Envisioning large-scale cloud migrations for financial-services organizations

Digital transformation—specifically, app migration to benefit from the computing power of the cloud—is not a technological change. It's a business transformation. The IT modernization that underpins digital transformation changes how banks deliver value to customers, and impacts people and processes, management philosophy, and leadership practice.

“Digital transformation is disrupting legacy leadership,” report the authors of a 2021 MIT-Sloan study. “The idea that effective digital transformation delivers agility, adaptability, and customer-centricity is now both managerial mantra and leadership inspiration.”

What's now managerial mantra and leadership inspiration is also central to the success of large-scale cloud-migration projects.

Without the strong backing of executive leadership—without a vision—cloud migrations can languish, and often fail entirely.

But you don't have to risk the bank to successfully migrate and modernize the hundreds, or even thousands, of enterprise applications your organization relies on to conduct daily business.

“We take a pragmatic approach at the proper scale,” says Rishan Lye, a partner in BDO's technology advisory practice. “We can customize an agile, adaptable, customer-centric framework that makes sense for the bank strategically—that can be deployed iteratively or in a ‘big bang.'”

Understanding tech is important—understanding business is essential

“Banks need agility—flexibility and pivot-ability,” says Mike Gelesz, the Banking & Financial Services Industry Manager with BDO Consulting, speaking of his experience supporting cloud-modernization and migration initiatives at Canada's largest banks.

Case study: How BDO helped a leading bank secure data in the cloud

Gelesz continues: “Some providers stick rigidly to the scope of a project contract, but that rarely works on a project like this. As the client shifted scope throughout the project, we responded to meet their business needs. They appreciated our agility.”

“The strength of our tech advisory practice is that we understand business,” Lye adds. “BDO has expertise across business lines. We understand your bank's many business needs across retail banking, capital markets, insurance, fraud, cyber...”

“Understanding tech is important. Understanding business is essential,” observes Kedar Kalkarni, a practice director, and data and analytics advisor who has led large-scale app migrations.

Kedar explains: “We start with the business (use) case—why do you want to go the cloud in the first place?”

Building a portfolio business case aligns any large-scale app modernization and migration process with your strategic objectives.

Scoping for success

“When you look at applications holistically to build a business case, you can identify quick wins and conduct a cost-value analysis,” says Iryna Aliakseyeva, a manager in Business Analysis and Quality Assurance at BDO.

“We can apply the same framework, the same principles of migration—aligning critical business priorities to digital-modernization initiatives—for any number of apps, any number of services or platforms,” explains Pavel Samchenko, a manager in BDO's technology-advisory practice and a senior cloud architect.

“Our framework is always tailored to each client,” Iryna agrees. “We're agile and client-centric.”

Pragmatic cloud migration at scale: an end-to-end framework

Enterprise-wide or for a line of business, what's common to every engagement is the end-to-end process:

• Envisioning your app migration and modernization (determining your cloud-migration strategy)
• Execution (delivering on your strategy)
• Evolution (refining your strategy to align with on-going and emerging business needs, including incidence response and cybersecurity considerations)

This is the first article in a three-part series discussing the end-to-end process of app migration for leading Canadian banks—it focuses on envisioning your app migration and modernization. Sign up for the next articles in the series—execution and evolution.

Envisioning your large-scale cloud migration: step one step-by-step

Our process to decide the best strategy—to envision your cloud migration—is attuned to your primary business goals.

The end goal of the envisioning process is to develop a cloud-migration strategy roadmap (with a recommended tactic for each application) and budgetary guidance—the budget needed to execute on the strategy, the ideal team structure, and the high-level execution plan.