Reasons Your Business Needs To Invest In Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a term that is thrown around a lot these days, and most businesses are adopting cloud systems. If you don’t already have a cloud computing system, do you really need one? The short answer is, yes. Cloud computing systems benefit your business in so many ways and even though it is a bit of an investment to get it all set up, you will see a good return on that investment in no time at all. These are some of the main reasons that your business needs to use cloud computing.

• Reduced Costs:
• Storing all of your own data is incredibly expensive. You need to pay for the servers themselves, cooling systems, and then you will need an experienced IT team to deal with the maintenance. If there are any issues, it can be expensive to fix. On top of that, you will have to deal with cyber-security. When it comes to data storage, you can’t afford to take any shortcuts because data loss can be devastating to your business. But if you switch over to cloud storage, you will save yourself a lot of money. Everything will be handled for you, so you don’t need to worry about paying for the upkeep and security. You can also cut back on office space because you don’t need to store all of the servers, and that will save you a significant amount of money.
• Improved Security:
• As well as saving money on security, your data will also be better protected if you store it in the cloud instead. There is always the risk of a physical break in and if laptops containing sensitive data are stolen, you’re in big trouble. But with cloud storage, you will be able to delete things remotely so you don’t need to worry. Cloud security systems also tend to be more effective than those that you implement yourself. However, it is important that you hire an experienced IT company to implement it properly. If you do not use a trusted cloud services provider, you will not get the same security benefits and you may be putting yourself at risk.
• Going Green:
• All businesses should be looking for ways to make themselves more environmentally friendly because it’s a big concern for the consumer these days. If you want to make your office more environmentally friendly, cloud storage is one of the best ways to do that. Not only will you have a smaller office space, you will also be saving a lot of electricity because you are not running large servers all the time.
• Flexibility:
• Flexibility is one of the major benefits of cloud systems because your employees have access to information regardless of where they are. As more businesses move toward remote working and employees are increasingly using their own devices at work, seamless access to information is more important. Implementing a cloud storage system will make things so much easier and you will see an increase in productivity as a result.

Cloud computing is becoming the new norm in business and if you are not using it, you will soon fall behind the competition.

Implementing Governance in the Cloud Era

-by Mr. Anand Prabhu
Customer Success Manager
Synergetics Cloud Consulting

Contents:

• Digital Transformation and its impact on IT Infrastructure
• Challenges faced by Infrastructure teams in adopting the transformation
• Planning the Cloud Journey
• Microsoft Cloud Adoption framework
• Implementing Governance in the Cloud Era

Digital Transformation and its impact on IT Infrastructure

Rapidly changing customer needs is forcing organizations to evolve and adapt. In today’s digital economy, enterprises depend on the effective use of technology to support ongoing business processes, and to drive new sources of competitive differentiation. The influx of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, IoT and ML is rendering traditional businesses redundant. Digital transformation is the new paradigm, that helps enterprises to stay ahead of the competition.  For these enterprises, success or failure ties directly to the effectiveness of their IT service delivery environments. Cloud computing is becoming the foundation for these new environments, as they provide the agility and flexibility.

Challenges faced by Infrastructure teams in adopting the transformation

Cloud computing is setting up a different paradigm for the IT operations model as well as a business growth vehicle. It is transforming the traditional IT roles and is emerging as an important solution offering enterprises a potentially cost-effective model to ease their computing needs and accomplish business objectives.

