Hitachi creates holistic plan to support Large Financial Services Firm’s cloud migration strategy

Business Challenge

In addition to gaining scalability, flexibility and agility by moving to the cloud, the Large Financial Services Firm wanted to significantly reduce their IT operating costs.

To embark on this journey, they needed to find a partner with deep cloud migration expertise to assess the firm’s cloud readiness, looking across multiple environments, more than 650 applications and 15,000 servers. The company’s current IT environment was decentralized, encompassing numerous business units from legacy acquisitions. Application ownership was spread across more than 200 individuals.

The various business units requested different types of functions and features. Personnel across all levels of the organization had differing views on what it meant to be cloud-enabled. The firm needed a more cohesive vision and common language around cloud.

Solution

Hitachi brought a winning combination of strategic relationships with cloud providers, demonstrated capabilities of delivering cloud transformation solutions, and a strong focus on organizational change management (OCM) and governance. Extensive experience with OCM and organizational effectiveness differentiated Hitachi from its competition.

The project began with Hitachi analyzing how the Large Financial Services Firm could migrate to the cloud. Working closely with the Hitachi cloud transformation solution team, financial and application usage information was gathered from various sources to provide a comprehensive view of the overall landscape.

The team evaluated the client’s application portfolio to determine what could move, looking at migration versus on-premises costs. The automated and proprietary Hitachi Cloud Assessment Tool (CAT) helped with the analysis and development of the migration journey by providing a consistent approach for focusing on the future disposition.

After the financial assessment was complete, Hitachi charted the cloud transformation for the client, creating a three-year roadmap that detailed which of the 650 applications and 15,000 servers would migrate, and when, to one of three clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Oracle Cloud. Microsoft Power BI was used for deep analysis, dashboarding and reporting.

The analysis and roadmap work were enhanced by Hitachi addressing organizational effectiveness and organizational change management components of the project. The team created the future cloud operating model and governance procedures. Process improvements were outlined that would optimize software development and information technology security operations (DevSecOps).

Hitachi also assessed worker skills and capabilities, identifying the gaps to be addressed, so that the client’s workforce would be ready to operate in the new cloud environment. The roadmap included communication and messaging plans to help with organizational buy-in throughout the implementation phase of work.

“This program encompassed technical, operational, and people aspects,” said Ravi Bodla, Director, Digital Transformation, Hitachi Consulting. “We put together a holistic plan, creating a strategy for how they would truly transform digitally and become cloud-enabled.”

Value Delivered

Cloud migration plan

Hitachi validated the client’s strategy and delivered a detailed plan for the Large Financial Services Firm’s cloud adoption and transformation journey, including application rationalization, instructions for modernization, skills roadmap to create a cloud-enabled workforce and financial recommendations. The migration plan outlined savings of $15.9 million that would be realized over three years.

Cloud-based governance

In addition to the migration plan, the client received detailed processes for how to govern themselves in a cloud environment. The governance model included:

• Decision criteria for bringing new or existing applications to the cloud
• How and whether to turn on additional services
• Operational policies
• Security processes
• Subscription and chargeback procedures

Common language and approach

After this project, client personnel from the executive team to the application owners had a shared understanding of what it meant to migrate their systems to the cloud. They used a common language about cloud operations, and knew how this migration would benefit their firm.

Conclusion

A clearly defined, comprehensive cloud migration plan and a shared understanding of cloud-based operations helped this organization visualize solutions that weren’t possible in their prior environment. Hitachi confirmed the strategic direction and presented a detailed migration roadmap that, once implemented, would allow the Large Financial Services Firm to meet its threeyear goal for cloud enablement.