The business question What are our cloud focus areas? provides top-down portfolio analysis for cloud migration in order to understand the applications that are best suited for migration based on cloud relevance and cloud readiness indicators. This enables you to migrate your cloud portfolio using a strategic approach, driven by planning based on your company's needs to rationalization and modernization.

To open this business question, go to the left navigation panel, click to expand Business Questions, click to expand Cloud Migration and click What are are cloud focus areas? 

The analysis looks at the cloud readiness and cloud relevance scores for cloud migration and places each application in one of four quadrants that shows the degree of benefits for the migration of applications to the cloud vs. the level of difficulty for cloud migration.

Applications for which the Cloud Migration Strategy attribute is set to Migrated and Architecture Type attribute is set to Cloud-Based are not considered for this business question. These objects may be cloud native or recently migrated to the cloud.

The quadrants represent the following information:

• Focus Area: These applications are better suited for migration and have a higher potential benefit than other applications in the application portfolio. In some instances, migrating these applications might be difficult but the benefits of migration out-weigh the cost of execution. Most commonly, applications of PaaS architecture type are found in this quadrant.
• Quick Wins: These applications are well-suited for migration but have lower potential value. These applications represent migration activities that could be easily carried out. These applications are usually existing SaaS application that can potentially replace other cloud applications.
• Rehost/Retire: These applications are harder to migrate and offer lower migration benefits. These are typically IaaS application that are either retired or rehosted on the cloud. These applications are candidates for cloud migration but they can be pursued at a later point in time.
• Long-Term Bets: These applications are harder to migrate but offer high potential value. These applications are usually associated with operational activities in the organization and migrating these could be part of the company’s long-term strategy. Migration of these applications usually takes a long time and involves more than one organization.

The report shows applications as bubbles analyzed across 4 dimensions. Point to an application to show a tooltip with the following information: Application name, cloud relevant score (CRel), cloud readiness score (CRead), Cloud Migration Strategy value, current year operational expenditure (OpEx).

• The bubble size indicates the application cost based on the current year operational expenditure (OpEx) or the project cost based on the current year costs (CAPEX).
• The bubble color indicates the Cloud Migration Strategy attribute defined for the application
  • Retain: The application supports a business capability that is business relevant but cannot be migrated to the cloud immediately. Or the application is at the end of its lifecycle and is about to be retired.
  • Rehost: The application is SaaS-enabled but is either outdated or would require rehosting to the cloud platform.
  • Refactor: The application requires some changes in code to be eligible for migration to the cloud. The application can be modular or a self-contained application with services that can easily be refactored.
  • Rearchitect: The application requires additional effort to make it cloud enabled. For example, this might be due to application health monitoring, application security, data backup and policies, scalability and replication zones, disaster recovery, network utilization, multi-channel communication, or identity management.
  • Rebuild: The application could be made cloud ready but would require a change in the build process to ensure seamless delivery. The concepts of CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) could be leveraged for these applications.
  • Migrated: The application has been migrated to the cloud successfully.
  • Unknown: The cloud migration strategy is unknown for the application. This may be the case for applications for which the Architecture Type attribute is not set to Cloud-Based.
• The X-axis value is the weighted indicator score for Cloud Readiness
  • Application End of Life: 0 = Less than one year / 1 = 13 to 18 months / 2 = 19 to 24 months / 3 = 25 to 30 months / 4 = 31 to 36 months / 5 = More than 3 years
  • Architecture Type: 0 = unknown / 1 = Mainframe / 2 = Distributed / 3 = Client Server / 4 = Stand Alone / 5 = Cloud Based ext. Webpage
  • License Portability: 0 = Unknown / 1 = No / 3 = Yes
  • Peaks in Workload: 0 = Unknown / 2 = No / 4 = Yes (Exceptionally) / 4 = Yes (Regularly)
  • Server Types: 0 = No Server / 2 = Only Physical Servers / 3 = Virtual & Physical Servers / 5 = Only Virtual Servers
  • Authentication: 0 = Unknown / 1 = Multi-Factor & SSO / 2 = Multi-Factor / 3 = SSO / Basic Access / 4 = Autonomous / 5 = No Authorization
  • # Interfaces: Computed indicator that depends on the number of local components used by an application.
• The Y-axis is the weighted indicator score for Cloud Relevance
  • Application End of Life: 0 = Less than one year / 1 = 13 to 18 months / 2 = 19 to 24 months / 3 = 25 to 30 months / 4 = 31 to 36 months / 5 = More than 3 years
  • Subject to Compliance Regulation: 1 = Subject to compliance regulation / 5 = Not subject to compliance regulation
  • Business Relevance: 0 = Unknown / 1 = Business Operating / 2 = Business Enabling / 3 = not applicable / 4 = Business Evolving / 5 = Mission Critical