• Lack of visibility: – Business units within organizations — from sales and marketing to HR and supply chain — see the advantages of cloud computing services. And they are using them, with or without IT’s help. When business functions adopt the cloud without IT’s involvement, the organization often ends up with multiple business units contracting with multiple vendors without understanding the risks or requirements. At the same time, IT lacks the visibility to efficiently and effectively manage these disparate cloud environments, creating unnecessary complexity and cost for the organization.
• Cost Overshoot: – The ease of deploying and scaling cloud services, along with their low cost of acquisition, has resulted in increasingly decentralized IT, or what is referred to as “shadow IT.” This is helping the organizations to become more agile, but the inability to track and control provisioning of the resources incurs an unaccountable cloud spend.
• Lack of Control: – In a cloud environment, there is a principal-agent relationship: the cloud service consumer is the principal and the cloud service provider are the agent. When operational control is released from the principal and delegated to the agent (e.g., outsourced), a mechanism is required to minimize risks and costs. Contracts among business parties often restrict how data is used and who is authorized to access it. When employees move restricted data into the cloud without authorization, the business contracts may be violated, and legal action could ensue. Consider the example of a cloud service that maintains the right to share all data uploaded to the service with third parties in its terms and conditions, thereby breaching a confidentiality agreement the company has made with a business partner.
• Non-Compliance: – These days, most companies operate under some sort of regulatory control of their information, whether it’s HIPAA for private health information, FERPA for confidential student records, or one of many other government and industry regulations. Under these mandates, companies must know where their data is, who is able to access it, and how it is being protected. BYOC often violates every one of these tenets, putting the organization in a state of non-compliance, which can have serious repercussions.
• Increasing Security Risks: – Companies increasingly store sensitive data including intellectual property in the cloud. When a cloud service is breached, cyber criminals can gain access to this sensitive data. If customers even suspect that their data is not fully protected by enterprise-grade security controls, they may take their business elsewhere to a company they can trust. A growing chorus of critics are instructing consumers to avoid cloud companies who do not protect customer privacy.

Organizations are trying to define an efficient path for the new paradigms (software-defined services, private cloud, hybrid cloud, public cloud etc.), which will lead to increased business agility and IT efficiency while lowering operating expenses, cost optimization. This forms part of the long-term organizational vision and strategy of the Executives to support achievement of the strategic directions of the organizations through the IT Strategy. Moving to the cloud offers enormous benefits for businesses. Yet there are risks as well. The challenge is multidimensional, with far-reaching implications not just for the solutions that will run in the cloud, but also for the technologies that support them, the people who need to implement them, and the processes that govern them. There needs to be a reference where one can perform an assessment of his/her organization’s readiness for the cloud and understand what the needs are to fill in the gaps and develop new competencies.

Planning the Cloud Journey

Getting the most out of the investment into public cloud requires changing or adjusting many aspects of work outside of technology. Understand and address all the needed aspects of strategy, governance, operations, skills etc of cloud transformation in condensed and efficient manner. The requirement arises to satisfy

• regulatory compliance,
• create cost value,
• security demands, or
• achieve design consistency

Planning this cloud journey becomes the core focus. Doing the right things right:

• Are we doing the right things?
• Are we doing them the right way?
• How do we know?

A journey without a target destination is just wandering. It’s important to establish a rough vision of the end state before taking the first step. A Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) provides guidance that supports each unit in your organization so that each area understands how to update skills.

Microsoft Cloud Adoption framework

[As stated by Microsoft]

The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure is the One Microsoft voice for cloud adoption, consolidating and sharing best practices from Microsoft employees, partners, and customers. The framework gives enterprise customers guidance, and narratives that help shape technology, business, and people strategies for driving desired business outcomes during their adoption effort. This life-cycle “product” aligns guidance to various stages and iterations of the typical cloud adoption life-cycle, ensuring easy access to the right guidance at the right time.

Adopting the cloud is a journey, not a destination. Along the way, there are clear milestones and tangible business benefits. However, the final state of cloud adoption is unknown when a company begins the journey. Cloud governance creates guardrails that keep the company on a safe path throughout the journey.

Implementing Governance in the Cloud Era

Though the cloud computing is creating a new paradigm for the technologies that support the business, it is also causing shifts in how those technologies are adopted, managed, and governed.  The interests of a cloud service consumer and cloud service provider might initially differ, but their need should be harmonized around the core objectives of reducing cost, supporting multi-tenancy, security, and many other factors. They must also make sure that existing applications and these new digital services are consistently managed in terms of security, reliability, and scalability. This shift of expectations and responsibilities are the challenges that an adoption of good governance practice can mitigate.

