The world of enterprise applications is expanding on a daily basis as more and more human processes are getting automated and digitized. The world of cloud computing is expanding with equal speed in terms of adoption, user base, technical challenges, and accomplishments. There are large numbers of success and failure stories getting created on a daily basis. None of these stories are based on luck or chance. Each one of them is an outcome of planning to the last level of details and accurate execution.
There are several reasons that are driving the need for migrating the enterprise-level applications to a cloud platform. It starts with the total cost of operating an on-premise infrastructure to the decomposition of larger applications into smaller decoupled microservices to the automation of repetitive activities.
We take a look at some of the basic differentiators between the successful implementations of cloud migration vis-à-vis the ones that failed.
When you start planning for migrating your application on to a cloud platform, what factors should you consider in your analysis? The very first step can determine the outcome of your project. The more objective these factors are, the better is the chance of 100% success. Let us have a quick look at some of the key factors.
Total Cost of Ownership: On-premise infrastructure is a fixed expenditure and involves extremely rigid expenses of building a safe and secure physical location, purchase of hardware and software, maintaining a team of technical staff to manage, monitor, and operate, and repair, overhaul, and other expenses. On the other hand, cloud-based infrastructure is owned by a third party where you need to pay for what you use. It is shared ownership where you own the data while the cloud vendor owns the rest of the things.
Support: Once you purchase hardware or software for your on-premise infrastructure, you are bound to purchase its support services from the respective vendor. While this pain is greatly reduced in the case of cloud-based infrastructure, you still need to consider whether you would be able to get adequate support from the cloud vendor for the next 5–10 years. This is a challenge when choosing a private cloud vendor who is not so well established yet.
Technology stack: On-premise setup has limited options to tinker with their technology stack. More often, the stack remains fixed throughout the lifecycle of the hardware. In the case of the cloud, you have the flexibility of choosing from a variety of options. These include platforms, run-times, containers, software, and licenses. All you need is to have compatible application architecture to use the power of the cloud.
Future services: On-premise setup has a defined expiry timeframe. It is known at the beginning that a certain infrastructure would sustain the load for a period of 5–10 years and would need replacement thereafter. A cloud platform would keep evolving and bringing in new and latest technological advances into its ecosystem. While some of the renowned cloud vendors have been a bit slow in this area, but still, this is true for the overall cloud computing industry. You need to check the future roadmap of the cloud vendor to be sure about its future service plans.
Community and references: You need to maintain your own team of experts in case of an on-premise setup. In the case of the cloud, you must look at the reference implementations by other IT and non-IT companies. That would give you a good idea about what level of expertise would be available in the market to consult or to hire.
Speed of migration: While you may always plan the migration path of your application with a defined timeframe and effort estimates, most of the time there would be deviations. There might be a case where you need to operate in a hybrid model where a part of your solution resides on the cloud whereas the other part still remains on the on-premises platforms. It is extremely important to look at your solution architecture during such periods of migration in terms of connectivity between the two sets of infrastructures, partial migration scenarios, rollout and rollbacks, and other unforeseen conditions.
Before you dive into the cloud, do consider preparing a proper risk plan and its mitigation steps. We are here to share our experience of cloud computing and migrating solutions from on-premises to cloud infrastructure. Do leave us a comment and we would get back to you.
