Migrate Your Mindset to the Cloud Along with Your Data — A Conversation with Mark Porter and Accenture’s Michael Ljung

The challenges of getting data and applications into the cloud are well-known. Technology isn’t always the hardest part of cloud migration, however, and it won’t produce digital transformation on its own. In many cloud migrations, both people and processes need to change along with the technology.

That’s because the processes that work in a legacy environment won’t necessarily help an organization thrive in the cloud. Instead, the opposite can happen: Legacy procedures tend to produce legacy results, making it difficult to achieve the impact that so many organizations seek from cloud-based digital transformation.

As part of an ongoing series on cloud migration and digital transformation, MongoDB CTO Mark Porter sat down with Michael Ljung, Accenture’s Global Engineering Lead, to examine new approaches and new ways of thinking that can be crucial to success in the cloud.

Experience and perspective

During their conversation, both Porter and Ljung recounted situations during which they, and their organizations, were called upon to partner in a new way with clients that were struggling to migrate to the cloud. Each knew that their experience and perspective could lead to success for these organizations. They also knew that their message — that sometimes it’s necessary to go slow to go fast — might not find receptive ears.

When organizations bring their old procedures and old deployment technologies to the cloud, “They’re in two places for a little while,” Porter says. Their data and applications may be in the cloud, but their mindset is on premises. Porter says that the MongoDB team helped a large cryptocurrency exchange through this exact situation. MongoDB helped the exchange get through the learning curve associated with new technologies, acting as an embedded member of the team and even guiding them in setting quarterly goals for their migrations.

Ljung described a large government client that wanted to move to the cloud and do it quickly. The organization embraced agile methodologies but didn’t have the automation or the experience with CI/CD to support cloud development. They were releasing new code to production almost daily, but a fix in one place could easily cause a breaking change elsewhere, and often did.

Digital done right

The solution was to take a step back. Accenture started by supporting the organization in mastering incremental delivery. Next came some basic automation. With that in place, the organization was able to return to agile methodologies and organize themselves into sprints. Now, Ljung says, “This client is an example of digital transformation done right” — all because, as he and Porter agreed, they were willing to go slow to go fast.