The Cloud Adoption Framework governance model identifies key areas of importance during the journey. Each area relates to different types of risks the company must address as it adopts more cloud services. Within this framework, the governance journey identifies required actions for the Cloud Governance team. Along the way, each principle of the Cloud Adoption Framework governance model is described further. Broadly, these include:

• Corporate policies: Corporate policies drive cloud governance. The governance journey focuses on specific aspects of corporate policy:
• Business risks: Identifying and understanding corporate risks.
• Policy and compliance: Converting risks into policy statements that support any compliance requirements.
• Processes: Ensuring adherence to the stated policies.

As governance requirements will evolve throughout the cloud adoption journey, a different approach to governance is required. Companies can no longer wait for a small team to build guardrails and roadmaps on every highway before taking the first step. Business results are expected more quickly and smoothly. IT governance must also move quickly and keep pace with business demands to stay relevant during cloud adoption and avoid “shadow IT.”

Await more Insights on Cloud Governance with Azure.

References

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/cloud-adoption/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/cloud-adoption/governance
• http://www.opengroup.org/cloud/gov_snapshot
• https://dzone.com/articles/how-cloud-governance-can-provide-cost-saving-benef
• https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-security-blog/9-cloud-computing-security-risks-every-company-faces

Latency and Data Gravity on Cloud

Reduce Cloud Latency When Dealing with Data Gravity:

We’ve been been revisiting the concept of data gravity of late and how that impacts where applications are placed. As a quick refresher, the concept of data gravity is simple. As organizations adopt and migrate infrastructure to the cloud, data that remains outside of the cloud starts to gravitate to those applications running in the cloud. As data is pulled closer to that infrastructure, it can reduce latency, increase efficiencies and speed, as well as increase application performance, all of which can positively impact the end user’s experience.

However, some in the industry note cloud latency can be a potential concern. Keith Townsend with TechRepublic noted some possible solutions to counter the potential problem:

In multi-datacenter designs, datacenter managers place workloads closest to the data that is commonly accessed, minimizing the impact of latency. An application hosted in the cloud has the same considerations. The simplest technical solution is to host workloads requiring cloud-based data in the same cloud service.

Another simple solution is to co-locate your non-cloud workloads in a Cloud Exchange… Switch’s Cloud Exchange is a value-add Switch offers to its cloud provider and enterprise customers hosting equipment in their datacenter.  Switch provides the capability of running cross connects from customer equipment to cloud providers. The closer proximity eliminates the need for dedicated circuits between a cloud provider and a customer.

Another option is to purchase on-premises cloud services… Since the data is local to the customer’s datacenter, data gravity doesn’t factor into application performance.

Another tip: some cloud providers are evasive when it comes to disclosing the location of their datacenters. This can complicate latency issues.

Wired notes to really understand latency, you should know the answers to the following questions:

• Are your VMs stored on different SANs or different hypervisors, for example?
• Do you have any say in decisions that will impact your own latency?
• How many router hops are in your cloud provider’s internal network and what bandwidth is used in their own infrastructure?

The idea of being able to transform one’s operations through the use and placement of data is a revolutionary one. And while some processes and workloads physically are restricted to the cloud, with the likes of AWS, Google, Microsoft, and others continuing to refine what it means to physically store data, it’s making more sense for enterprises to increasingly move more workloads and applications to the cloud.

Source: https://blog.rackspace.com/tips-to-reduce-cloud-latency-when-dealing-with-data-gravity-2

Approach to Cloud Security!

