Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Top four mistakes to avoid for ERP cloud migrations (PRT072)

Summary

Speaker: Tom Monk, Director for Product Management for Cloud at Navasite, a premier tier services partner.
Key Points:
1. Not Knowing Your Why: Organizations should understand the broader goals of migrating their ERP to the cloud, not just focus on a single pain point like cost reduction or a compelling event. They should align cloud strategy with business strategy and look beyond IT for benefits.
2. Being Overly Ambitious: It's important to set practical goals for migration and not attempt too much at once. Small changes can lead to significant benefits, as demonstrated by a case where a SaaS provider moved an Oracle workload to AWS RDS and adopted infrastructure as code.
3. Waiting Too Long to Assess Your Workforce: Organizations should assess and address the skill gaps in their workforce early in the migration process to avoid delays and increased costs. Upskilling, hiring, or partnering can help bridge the skill gap.
4. Not Establishing Your Cloud Operating Model: Post-migration, it's crucial to have the right tools, skills, and operating procedures in place. Establishing a cloud center of excellence and considering FinOps or cloud management expertise can help in defining best practices and managing costs.

Cloud-First Strategy: The quote from Gartner highlights the trend towards cloud-first strategies, emphasizing the importance of integrating cloud initiatives with business objectives.
Migration Benefits: The discussion underscores the need for a holistic view of migration benefits, suggesting that a narrow focus can limit the potential advantages of moving to the cloud.
Practical Migration Goals: The speaker's advice to avoid overly ambitious goals suggests that incremental changes can be more manageable and still yield significant improvements, especially in complex ERP environments.
Workforce Readiness: The point about workforce assessment indicates that cloud migrations often require new skills and competencies, which need to be developed or acquired to ensure a smooth transition.
Operational Readiness: The final mistake to avoid points to the necessity of having a robust cloud operating model, which includes not only the technical aspects but also the financial management (FinOps) of cloud resources post-migration.