As organizations accelerate the pace of innovation and empower new customer experiences, the hallmarks of native-cloud infrastructure — elasticity, resilience, and automation — are essential building blocks for applications and services designed for a modern business era.
The combination of modern technologies, architectures, software delivery practices, and new operational processes forms the cornerstone of a modern cloud estate. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud ecosystem serves up 200-plus ready-made cloud-native capabilities from AWS and its partner network that can transform critical systems and deliver sustainable business value.
“Cloud modernization is not an all-or-nothing proposition — it’s a progression, but the idea is to reimagine what’s possible,” says Jake Burns, enterprise strategist at AWS. “If you don’t modernize in the cloud, you are unlikely to realize most of the benefits.”
There are four essential building blocks for cloud modernization:
- Replacing block storage with object storage. Block storage, the typical storage array found in most data centers, functions as a monolithic system, and it is inefficient and far more expensive than cloud’s object storage architecture. Because block storage acts as a single big disk, it creates a single point of failure. In comparison, object storage is distributed, so if one piece fails, it doesn’t impact the entire IT estate.
- Moving from a server mentality to serverless infrastructure. With a serverless architecture, organizations no longer have to provision, scale, and maintain server overhead. Instead, AWS handles server management tasks, freeing up developers to focus on building and enhancing their core product. Cloud-native services such as AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB can be employed to implement serverless environments that reduce operational complexity.
- Shifting from relational databases to distributed databases. Most modern workloads could benefit from the scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability advantages of a distributed database. Data is distributed across multiple nodes, ensuring better resilience and performance for handling large data volumes.
- The advent of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI and AI capabilities will be an integral element of most applications and systems going forward. “If you’re not taking advantage of AI, you are at a huge competitive disadvantage,” Burns says.
Challenges to modernization
Modernizing with cloud-native capabilities is a must, but there are challenges along the way. For one thing, refactoring complex monolithic applications is a heavy lift, given that they can be difficult to unwind and understand. Many organizations are lacking talent versed in critical skills areas such as DevOps, containerization, and microservices. Organizational silos hinder collaboration, and “analysis paralysis” sets in as IT spends too much time weighing the pros and cons of modernization instead of jumping in with targeted experimentation.
AWS and its network partners offer 200+ tools and services to help enterprises start down the cloud modernization path. Among them:
- AWS Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA), one methodology underpinning ModAx, a multiday workshop designed to develop modernization muscle within IT.
- Six modernization pathways, which AWS outlines to help streamline decision-making and ensure optimal results.
- AWS AI services such as Amazon Bedrock, a managed service for building generative AI applications, and Amazon Q, a chatbot designed for enterprise use.
The biggest facilitator of AWS modernization is learning to cultivate a “tech company” mindset where cloud resources are seen as ephemeral, able to be turned off and on at will. “Stop thinking of resources in static terms — everything is temporary,” says Burns. “You have to think of technology resources in a completely different way.”
Want more modernization tips? Check out our next article: “How do I make the business case for modernization?” Or learn how AWS can help you reduce costs, gain efficiencies, and make the most of your existing investments.