More targeted approach to cloud security needed

As business leaders are exceedingly aware, security is a top-level issue for any cloud services deployment. There’s no way for any company to fully take advantage of the cloud and its capabilities unless that organization can feel confident that the data stored in these environments will remain safe always. And while the rise of cloud computing has largely convinced decision-makers to discard many of the myths surrounding cloud security and its exaggerated vulnerabilities, the fact remains that there are data protection issues that must be addressed.

To this end, companies will likely need to embrace more targeted approaches to cloud security. As a recent CloudLock study revealed, most of issues in this area are not the result of inherent flaws in the technology but are rather caused by an extremely small number of users.

A SMALL BUT SERIOUS SUBSET

The report examined the behaviour of approximately 10 million cloud users. Among this sample, 75 percent of all cloud risks were the responsibility of only 1 percent of total users, according to the Washington Times. This segment of cloud users was largely composed of system administrators with advanced privileges. The report explained that a cyberattack which focuses on this subset and manages to gain access to their accounts could potentially lead to company-wide data breaches.

The CloudLock study also determined that some of the users within this subset are machine-based identities, IT Business Edge pointed out. Overlooking the cloud security vulnerabilities generated by this group could put an organization at serious risk of experienced a cybersecurity incident.

“Cyber-attacks today target your users – not your infrastructure,” said Gil Zimmerman, The Washington Times reported. “The best defence is to know what typical user behaviour looks like – and, more importantly, what it doesn’t.”

IMPROVING SECURITY

Naturally, education and training should play a key role in any cloud security effort that focuses on reducing risk among these select users. However, considering their expertise, there is only so much that additional training can accomplish. To go further, IT leaders should also invest in automation solutions. Automation can be used to take on many of the tasks that IT professionals must currently enact, and which present a significant risk of a costly misstep. By reducing the potential for human error, automation can play a powerful part in any cloud security improvement strategy.

Read More on: https://blog.rackspace.com/more-targeted-approach-to-cloud-security-needed

Considerations for Azure Cloud Migrations

By now, you’ve heard it many times and from many sources: cloud technology is the future of IT. If your organization isn’t already running critical workloads on a cloud platform (and, if your career isn’t cloud-focused), you’re running the very real risk of being overtaken by nimbler competitors. Cloud enables the consumption of technology services with reduced infrastructural overhead.

Create a Cloud Center of Excellence CCoE

Finding champions across the organization—beyond IT and from the business—who can help remove barriers and push past inertia.

The AWS article, Key Findings from Cloud Leaders: Why a Cloud Center of Excellence Matters, describes a CCoE as:

“…a cross-functional team of people responsible for developing and managing the cloud strategy, governance, and best practices that the rest of the organization can leverage to transform the business using the cloud. The CCoE leads the organization as a whole in cloud adoption, migration, and operations. It may also be called a Cloud Competency Center, Cloud Capability Center, or Cloud Knowledge Center.”

The message is clear: cloud transformation efforts cannot be turned into Yet Another IT Project. The focus shouldn’t be on technology alone but on the entire business and the people (and workflows) that help you serve your customers.

Assess your current environment

The key to successfully identifying appropriate projects

Enterprise IT environments are complex. It’s not unusual for important elements of an organization’s technology portfolio to be a mystery to all but a few people. And even high-profile platforms often support (or create) dependencies that aren’t fully understood.

Before you begin your cloud journey, it’s vital to have a full understanding of your current situation. This is so important (indeed, fundamental) to success that Microsoft details current state analysis (or discovery) as the first stage of migration.

Azure Migration Workflow

Use security best practices from the beginning

Understand Azure security best practices and build your solutions with those in mind from the start.

Security shouldn’t be an afterthought. Although Microsoft ensures the security of the Azure platform, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your Azure tenant, and the solutions you build, are properly protected.

This is why it’s essential you understand Azure Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to control access to the Azure portal. Use Azure AD as the identity and access management platform for your applications and solutions and employ Azure Security Center to protect your cloud assets from threats.

