It’s been a whirlwind three months in Microsoft! The time has flown – and I’d love to share a perspective on how my customer conversations have evolved over the last 12 months: some similar, some different – all fascinating.
To give a little context, in my new role I continue to work with the world’s largest organisations, all of whom are racing to offer increasingly sophisticated and intuitive digital experiences. These are underpinned by a heterogeneous mix of traditional and contemporary IT services – all needing to be delivered faster and more efficiently.
With my background in mainframe technologies, I joined Microsoft to help companies accelerate their transformation programmes, exploiting their most complex and critical applications with Microsoft Azure cloud.
How are companies transforming these critical services with Azure?
Companies are approaching this in one of three ways; the first of which is very familiar.
Some have invested equally across their IT landscape, oiling the machinery of their digital services, from clouds to mainframes, monoliths to microservices. Their apps - regardless of architecture, language, or platform – are delivered with a common set of practices and tooling, extolling the virtues of a DevOps culture. Key app and data services are productised with APIs, becoming quick and easy to consume. Even now, these companies are building out container frameworks to deploy, manage and scale their entire enterprise stack, giving them the agility to respond to emerging business drivers.
Together with these organisations, we've found significant areas where Microsoft Azure solutions can extend and accelerate mainframe apps and data services. Whether that’s releasing application enhancements at speed with Azure DevOps; extending core business logic with API management, or bringing new insight with Microsoft’s Power Platform. Imagine the possibilities when we combine core COBOL business logic with IoT Edge or AI solutions.
What about those organisations stepping away from data centres entirely?
One of the biggest differences in my discussions: the ‘DC exit’ discussions.
This is the big one. I’ve been genuinely surprised by just how many organisations are shifting away from the data centre. It’s not simply the sheer number, but also how far along this journey they are – companies large and small, across all industries – are well into their 2-5 year programmes to migrate wholesale to Cloud. This presents an interesting challenge: what to do with mainframe and midrange services? Linux and Windows on x86 are readily ported to Cloud and, with migration well underway, the focus naturally turns to migrating the remainder.
For companies on this DC exit path, there are multiple, proven, patterns to migrate mainframe services to Azure. Options range from re-platforming assets intact, to automated re-factoring into preferred languages and data repositories. Or re-imagining those functions afresh, with packaged applications or ground-up microservices architectures. I've been impressed by the sophistication in the practices and automation employed to build, test and deliver these transformation programmes. We're talking about tens of millions of lines of code re-factored, and terabytes of data re-located in just the last few years.
These two examples are diametrically opposite: strategically invested in mainframe; vs. exiting the DC to go cloud-first. But there is another group...
These organisations have yet to settle on their future platform for core business services. They have invested in the latest cloud technologies to deliver new capability, and yet only minimally maintain their mainframe estates. As a result, essential business logic and data is understood by a fast-shrinking pool of people, with a fading understanding of highly complex environments.
Speaking with these organisations, it’s clear they are on the cusp of change: either doubling-down on mainframe to modernise processes, skills, and hardware; or transforming those core services with a migration to cloud. Both options are equally valid, and depend on IT strategy and business direction. The key first step is to understand available options, in order to make an informed decision.
This is where I sit in Microsoft today, combining expertise in mainframe and cloud platforms, exploring pragmatic ways to transform these most critical services. It’s been a fascinating 90 days and a great opportunity to reflect. For now, I’m curious…
What are your ideas for transforming your most critical IT services?