While it’s easy for organizations to mull over the idea of digital transformation through cloud migration, a lot of the actual practice is delicate.

Today, many companies have their core applications and data resources on infrastructures like mainframes, creating the need to gradually move both peripheral and core resources.

“While we have seen an acceleration of transformation to the cloud, there is still a lot to do,” said Jean-Philippe Poirault (pictured, right), executive vice president and global head of telecom, media and technology industry at Atos SE. “This is especially because many critical applications are sitting on top of mainframes.” 

Poirault and Justin Hooper (pictured, left), vice president of global operations and infrastructure at Ingram Micro Inc., spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how Atos is helping Ingram Micro along its digital transformation journey and the general cloud migration trends surrounding it. (* Disclosure below.)

Doing it right

While the reliance on physical infrastructures, including mainframes, is a tried-and-tested approach, it comes with a crippling set of hindrances, according to Hooper. The shortcomings of this system are quite pronounced, especially with technologies like edge computing and hybrid cloud.

“We’ve had great success, great resiliency with mainframes; we are on the most modern chips, but there are a lot of restrictions. Organizations really have to size their mainframe for their peak workloads. Then there’s the absence of the ability to separate segments, scale horizontally,” Hooper explained.

In a rare change of pace, Ingram Micro will be making a wide-reaching exodus toward cloud systems for the logistical and cost benefits associated therein, according to Hooper.

“We want to look at how we can make a massive leave. We’re looking at starting a journey where we can really take advantage of horizontal scalability, the ability to have a utility compute model where we’re paying as we go.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Atos SE sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Atos nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE