After publishing our five-part series on Elevate, we received a wave of interest from organizations eager to modernize, scale, and innovate faster. But with that interest came questions—smart, strategic questions that deserve thoughtful answers.
1. How do I know which workloads to modernize first?
This is the most foundational question—and the one that often paralyzes organizations.
Elevate solves this with automated workload prioritization, using a quadrant model that evaluates each workload based on:
- Business Value: How critical is the workload to revenue, strategy, or customer experience?
- Modernization Potential: How feasible is it to modernize based on architecture, dependencies, and team readiness?
Each workload is plotted on a visual map, with bubble size indicating scope and color denoting target modernization category. This allows you to:
- Quickly identify high-impact, low-effort opportunities
- Align modernization with business strategy
- Avoid wasting resources on low-value or high-risk efforts
The prioritization engine uses contextual data—business, technical, and DevOps—and integrates with tools like CloudPilot, Movere, and Excel to enrich analysis. You can override scores manually if needed, but the default logic gives you a strong starting point.
Bottom line: You’ll move from “gut feel” to data-driven decisions in days, not months.
2. What makes the Elevate different from other modernization frameworks?
Most frameworks offer guidance. Elevate offers execution.
Here’s what sets it apart:
- Assisted Engineering: Automatically generates target architectures, modernization backlogs, business cases, and even infrastructure as code.
- Template-Driven Delivery: Provides a catalog of vetted templates for common workloads (e.g., API apps, Function Apps, Cosmos DB), complete with CI/CD pipelines, governance, and security.
- Self-Service Enablement: Developers can launch environments and projects on demand via a portal—no waiting on centralized teams.
- Built-In Governance: Every template includes compliance controls, RBAC, audit trails, and monitoring.
- Scalability: Designed to support hundreds of workloads across multiple teams and business units.
It’s not just a playbook—it’s a platform. You get strategy, tooling, enablement, and governance in one integrated solution.
3. How does Assisted Engineering actually work?
Assisted Engineering is the bridge between strategy and execution. It takes your prioritized workloads and turns them into actionable, production-ready assets.
Here’s what it does:
- Generates Target Architecture: Based on workload context, it recommends infrastructure, integration patterns, and security layers.
- Creates Modernization Backlogs: Produces detailed work items with effort estimates, dependencies, and sequencing.
- Builds Business Cases: Calculates current vs. future state costs, ROI, and breakeven timelines.
- Produces Code and Pipelines: Generates infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and governance artifacts.
For example, if you’re modernizing a legacy CRM system, Assisted Engineering might:
- Recommend a microservices architecture on Azure
- Generate a backlog of 80+ tasks
- Create a business case showing a 12-month breakeven
- Provision infrastructure and pipelines in hours
Result: You go from strategy to sprint-ready in under a week.
4. Can this help us adopt GenAI in a structured way?
Absolutely. GenAI is powerful—but without structure, it’s risky and hard to scale.
Elevate includes Assisted Engineering for GenAI, which helps you:
- Identify and prioritize use cases based on industry, business drivers, and technical feasibility
- Deploy curated templates for RAG, fine-tuned models, and multi-modal architectures
- Embed governance for privacy, bias mitigation, and explainability
- Generate business cases with ROI modeling and scenario planning
For example, a financial services firm might use the accelerator to:
- Identify a GenAI use case for fraud detection
- Deploy a fine-tuned model template with Azure OpenAI and Synapse
- Generate a business case showing a 3x ROI
- Ensure compliance with embedded governance policies
Outcome: GenAI moves from PoC to production—securely, scalably, and with business alignment.
5. How do we get started with the Elevate?
Getting started is simple—and fast.
Here’s a typical onboarding path:
- Discovery Workshop: We assess your portfolio, goals, and challenges.
- Portfolio Ingestion: You upload workload data or connect existing tools.
- Prioritization Engine: We generate your modernization quadrant and roadmap.
- Assisted Engineering: We produce architecture, backlog, and business case.
- Template Deployment: You launch projects using our curated templates.
- Self-Service Enablement: Your teams use the portal to scale delivery.
You can start with a single workload or a full portfolio. Either way, you’ll see results in weeks—not quarters.
Final Thoughts
Modernization is hard. GenAI is complex. Scaling innovation is even harder.
But with Elevate, you don’t have to go it alone. You get a structured, automated, and scalable way to modernize your platforms, empower your teams, and deliver real business value.
If you’re ready to move from chaos to clarity—and from strategy to execution—reach out. Let’s build the future together.