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Five Things to Do Before Moving to the Cloud
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LinkedInBefore moving an enterprise application to the cloud, you need to be sure that your expectations are realistic and your objectives match what the cloud can deliver. In this post, I’d like to share what we’ve learned from working with our beta customers, from their initial exploration of cloud possibilities to going live with a specific application they’ve migrated to the cloud. The following steps can help guide the thought process when considering a cloud deployment, and provide a starting point for moving forward.
1. Determine your cloud objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? Is the cloud a solution for reducing costs, faster provisioning, data center consolidation, all of the above? Sometimes all goals align, where the cloud allows you to save money, be more responsive and avoid huge infrastructure investments all at the same time. But it may not be possible to realize all the benefits for a given organization or use case. For example, if there’s extra capacity in your data center there may be no obvious consolidation advantage to putting an application in the cloud. However, there could be other issues at play that justify the move, such as high operating costs or an infrastructure that makes it difficult for users to get the support they need.
2. Pick an application that makes sense. For example, how much latency is acceptable to users? The laws of physics slow things down over the Internet and network performance will vary, so if you need millisecond response the cloud may not work for your application. How critical is the application? You may not want to put an application in the cloud upon which the business depends even if infrastructure limitations (scaling, support, response time, etc.) make it seem like an attractive option. Get your feet wet before diving in -- a safer approach might be to start with a low-risk, back office (not-strategic) application before setting your sights on more ambitious targets.
3. Involve the CSO/risk management team from the beginning. The cloud, perhaps even more than other technology shifts, has raised red flags about security since your applications and data will potentially be moving outside of the enterprise firewall. Engage your company’s security experts and decision makers from the beginning to understand their perspective and address their concerns directly. Get them involved in the discussion early so they’ll understand why the cloud is important to the business and how you want to use it. Give them a chance to review their security concerns with potential vendors before you sign up.
4. Decide which cloud(s) are acceptable. Finding a cloud that’s best suited to your needs is as critical as identifying the right target applications. Cloud offerings vary widely—in their APIs, configurations, storage infrastructure, networking options, pricing structures and SLAs. Some of the variables will be essential for your requirements, while others are simply nice to haves. The process is like evaluating any other technology offering, except the environment is probably new and unfamiliar. You may want assistance from a partner with cloud expertise who can help you qualify the various cloud options to make sure you make the right choice.
5. Create a sandbox where people can experiment. All of the different user groups should be able to see how a cloud-based application compares to a traditional one. Give business users, administrators and developers a chance to evaluate the benefits of the cloud from their perspective, as well as the limitations. Application experts can use the sandbox to run functionality and performance testing on the application in the cloud to see how it behaves compared to the traditional environment, and if any differences are acceptable.
Get Your Hands Dirty
Once you’ve done the necessary due-diligence, you’re ready to get started with beta testing and proof-of-concept pilots with vendors. In an area as hyped as the cloud there’s really no better way to learn than hands-on, and these basic best practices will help lay the foundation for a successful cloud strategy. CloudSwitch can help address the security concerns and make it “point-and-click” easy to move to the cloud, using your existing management tools and applications.
What Does Enterprise IT Really Want?
Analysts, bloggers and mainstream media have spent 2009 promoting cloud computing as “the next big thing” that will revolutionize the way companies buy and use computing power. But beyond the hype and the C-level interest in an exciting trend, there’s value to the cloud that appeals to the pragmatic, “show me” nature of enterprise IT.
The two main drivers for cloud computing are the same ones that have always motivated enterprise IT: save money (do more with less) and be more responsive to business needs. These goals are typically in conflict with each other, so that in tough times the first takes precedence and in boom times the second one does.
The cloud offers the promise of being able to do both, which is why it so attractive to the CIO and IT managers. The cloud potentially lets you offload from your expensive internal infrastructure and scale up/down/out as needed. Developers and SMBs may have started the cloud revolution, but the real transformation will be in enterprise IT, where the demand for computing resources is constantly changing and evolving — across seasons and application lifecycles, sometimes even during the course of a day. Rather than investing in capital equipment that may sit idle much of the time, the cloud model provides an attractive alternative, both for users who need computing power not available internally and IT departments trying to watch their budgets.
Today enterprises are trying to figure out how to leverage the cloud in a way that makes sense. It can be somewhat scary in these early days, as issues around security, control and integration are still being debated. What does it take to change the mindset from “we can’t do that” to “let’s try it”? What does enterprise IT need to have the confidence to get started in the cloud?
What IT really wants is to get access to this potential great resource, but to do so in a very low-risk, walk-before-you-run way. This means putting a limited, usually small, footprint into the cloud initially. It also means focusing on applications that are by definition separable from the data center, and probably not core to the business. For example, most of our early customers are putting development, test, business continuity and back-office applications into the cloud first, and thinking about how they will add the next set of apps and/or scale out the original ones if things go well.
IT also wants protection in case the cloud reality takes longer to deliver than the hype suggests. They want to be able to bring their apps back to the data center, or potentially to switch clouds if a better set of offerings comes along. As a result they don’t want to do a lot of work changing what they have today for a specific cloud or re-architecting their applications or internal processes.
Most of all, enterprise IT is looking beyond the hype and saying “show me how this could work in my environment.” They want results they can trust showing how the cloud can provide flexibility and cost savings that their internal data center can’t deliver alone – so they can make the case for embracing the cloud in a more meaningful way. So while IT managers are certainly reading the blogs and analyst reports about the future of the cloud, they’re serious about testing the cloud today, and pushing vendors to make the cloud work for fundamental enterprise needs.
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