Sep 11, 2020
In today’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by AgileThought’s Managing Director of the Run Practice, Daniel Novelo! In his role, Daniel is in charge of defining the vision and strategic direction of the Cloud & Managed Services Portfolio at AgileThought, by understanding the market trends, designing the Digital Products & Services that our customers require, and by delivering the revenue and profit that AgileThought budgets. He also designs, coordinates, and executes business plans with AgileThought’s Partners, Sales, and Delivery Teams to achieve its yearly objectives.
In their conversation today, Daniel speaks about his role as Managing Director of the Run Practice at AgileThought, explains what the Run Practice is, and shares about the different ways that organizations have started down their path to Cloud adoption. He also addresses some of the possible risks associated with migrating to the Cloud, how to mitigate these risks, the benefits and opportunities the Cloud opens up, and how AgileThought works with companies in migrating to the Cloud or optimizing their Cloud usage.
Key Takeaways
What is the Run Practice? What does it do?
It delivers value to customers by providing Cloud & Managed Services and outsourcing the IT operations of its customers (with a modern approach and a mission-critical mindset)
They complement the portfolio of AgileThought’s transform, build, and run by operating and maintaining software, applications, and the underlying infrastructure in production environments
There are dedicated teams to review the cost and complexity of their customers to operate their systems
They accelerate the adoption of the Cloud with a set of services that go from the strategic aspects (like Cloud design, Cloud foundation, & assessments) to building strategies and performing the migrations to the Cloud for their customers
Once their customers are in the Cloud, they help modernize their business applications for optimal Cloud performance
Why Cloud adoption is becoming increasingly popular and why companies want to migrate to it:
It’s important to understand the reasons behind why some companies are adopting Clouds as well as the challenges and implications companies can face dependent on the type of workload they want to bring to the Cloud
It’s nearly impossible to find an organization that doesn’t at least partially rely on Cloud services (especially now, during the pandemic, is it becoming more popular than ever)
Modern workplace platforms are really encouraging the use their Cloud versions
The adoption of Cloud services has been key in accelerating the migration of enterprise workloads to the Cloud
Enterprise workloads show that Cloud Storage is the most widely adopted
You can easily scale up the Cloud Storage within minutes and then scale it down when needed
A Cloud Database setup empowers distributed teams because the team members working remotely can conveniently access data through the internet to perform their tasks
Publishing your dev and test environments to the Cloud is also becoming increasingly popular
Bringing environments to the Cloud gives the ability to use only what you need when you need it
Cloud technology can be a massive enabler for Agile teams (as you are able to spin up an environment, do the deploy, do the validation, and tear it all down once it’s done)
Analytics and big data are huge drivers for the Cloud (because when the data resides in the Cloud it’s easier to locate it, consume it, and to embed it into analytic solutions)
Daniel on Cloud risks and security:
Having partners who can walk organizations through an adoption/sticking their toes into the waters of the Cloud is very helpful in showing how secure it is
More than 90% of Cloud breaches are at the user’s fault
Possible security risks: loss of data (passwords, banking information, intellectual property, and other sensitive data), exposing confidential information (that leads to regulatory or legal actions against an enterprise), malware and ransom attacks, an employee who has left the company still having access to files and information (however, there are tools to mitigate and control this access)
Many risks can be mitigated through tools that can secure confidential documents in real-time
Tools and systems that are lagging behind in Cloud adoption:
A lot of companies that still rely on legacy systems (but there are strategies to migrate these companies to the Cloud [though additional scaffolding may be necessary])
Implementing APIs (and securing them) can be a way to bring a legacy system to the Cloud
How AgileThought works with companies that are new to the Cloud:
Customers should first perform a Cloud readiness assessment for their application and infrastructure
It is helpful to make an inventory of all of the assets within the company and identify which of them are supported in the Cloud and which need an upgrade
The assessment will also help map dependencies to understand the interfaces between all of the customer’s systems, which is key for developing a Cloud strategy
Time and effort should be invested into designing a desired state/a landing zone in applying the architecture best practices
AgileThought helps their customer establish their Cloud foundation and makes sure to include all of the security and compliance requirements
After this, AgileThought helps the customer build their rational decision map (figuring out the path forward, “bucket by bucket”)
AgileThought helps the customer identify which applications they want to modernize or refactor so that they really capture the benefits of the Cloud
Mentioned in this Episode:
AgileThought Event: “Virtual Community: Building an Agile Mindset During COVID-19”
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