INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
provider and hence needs to be managed remotely by the end-user.
Among the other operational considerations that need to be overcome
are concerns around privacy, interoperability, data and application
portability, data integrity, business continuity and security.
Migrating to the cloud has its share of benefits and hitches and end-
user organisations should work with their cloud service provider to
identify what is in their best interests.
The cloud is meant to provide environments that are scalable,
reliable, and highly available, among others. Migrating workloads to
the cloud brings with it various benefits. The cloud platform can scale
with the demands of user access and the connectivity is much better
than an on-premises installation.
This means end-users do not need to depend on investing in internal
resources to manage performance as the demands scales up. And as
IF THE APPLICATION
MANAGES SENSITIVE DATA,
IT MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE
TO MOVE SUCH DATA AND
APPLICATIONS TO THE CLOUD.
the demands scales down, the investment does not become idle and
suffer a loss in return on investment opportunity.
Migrating databases, applications and data to the cloud is therefore
highly effective in managing the costs of organisational IT operations,
while anticipating seasonal demands and geographic and business
expansion. Increasing demands in terms of compute and storage
resources linked to business expansion and increasing application
workloads is another strong driver for end-user organisations to bring
in a cloud service provider. End-users and business decision makers
are increasingly impatient for the IT organisation to produce these
resources on demand and drive adoption of the cloud.
Application development cycles being managed by internal teams
also need to be shortened to match business expectations in terms
of time to market. Adoption of cloud helps to reduce application
complexity and reduces time to market.
On the other hand, migrating to the cloud does raise its fair share
of questions, primarily whether the move is justified or not. If the
application manages sensitive, confidential, and country specific
data, that is controlled by highly governed procedures of risk
and compliance, it may not be possible to move such data and
applications to the cloud.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Sachin Bhardwaj, Director Marketing and Business Development,
eHosting DataFort
An end-user organisation that has outsourced a significant portion
of its hardware and software operations to a third-party will find it
increasingly challenging to move those parts to the cloud in the early
phases of migration.
Similarly, those applications that are proprietary or have undergone
significant customisation on-premises will be challenged in the
initial phases of cloud migration. If the applications being used on-
premises are not cloud-ready, there will be similar obstacles in the
initial phases of the migration.
The older an application has been in use in an end-user
organisation, the more likely it will have multiple, complex points
of integration, with other applications and third-party solutions.
Also, the older the application, the less likely that a complete set of
documentation or the skilled resources behind its deployment, will
be readily available on-site.
A cloud service provider can play the role of a trusted partner by
assisting in the process of migration to the cloud. This can be done
by setting up a proof of concept in partnership with the end-user
organisation. While not a perfect substitute, this will give the end-
user organisation an idea of the following: comparison of application
performance between on-premises and in-cloud; possible points
of complexity and failure during migration; network bandwidth
required for end-to-end data transfer; and hands-on evaluation of the
capability of the cloud service provider, among others.
A healthy partnership between the end-user organisation and a cloud
service provider can therefore go a long way in ensuring success of
the cloud migration journey. n
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