August 31, 2023 Solve Modernization Traps with One Question

IT modernization demands careful, thoughtful planning. And it all starts with a simple question: Why are we making this investment?

By Justin Mescher

It’s a trap all too many companies fall into: In an effort to modernize and adopt the latest cloud capabilities, having a concise vision and outlining specific success metrics take a back seat to the excitement of being on the leading edge. Quickly, they find themselves on the “bleeding edge,” with over-budget programs and missed deadlines as the norm.

It’s common, but avoidable. At the root of these modernization fumbles are a lack of alignment between stakeholders, talent gaps, changing too much too fast, and underestimating budgets and timelines. IT modernization demands careful, thoughtful planning to be successful. And it all starts with a simple, yet often overlooked question: Why are we making this investment?

The Children’s Hospital of Orange County in California is a great example of how this can work. The hospital spearheaded a project to drive modernization efforts within their disaster recovery program to support a hybrid cloud model, provide secure remote access, and deliver resiliency for mission-critical applications.

What made this project different than many others like it was the focus of the IT leaders. In every meeting, the leaders would always ask, “How will this help our patients?” Even during technical discussions, brainstorming sessions, and failover planning, this question was the core tenet of all meetings, leading back to the ethos of the effort.

That established a mindset that every aspect of the project was tied to a larger objective. No matter how detailed or technical the conversation was, it all came back to the same place: the patient. Their focus was on delivering the best service possible for the children during their care, period. In other words, they understood their purpose for modernizing. Here’s how your company can do the same:

Establish Desired Outcomes

Before beginning any project, it’s important to have a shared understanding of what the desired outcome and success metrics will look like. For the children’s hospital, the business leaders knew they wanted three things:

1. Improve Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) service level agreements.
2. Maintain adherence to strict governance, risk, and compliance mandates.
3. Deploy a secure, hybrid Horizon Virtual Desktop solution across its on-premises data centers and VMware Cloud on AWS environments to support both live workloads and disaster recovery workloads.

Each of those requirements had well-defined success criteria that were used as the key performance indicators for the project. Often, knowing where the finish line is can define the roadmap and reduce the frequency or intensity of roadblocks faced along the way. Modernization projects can be complex, with many tasks and moving parts, each essential to the success of the effort. To maximize the value delivered, everyone involved needs to stay focused on the outcome.

Align with Key Stakeholders

Another critical success factor is aligning success metrics with key stakeholders. That means understanding how and when to measure the status of operations to benchmark progress and ultimately, deliver desired results to the business – be it improving efficiency, enhancing security, lowering costs, or increasing scalability. Aligning with stakeholders is the crucial next step so many business leaders miss, risking a well-intentioned initiative falling apart before it gets off the ground.

After all, the purpose of modern IT is not simply to make your platforms more scalable and secure, but to deliver value business value via innovation and technology. Having agreed-upon key performance indicators will empower teams to meet budgets and critical deadlines to drive project success.

Know Your Why

This is undoubtedly the most crucial step in any modernization process. Understanding the ‘why’ behind IT modernization not only helps organizations secure budget and deliver meaningful outcomes, but also improve the link between IT teams and the business. As the market for technical expertise continues to be competitive, fostering a connection between your technology experts and your business will help drive purpose with business results.

When you understand the purpose, IT modernization projects can give your organization the edge it needs to be more competitive and deliver better results. And help keep your technical talent excited about the skills they are learning and the difference they are making to your organization and those you serve.

The Children’s Hospital of Orange County is a great example of a technology implementation that never forgot the “why.” By establishing desired outcomes, aligning on benchmarking, and holding the importance of their project at the center of their activities, the hospital was able to decrease the risk of disaster, increase security posture, and improve resiliency for remote worker virtual desktop access – thus improving quality of care and lowering costs for its disaster recovery plan.

Justin Mescher, Vice President of Cloud and Data Center Solutions for ePlus, leads overall strategy and go-to-market for both the Cloud and Data Center practices as part of ePlus’ Global Strategy Team.  He started his career in corporate IT, managing a hospital’s data center, then expanded his experience as a Pre-sales Engineer at EMC and then CTO for IDS, where he led the engineering team and developed the cloud practice. After IDS was acquired by ePlus in 2017, he has served in his current role, leveraging his expertise in cloud strategy, design, implementation, migration, and managed services to grow the Data Center and Cloud practices for ePlus. Justin spends his time meeting with strategic customers, discussing their journey to the cloud, and developing new solutions within the ePlus portfolio to align with customer needs

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