By Dan Barton
Director of Software Development & Integrations
Last month, here on our Insights section of the site, I introduced the LEVEL8 approach to getting Cloud-Ready and began to look at the process of a business’s journey towards operating on cloud-based systems – as well as our credentials for supporting clients with such a move.
Alongside our general experience as a business systems consultancy and expert knowledge of the solutions we work with, the software our specialist team of developers produce was something I was keen to highlight as a significant string to our bow when it comes to managing successful cloud migrations.
This might not seem much of a surprise with software development being the side of LEVEL8 that I head up but this definitely wasn’t any kind of self-aggrandisement (I’m resolutely British when it comes to ‘bigging myself up’, honest!).
You see, the LEVEL8 Portal in particular deals with one of the major hidden challenges of any cloud migration. That of system integration.
We all know that modern business systems must communicate with each other in order to drive efficiency and avoid issues such as data silos and inaccurate reporting. Devising and implementing this kind of integrated business systems environment has been a key objective of IT departments and enterprise architects for a long time now.
And in that time most businesses have cracked it, right? Systems have been made to talk to each other and now that this exchange of data has been established, the softwares are talking each other’s languages, so why should it stop working?
Well, when talking about cloud migration, the problem isn’t necessarily the two bits of business software to be connected. Rather it is the bit of software that sits in the middle and acts as a translator between them.
Yep, I’m afraid so. More often than not that custom integration you implemented to get past this challenge the first time around is not going to function as a cloud-to-cloud translator.
Before your head makes its way to your hands though, remember that this is exactly where I said the LEVEL8 Portal comes in to its own. Seamlessly stepping in and delivering the system integration and communication that took so long to establish but now becomes obsolete as you look towards your cloud journey.
I know what you’re thinking. This was such a headache the first time around that it can’t be that simple, straightforward and painless. This is IT after all.
It’s a fair reaction and one that requires a more detailed examination and answer than I can really give here (without making this one of the longer blogs you’ll read this year). That’s why we’ve produced Cloud Talk: A guide to Cloud-2-Cloud software integration with the LEVEL8 Portal.
Click below to download your copy and find out why I’m so confident that the LEVEL8 Portal has a big role to play in your cloud journey.
