Assess
Once your customers have a catalog, they will need to assess what they have by categorizing and analyzing their cataloged applications and workloads based on several factors, as shown below.
We suggest categorizing the applications and workloads by:
1. Type: Microsoft server roles, Microsoft applications, custom applications, or third-party
applications
2. Criticality: Can be retired, marginal, important, or mission critical
3. Complexity: Low, medium, or high
4. Risk: Low, medium, or high
5. Infrastructure Type: Physical or Virtualized server instance
With this categorization complete, customers can begin to understand the scope of the problem and can prioritize their workloads and applications for migration. The categorization will also reveal some potential opportunities, as well as potential issues. The criticality category, for example, may raise the considerations and concerns shown in the diagram below:
Mission critical
- May require more resources
- Likely to be required for compliance purposes
- Planning is critical
- Start now
Important
- Does it provide a competitive advantage?
- Could doing something different drive more value?
Marginal
- Consider usage statistics
- What is the business value?
- Possibly retire or move to a different solution
Can be retired
- Retire them
The complexity and cost categories will indicate which migrations might be the easiest and quickest to accomplish. A cross-category analysis provides even more insight. For example, an important application with low complexity and only medium risk may be a good candidate for early migration.
