An interesting challenge that healthcare companies face when making the transition into cloud computing is, what to move into the cloud?  Putting aside the technology decision – be it public, private or a hybrid cloud – the return on investment decision can be daunting.  Most companies have a list of applications which have the potential to be good candidates for a cloud environment and need a sound approach to a phased cloud adoption.

So the question becomes which applications are suitable for the cloud?  Which cloud model is best for those applications?  Which move will yield the biggest benefit in cost savings, improved performance and greater agility back to the business?  Performing a cloud readiness assessment answers these questions.

A healthcare organization’s initial adoption is typically moving the non-essential web-based applications which exist in a virtualized environment to the cloud.  IT directors and application developers can utilize a flexible approach to scale an application based on consumption of compute and storage resources with minimal concern for data classification.  The sticky issues arise when an organization considers core applications and those with data privacy and compliance concerns.

Another approach to phased cloud adoption is embarking in a fast-cycle assessment project which leverages fact-based identification for candidate applications and groups the appropriate fit-for-purpose cloud type by application and workload.  This approach ranks the cloud fit for a given application, and reviews the application design to help size the cloud implementation.  The output helps organizations understand the business impact of a cloud migration and ensures a consistent approach for cloud adoption across the enterprise.

Typical goals for cloud adoption are a combination of business value determined by performance, cost and flexibility.  Meeting these goals requires an approach that combines industry best practices and practical experience through a lens of business, technology, operational, regulatory and implementation filters.  This assessment methodology helps to quickly identify applications which might be prime candidates for the cloud in the near term or “first movers” and offers the best combination of meeting these business goals.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to whether there is a benefit from moving an application or service to a cloud platform.  Each organization must assess its application or service portfolio based on its own strategic business imperatives, technology strategy, operational structure, and risk appetite which can all have an effect on the overall success of an organization’s broader cloud initiative.

In my next post, I will explore how a healthcare organization can link their applications in a data center to a multi-tenant public cloud for flexible and scalable disaster recovery.