There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and this applies to computing’s on-premises-to-cloud migration as much as anything else. Companies can whittle down the fear factor of moving data and applications to cloud with a try-and-see approach rather than a go-for-broke method, because in today’s ecosystem creative technology partnerships can let customers start small with offerings tailored to their unique goals.

Rick Gouin (pictured), chief technology officer of Winslow Technology Group LLC, spends a lot of time explaining this to customers lately.

“It doesn’t have to be this big, jarring event as we sort of transform. This is something where we can take baby steps and start to move ourselves forward,” he said.

Winslow is mapping out those steps for customer with the help of partners like Nutanix Inc. (makers of hyperconverged infrastructure) and others. It integrates its existing infrastructure with various cloud services — platforms, software, etc. — to produce easily digestible cloud offerings for customers.

Gouin spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the WTG Transform event in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the idea of cloud as a verb and how Winslow and partners help customers do it. (* Disclosure below.)

Look before leaping with out-of-the-box offerings

“I’m really high on an analytical approach to hybrid cloud,” Gouin said.

The hype around cloud could light a fire under executives’ seats and get them hustling workloads to cloud prematurely, he explained. A more sane approach would be to do homework ahead of time, run analytics, and make data-driven decisions; in other words, get toes in the sand before wading all the way out to sea.

The move to cloud — and digital transformation generally — is about looking at business needs first and then building IT around them, Gouin stated. That is the cloud operating model, and it can be done in a number of ways — on-prem or in a public cloud. Winslow’s partnerships aim to enable customers to do cloud in a number of environments.

“A common theme there is adding this built in sort of cloud interoperability, connectivity and feature set,” Gouin said. “We’re seeing things like self-service portals, things like the ability to measure multiple tenants, [etc.].”

Services like these deployable out-of-the-box allow customers a cloud operating model without a drawn-out system relaunch.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the WTG Transform event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for WTG Transform. Neither Winslow Technology Group LLC, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE