The Stages of Cloud Transformation

Author:  Eric Vasbinder

Welcome to Viewpoint's Vista Cloud!  We are very happy you've decided to become our latest Viewpoint One Customer and experience the power, reliability, and flexibility of hosting your ERP in our cloud.

We will be working with you over the next weeks to create a new home for your data in our cloud and to walk you through the process of testing your environment to ensure a smooth transition as of day one.

At a high level there are seven steps, or stages, involved in your transformation to our cloud.  Please see the below list for each of those stages, with links to more detailed information about each stage:

1. Stage 1: Welcome and Planning

   • We hold initial welcome calls, walk through what to expect during the process, and set up a micro-project site to enable collaboration on status, team contacts, and more.

   • NOTE:  As of this time, please ensure you do not update your on-premise or existing cloud (e.g. VFC) Vista environment unless on the explicit request of your cloud transformation team.

2. Stage 2: Initial Cloud Footprint

   • We stand up your initial environment in our cloud, ensuring servers and infrastructure components are working properly.

3. Stage 3: Integrations Framework Setup (Vista VPN or Spectrum IP Whitelisting)

   • For Vista, we set up a TLS Database Endpoint (TLS VPN) or an IPSEC VPN tunnel in this stage so that users on your local network will have access to the Vista database in a similar fashion to your on-premise environment.

4. Stage 4: Initial Data Upload and SSO Authentication Setup

   • During this stage, we take a compressed backup of the various databases, from Vista, to attachments, to Keystyle (if any), as well as the Viewpoint Repository, SSRS reports, Crystal Reports, templates, and more and copy them to your new environment in our cloud.  The Initial Cloud Footprint then becomes something more:  the newly forming home for Vista.  It's after this Stage (otherwise known as Phase 2) that your new environment is made available to you with your data to begin testing.

   • Once the Upload is complete and restored into the new cloud environment, we need to ready our Trimble ID SSO login for use by your users across Spectrum, Vista, Vista Web, etc. - All Viewpoint ERP Cloud products

5. Stage 5: Testing, Training, and Integration Setup

   • During this stage, we hand over the "keys to the car" to you and your team to perform in-depth testing of your custom reports and unique data in our cloud.  We work through any issues that are found, and get ready for go-live, while providing training to your cloud user admins on how the cloud admin portal works.  Finally, we work with you to perform final setup of custom integrations to Vista in our cloud.  If you have third party software that talks to Vista, this is where we enable it to talk to Vista in our cloud.

6. Stage 6: Go-Live!

   • Now we are ready!  We schedule a time, usually any where from late Thursday evening to early Friday afternoon to begin the cut-over process.  During this time, you will turn off the services for Vista on-premise, ensuring no additional changes are made.  Then, you will ensure that compressed backups are made and will coordinate with us to upload those backups to our cloud again, just like in stage 4.  Once complete, our team will finalize the cut-over in our cloud and send you the long-awaited "Migration Complete" email!

7. Stage 7: Post Go-Live Wrap Up and Hand-off

   • This is the final stage of your transformation process. Over the past weeks we have closely coordinated with multiple weekly calls and technical sessions.  Now, we are ramping down, meeting once a week for two weeks after go-live, answering any lingering questions you may have, and getting ready for the hand-over to sustaining support.  On the final meeting day, two weeks after go-live, we will officially hand over support of your environment to our sustaining support team.

We look forward to having you live in our cloud soon!