application architecture. Most commonly, clients will be able to containerize workloads for more portability, increased agility and scalability. They can also achieve faster deployments, centralize orchestration and create a foundation for future modernization.
Red Hat OpenShift is a comprehensive application platform to build, modernize and deploy applications, including AI-enabled apps, at scale. The Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) focuses on containerized applications. Help clients plan their ROSA architecture and choose between a "hosted control plane" (HCP) or "classic" model. Check here for how these architectures compare side-by-side.
You and AWS, IBM and Arrow: A bright future for clients
When you work with AWS and IBM Solutions and services, you'll help clients embrace the cloud and unleash the value of generative AI in their business with greater speed, scale and trust. They will be able to access best-in-class AI, optimization, sustainability and security IBM products, including the entire IBM watsonx portfolio — all available in the AWS Marketplace.
Arrow is here to support your clients on their AWS and IBM journey and help you expand your portfolio. Check out Arrow's IBM on AWS Marketplace page and the latest session featuring guests from IBM and Arrow here for more insights.
