5 examples of cloud migration success stories to learn from

1. Experian connects the dots between data silos

Experian routinely analyzes huge amounts of data to update its credit scoring models. It decided to explore how the cloud could help connect data silos scattered across the organization by improving collaboration among its data scientists. The company settled on moving much of its data processing infrastructure to AWS, which improved the ability of internal data scientists and enterprise customers to customize models for various use cases. AWS consultants played an essential role in ensuring that Experian could continue to enforce security and regulatory compliance requirements while taking advantage of the new infrastructure. AWS also provided migration and training credits, which helped Experian train teams, design secure architectures and migrate efficiently.

Jimmy Cheung

Jimmy Cheung, senior vice president of the global cloud office at Experian, said the company's previous IT infrastructure was predominantly on-premises, with select workloads running in a public cloud. Experian was using a combination of VMware, Cisco and Red Hat OpenShift to support hardware virtualization and container orchestration in this private infrastructure before deciding to migrate to AWS.

"This setup allowed us to handle traditional data workloads, but as Experian evolved from being primarily a credit data provider to a broader technology leader in sectors like healthcare and automotive, our demands on scalability, agility and security grew," Cheung said.

Migrating to the cloud helped the company use innovations such as infrastructure as code (IaC) to improve consistency, configuration governance and application access. It also helped Experian take advantage of cloud elasticity to scale up and down during surges for sporting event marketing campaigns. "This rapid scaling capability has empowered us to handle incredible volumes of decisions powered by our AI and data analytics, making timely, fair and secure decisions possible on a global scale," Cheung said.

Moving things to the public cloud required close collaboration across several teams, including senior management, IT, finance, operations and security. "To gain buy-in, we established clear business cases that articulated our migration goals, such as cost savings, improved agility and enhanced security," he said. The company also formed task forces with representatives from key departments to ensure alignment on goals, promote shared ownership and set up an infrastructure that could support customers across various industries.

One example is the new Experian Ascend Technology Platform, which uses the public cloud to bring together tools for analytics, credit decisioning and fraud detection. Experian claims it helps simplify and accelerate complex decision-making processes for businesses, which then enables them to optimize operations and reduce costs. It also uses cloud-powered AI analytics and improved data access to improve digital identity, analytics and credit insights.

Rapid scaling capability has empowered us to handle incredible volumes of decisions.

Cheung acknowledged the migration came with challenges, such as existing technical debt, which required refactoring older systems to run more efficiently in a cloud environment. "If workloads are simply lifted and shifted without optimization, this can lead to unexpected costs, particularly without proper governance in place," he said. The cloud migration also called attention to skills gaps in expertise in cloud architecture, DevSecOps and site reliability engineering, which prompted the need for training and hiring.

Cheung said if Experian were to start over, a key focus would be ensuring comprehensive IaC coverage for every cloud service from the beginning, as this helps streamline operations and supports security and consistency. It would also invest more in training to build strong cloud and DevOps expertise in teams. Cheung said he would also make a priority of giving technology leaders real-time cloud cost management tools to help track spending and optimize resource use to avoid unexpected costs.

2. TCW thinks differently to bolster cloud security

The conventional wisdom for IT executives considering cloud migration is to start with the big cloud providers that have invested considerable resources to improve security, agility and efficiency. But Steve Thompson, vice president of IT at TCW, decided to think differently, reasoning that hackers invest fewer resources in identifying vulnerabilities in the smaller cloud platforms.

Steve Thompson

When TCW started the project, it was using HPE's hyperconverged infrastructure product, Simplivity, to configure multiple nodes for high availability and redundancy. Thompson said that although the setup was easy to use on a day-to-day basis, upgrades were extremely time-consuming. So, his team explored cloud services from AWS, Microsoft and Google. Ultimately, it instead chose the cloud offering from Flexential, which beat the competition in terms of price, risk and ease of migration.

Security was top of mind for Thompson. The transportation industry was increasingly overrun with ransomware attacks, and he was concerned TCW was vulnerable. He had watched industry counterparts spend large sums of money to restore critical operations, which prompted efforts to build a more reliable system to avoid downtime since transportation is a 24/7 year-round industry.

His research turned him away from the public cloud names. "One key decision for us was actually to avoid the larger players, our rationale being that the bigger the cloud provider, the bigger the target for ransomware and other attacks," he said. "I think everyone on this planet is aware of the CrowdStrike debacle. During that massive outage, there was no greater satisfaction than to share with our customers that we were not affected and had 100% of our business online and operational."

Another challenge was the time it would take to migrate the data. He was pleased with Flexential's support for direct, dedicated connections, which made it easy to move data with Zerto, a data migration tool. The reliable connections also helped link facilities previously hosted in Nashville, Tenn., to Atlanta.

At a Flexential event after the migration, TCW was pitched a plan to enhance the capabilities. Thompson's team discussed the benefits of Flexential's offering for disaster recovery as a service and has since implemented it to replicate TCW's private cloud to a separate Flexential location in Denver.

Thompson said that, in hindsight, he wouldn't have done anything differently. The company was motivated to escape the cycle of new infrastructure installations, maintenance and patching of underlying systems it had experienced with its previous infrastructure. "Being freed from these tasks has allowed us to focus more resources on our internal and external customers, providing a better value and experience," he said.

3. Johnson & Johnson moves recruitment to Google Cloud

Johnson & Johnson turned to the cloud to improve the presentation of its job openings to prospective employees. The healthcare consumer goods giant noticed that over a million people were applying for around 25,000 roles per year. Many applied for roles they weren't suited for, even though there were more promising jobs for which they could have been a better match.

The company worked with ICIMS, a career site provider, to port its talent acquisition and recruitment process to run on Google Cloud's Cloud Talent Solution. The result was a 41% increase in qualified applicants for essential roles, according to a Google Cloud customer page. The cloud migration helped improve the match between applications and relevant open roles to enhance job searches and recommendations. The key, according to the vendor, was that it took advantage of Google's search and AI capabilities to distill the essential aspects of job titles, descriptions and skills.

4. Unilever taps Azure for customer-focused cloud transformation

Unilever worked with Accenture and the Microsoft Azure team to move its IT infrastructure to the Azure cloud as part of a massive digital transformation effort. The move helped the consumer goods giant accelerate product launches, improve customer service and enhance operations, according to a Unilever press release. It also enabled the company to consolidate its data to take advantage of new AI approaches for forecasting, adapting to changing market needs and enhancing customer experiences.

5. Capital One modernization requires 8-year migration to AWS

Capital One went all in on the cloud when it decided to migrate and modernize 2,000 applications from the ground up to run on AWS. The move helped improve the provisioning of new infrastructure, support innovation efforts and take advantage of new AI approaches.

It was no easy task. It took more than 11,000 people to help implement the eight-year migration. Early results included dramatically reducing disaster recovery time, a 50% reduction in transaction errors and a significant reduction in build time for development environments, according to an AWS case study.

An essential aspect was figuring out how to refactor apps to run across 30 essential AWS services for compute, storage, data management and contact centers. Capital One also had to develop or recruit talent that was competent in provisioning, operating and developing for cloud architecture. It invested significantly in educating its developers on the new cloud approaches. The effort reportedly paid off with a more agile development process that sped development and attracted new talent.

The modernization effort also planted the seeds for a new intelligent agent that improved customer experience, security and safety. The new, cloud-centered approach also helped the bank adapt to COVID-19 restrictions by enabling workers to stay productive despite working from home.

George Lawton is a journalist based in London. Over the last 30 years, he has written more than 3,000 stories about computers, communications, knowledge management, business, health and other areas that interest him.