Cisco is somewhat of a tech anomaly. It’s not uncommon for teams to have employees with tenure of 25+ years outnumber those who’ve worked there for 5 years or less. This can be attributed to Cisco’s commitment to customer satisfaction and adherence to quality. With over 40 years in the tech industry, every long-term decision needs to reflect Cisco’s dedication to customers and employees alike.
This culture of strategic decision-making is clearly reflected in Cisco’s cloud migration journey. Before migrating, Cisco used Rally as its main project management tool. But, when Broadcom, a competitor of Cisco, acquired Rally in 2015, Cisco knew they needed to limit their exposure. This signaled that it could be time for a transformation.
Allowing teams to operate freely to choose their preferred tools helped fuel Cisco’s innovation. However, over time, the proliferation of tools created silos and unnecessary costs of up to 30% more than the average enterprise.
Jason Andrews, a Vice President at Cisco, decided to tackle these two issues head-on by consolidating on a single Atlassian platform, starting with a single Jira instance. Cisco started its consolidation journey with the Atlassian Server but soon after migrated to the Atlassian Cloud.
Cisco post-migration snapshot:
- Revenue: $35 Billion
- Customer Base: 20K organizational with 10K active Jira users
- Instances: 3 Jira Cloud instances
- Atlassian Products: Confluence, Trello, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management
Setting a transformation mindset
Cisco started their journey by asking themselves, “What would we do if we could start from scratch?” They started their planning and research with a transformational mindset rather than a simple lift and shift. That mindset led to identifying 4 problem areas, which confirmed that “the only thing we knew was Cloud-first was our choice to avoid the disruption of a second hop a couple of years down the road.”
Next came trust in the team. Once aligned, Andrews encouraged his teams to work autonomously, with the exception of obvious guardrails on larger projects. This team empowerment led employees to construct a world where they could work efficiently.
By introducing a culture of “if you fail, fail fast,” teams became more proactive about innovating and constructing effective workflows. The faster you fail, the quicker you can assess the process through a post-mortem, dust yourself off, and implement new, more strategic methodologies.
Andrews stressed that teams must focus on this transition as a transformation rather than a migration. While a migration seems like a tedious move, a transformation mindset offers a phoenix-like rebirth to inspire more proactive teamwork.
Cisco’s dedication to the transformation mindset helped them migrate directly to the cloud without bringing along outdated ways of working. They also knew they didn’t want to delay their modernization process by leveraging Data Center in the interim, which meant transformation had to remain front and center.
Focusing on “The 4 S’s”
Before launching their migration, Andrews knew they needed to avoid dragging along issues that had been plaguing their teams while operating on Rally. From the aforementioned software bloat to other obstacles in their workflow, Andrews and the team outlined their “4 S’s” to focus on going into their transformation:
Eliminate Silos
Before their transformation, silos were a thorn in Cisco’s side. With data stuck in Excel and Smart Sheets across the organization, they struggled to make data-driven decisions. Andrews noticed that data delays meant stakeholders relied more on gut instinct than statistics.
Jumpstart a Slow environment
According to Andrews, “A common joke was, ‘ok I’m going to go ahead and update this field, go get a cup of coffee, come back and update the next,’ because that’s how long it took.” This led to poor data quality on top of silos. Andrews knew that not only did they need clean, accessible data – they needed it fast.
Simplification
At the time, Andrews conceded that their architecture was too complex. Admins needed to be able to update fields or submit information without the steep learning curve or proprietary workflows. It was clear to Andrews and the team that they needed a unified and user-friendly platform to simplify and streamline day-to-day tasks.
Lower software cost at scale
The solution they envisioned needed to solve the above problems at a lower price. Since Cisco was already spending more on tools than the average enterprise in its industry, moving to a unified solution needed to be cost-effective.
5 keys to a successful migration
Cisco’s Engineering Operations Leader Eric Lyke, who helped oversee their migration to Atlassian Cloud, identifies five keys to a successful cloud migration beyond the basic pre-migration, migration, and post-migration processes. Lyke stresses that strong preparation is crucial.
According to Lyke the 5 keys to a successful migration are as follows:
- Set clear expectations
- Workshop and find advocates
- Use an Atlassian Migration Specialist
- Create a single entry point for help
- Communicate transparently
Even if you’re in the early stages of your migration, and you’re still analyzing other tools, I would call and setup some time with an Atlassian Migration Specialist because they were instrumental in setting up the rubric for us to understand what all was involved.”
Eric Lyke, Engineering Operations Leader, Cisco
Life on cloud
After adopting Atlassian solutions, Cisco saw massive wins, with the ability to review live data in real-time. Live data in a dashboard with Atlassian Intelligence insights gives Cisco the ability to make faster, more impactful decisions.
By eliminating duplicative licensing and working off of a unified platform, Cisco continues to see significant savings. Before their migration, Cisco spent $2.6 million annually, or roughly $260 per user. After their migration, Cisco cut their spending by 54%, resulting in a far lower software spend of $1.26 million annually, or roughly $126 per user.
This doesn’t even take into account the time savings of being silo-free, seamlessly transitioning between tools, or leaving behind hardware maintenance. Andrews calculates an additional annual savings of $5.3 million, by simply saving users 15 minutes per week through faster feature delivery on top of accelerated workflows. His next goal is to raise that time to 45 minutes per week, tripling these annual savings.
What saving 15 minutes per week means for Cisco:
[52 week/year] x [15 minutes/week] = [7.8 hours/year per user] x [10K users] x [$68 hourly employee cost]
Total: $5.3 million per year
Assess your migration needs
For organizations that still operate within on-premise architecture, there’s never been such an opportune time for a smooth, supported migration. One Forrester Research® study found that teams who migrate to Atlassian Cloud experience an average of 358% ROI by migrating, with full payback in just 12 months. The study also found that teams saved one developer workday per week by automating tedious, time-consuming tasks and improving collaboration.
To assess your organization’s needs, make sure to check out Atlassian’s Migration Program to help prepare your teams through Atlassian’s migration resources, specialists, customer stories, and Cloud Toolkit. For enterprises in highly regulated industries, the cloud is still accessible through Atlassian’s Data Residency program offering local data hosting in Australia, Brazil, Canada, EU, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, The UK, and The USA.