By Neil Holloway, SVP of Business Development at Skytap
Cloud migration is accelerating: Gartner predicts public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending by 2026. At the same time, there are nearly 150,000 businesses running IBM i and AIX applications around the world and as interest in cloud-native, value-added services (artificial intelligence/machine learning, advanced data analytics, etc.) continues to grow, so will cloud migrations of IBM i and AIX workloads. Historically, IBM Power workload migrations presented a challenge, since these applications are written for IBM Power Systems server hardware and there wasn’t a simple way to move them to the major public clouds (which use the x86 processor architecture) without refactoring and rewriting significant amounts of application code. Now, with available cloud infrastructure services to migrate these workloads without refactoring or rewriting, an increasing number of organizations across industries are choosing to migrate their IBM Power workloads to the cloud for a variety of reasons. First and foremost among these are:
- Interest in value-added cloud native services
- Modernization of traditional business applications
- Disaster recovery planning
- Cloud-first driven data center exits
- Record-high acquisition levels
Now let’s take a closer look at these five main drivers of migrating IBM Power workloads to the cloud:
Value-Added Cloud Native Services
As organizations look to keep pace in an increasingly competitive marketplace, interest in cloud migration has shifted from the traditional “lift and shift” mindset to one that recognizes the value of moving traditional workloads to the cloud well beyond the initial migration. Once migrated, organizations unlock access to value-added cloud native services such as advanced analytics, AI and machine learning capabilities and accelerated DevOps for faster development cycles. These expanded capabilities not only extend the value and life of traditional applications, but they also help to drive intelligent decision-making and competitive advantage across industries.
Modernization of Traditional Business Applications
Many businesses want to modernize their business applications to better integrate with cloud-native services. Others might be in the process of migrating to cloud-based ERP systems and need to move ERP-adjacent workloads to the cloud along with them. Historically, many IT teams were reluctant to migrate or refactor traditional business applications built on IBM Power systems, since they are business-critical and highly customized. But the push for digital transformation and the need to modernize these systems is leading an increasing number of organizations to migrate these workloads to the cloud (usually by taking advantage of offerings in the major public clouds to run IBM Power unchanged). By first lifting and shifting these workloads without modifying them and then refactoring them slowly over time to use cloud-native services, organizations can modernize their traditional business applications systems in a controlled, low-risk manner.
Improved Disaster Recovery Planning
Now two years into a global pandemic wrought with unexpected market conditions and increasingly-common threats to critical IT infrastructure, businesses need disaster recovery plans now more than ever. This ensures their operations remain in order even in the most extreme situations or throughout an unexpected event, such as Texas’ widespread power outages in early 2021. The cloud lets an organization back up and recover data in a third-party cloud computing environment, instead of its own physical backup server. Cloud-based disaster recovery offers several benefits compared to on-premise solutions, such as reduced costs, ease of use, and geographical distribution and resilience (DR workloads can be run in separate regions to ensure a widespread natural disaster doesn’t knock out both the primary data center and the DR ones), depending on the recovery requirements of the specific customer.
For many organizations, disaster recovery is a low-pressure way to explore the cloud. The IT team can move DR workloads to the cloud without interfering with production, and gain familiarity with the migration process and the destination cloud in the process. This helps prepare them to migrate future workloads more efficiently and builds internal confidence in the cloud.
Cloud-first driven data center exists
There are many reasons an organization might want to reduce its physical data center footprint. Perhaps the organization is reviewing capital expenditures when its software or hardware is scheduled for a refresh. Maybe the lease on the data center is about to expire, and the team must decide whether they want to renew or find a new way to host critical applications. Entire data center exits are becoming more common; according to Gartner, end-user spending on public cloud services will hit $482 billion in 2022; by 2026. Numbers like these go to show more and more organizations are embracing the cloud and its flexibility, scalability and simplicity.
IBM Power workloads are often the last ones to move to the cloud for the reasons listed above. Even if an organization is reluctant to move its IBM i and AIX application to the public cloud, outside circumstances like an IT service provider ending support for Power, may prompt this change.
Record-Breaking Acquisition Levels
2021 was a banner year for mergers and acquisitions around the world, bringing in a whopping $5.63 trillion, an increase of 64% compared to the previous year. US acquisition targets increased by 82% over 2020, reaching over $2.5 trillion, meaning the US’ deal activity made up nearly half of worldwide M&A activity. The boom in M&A activity means that more and more organizations on the acquiring side can turn to the cloud to consolidate IT operations and systems while supporting workplace productivity and collaboration.
Based on conversations with colleagues and customers, I estimate that less than 5% of organizations using IBM Power have migrated or are in the process of migrating their Power-based workloads to the cloud. As cloud adoption continues to increase, so will the migration of IBM i and AIX applications. The main business drivers of these migrations are clear and organizations must embrace a comprehensive cloud strategy if they want to continue to modernize business operations to keep pace in a technology-centric marketplace.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Neil Holloway is the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Skytap, the leading cloud service to run IBM Power and x86 workloads natively in the public cloud. Neil has over 30 years of experience building, growing, and enabling technology partner ecosystems. Prior to joining Skytap, Neil was the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions, as well as President of Microsoft EMEA and Managing Director of Microsoft UK. He has a Master’s in Philosophy for Organization Research from the University of Cambridge, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Bath.
