Honest insights on making the move to modernization
June 25th marked the inaugural run of Saviynt’s new interactive Ask The Expert series. This series showcases partner success stories and provides strategies to help others on their journey from legacy IGA to modernization. Joining us for the first episode was Suncor Energy’s Chris Hoy, who shared his experience migrating from legacy IGA to a modern cloud solution. Chris discussed valuable lessons Suncor discovered during their platform migration. Accompanying Chris Hoy was Adam Barngrover one of Saviynt’s resident experts. Hosting this conversation live from the Identity Hub was Saviynt’s Chris “the Hubster” Gregory.
Much of this discussion centered around honest insights on cloud migration, which is refreshing because the reality of the matter is that the journey from Legacy IGA to modernization is an intense process that isn’t all “rainbows and butterflies”. Real tips from real clients who’ve implemented cloud and application modernization strategies offer hope to those struggling to deal with today’s world using legacy systems or legacy applications. Suncor kept it real when discussing the Energy industry’s challenges moving to the cloud and Suncor’s digital transformation strategies. We got to peek behind the cloud, so to speak, at the security challenges they faced with automation and onboarding applications. Legacy systems owners will appreciate the insights on operational cost and reduced risk considerations. The panel broke down several KPIs for measuring ROI while giving real-world advice when discussing lessons learned for improving the cloud migration processes, dealing with legacy systems, getting buy-in from application owners, and eliminating internal silos. Let’s review some of what our panel discussed, statements Chris Hoy made, and talk briefly about why they matter.
Modernizing Legacy Applications
The word modernization often brings to mind replacing legacy systems, but a major part of the modernization journey is dealing with legacy applications and how they integrate into the cloud environment. Updating from a legacy environment to the cloud comes with unique security challenges. Such as when the business processes and workflows designed around the applications are built strictly for functionality rather than business optimization. When these applications form the foundation of the legacy environment, the modernization strategy runs the risk of breaking existing processes. Cloud migration must account for possible unintended consequences before making changes to applications. An in-depth understanding of these applications in advance helps in planning and anticipating potential bumps in the road on your digital transformation journey.
Evaluate Legacy Applications
We’ve all heard “Don’t fix what ain’t broke” but when do you not fix what is broke? Not every application will survive your cloud modernization effort. Some legacy pieces are going to break, how do you decide which legacy software is worth the time and effort to fix and which are better left for dead? Evaluating which applications to migrate involves gauging fit vs force. Applications that fit your optimized business processes offer better ROI than applications that force you to create business processes to accommodate them. Often, it’s better to simply re-design or re-invent them rather than investing the man-hours to reverse engineer and modify them. Time is money. It may be more cost-effective to start fresh with an application optimized for today’s workflows.
Living in Continuous Compliance
One of the key benefits of modernizing and implementing a cloud IGA solution is leaving behind the point-in-time compliance model and collecting evidence of compliance continuously. Point-in-time compliance is not enough to satisfy many auditors. How many times have you had an auditor look at your evidence only to ask for more? The point in time model puts you at risk of non-compliant periods that can foul up an audit. Implementing a robust cloud IGA solution during your modernization process provides continuous logging, monitoring, validation, and micro certifications, ensuring your compliance posture throughout the year is verified for auditors without increasing overhead.
Knowledge is Key
As the webinar wrapped up, Chris Hoy encapsulated the essence of his advice in three points. Before you start any digital transformation, knowing your goals gives you direction to ensure that your modernization process is focusing on the right systems and applications. Knowing your key people will help you with building a consensus and reducing roadblocks. Bringing application stakeholders in from the start ensures not only that everyone is on board but that they are on the same page. Understanding business processes and identifying times of the year or month that certain applications are already overloaded eases the scheduling of rollouts and prevents unnecessary disruption of normal business operations.
Saviynt appreciates the time and effort our experts put into offering their guidance in this interactive series. We hope you will join us for future episodes. If for any reason you were unable to attend this session, please enjoy the session in an on-demand format. Saviynt is committed to bringing you expert advice in both a live interactive format as well as on-demand.