A security-focused mindset is essential to the ongoing success of your cloud efforts.

• Create a Cloud Center of Excellence: Build a team composed of people from across the enterprise who represent the full business.
• Assess and understand your current environment: Know where you are to move to where you want to be.
• Make security second nature: Secure access to the Azure portal, use Azure AD as your identity and access management solution, and employ the Azure Security Center to protect your cloud assets.

If you follow this checklist, you’ll go a long way towards increasing your odds of success when moving to Azure.

Source: https://cloudacademy.com/blog/azure-migration-strategy-a-checklist-to-get-started/

CLOUD OPTIMIZATION & Ways to improve cloud efficiency

Ways to improve the efficiency of your cloud usage:

With cloud adoption continually growing, companies really need to optimize their cloud presence—both during cloud migration and on-going cloud management—to ensure they’re taking full advantage of cloud solutions.

Many companies rely solely on third-party tooling reports to provide recommendations for optimization—and that’s a big mistake. The reason is, these tools’ algorithms generally calculate only the technology-context recommendation.

With cloud computing firmly established as a basic business tool in virtually every sector, a growing number of company leaders are turning their attention to the issue of cloud optimization. Cloud optimization is fast moving from a luxury to a necessity as cloud services come to form an increasingly large component of organizations’ overall IT infrastructures. It’s no longer enough to simply evaluate and deploy a collection of cloud services – now, firms need to closely monitor these resources to ensure maximum productivity, as well as security and compliance. Efficiency is one of the greatest advantages that cloud solutions have to offer, but firms must take the appropriate steps to ensure they see these returns.

With that in mind, here are three ways to improve cloud usage efficiency in your company.

1. DEVELOP A ROBUST GOVERNANCE STRATEGY

Cloud governance is intricately intertwined with the issue of cloud optimization. Put simply, a governance strategy will determine how a company approaches and oversees its cloud solutions through established policies. As is the case with optimization in general, governance is essential as organizations’ cloud suites become increasingly complex and extensive. Governance is also crucial for ensuring that a firm remains fully compliant with all relevant regulatory measures.

For purposes of achieving superior cloud efficiency, governance is key because it establishes protocols for utilizing and overseeing cloud resources throughout the organization. This includes determining who is authorized to access a given cloud service, what ways a cloud solution can be applied and so on. As a result, governance can and will cut down on inefficient instances of cloud use, ensuring that the resources are only utilized in a responsible, company-approved fashion.

2. INVEST IN CLOUD ANALYTICS

Just as important, if not more so, is the use of high-quality cloud analytics tools.

In order for an organization to ensure that its cloud services operate at peak efficiency, that company must first have a means of determining exactly how, when, where and by whom its cloud resources are being utilized. Cloud analytics can deliver this insight. Additionally, cloud analytics can reveal how the cost and use of a cloud service have changed over time. Without this level of awareness, it’s very possible for a firm to fail to notice that a once-efficient cloud service has become a suboptimal solution.

3. FIND THE RIGHT MANAGED SERVICE PARTNERS

Finally, it is imperative for companies to partner with the right managed cloud services providers if they want to maximize the efficiency of their investments. Cloud MSPs vary tremendously in virtually every way, from the services they offer to reliability to pricing. While obvious, it’s always incredibly important for companies to look for MSPs that make efficiency a priority and have established reputations for delivering results in this area.

Source: https://blog.rackspace.com/cloud-optimization-3-ways-to-improve-the-efficiency-of-your-cloud-usage

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/blogs-anthony-Johnson-cloud-optimization

Business Decision – Why and what to move to the Public Cloud?

Migrating to AWS or Azure

Organizations have begun moving applications and workloads to public cloud at an increasing rate. According to Gartner, the worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud market grew 31% in 2016 to total $22.1 billion1. In 2016, Amazon AWS had the No. 1 market share of 44.2%, Microsoft Azure 7.1% of the market and Alibaba 3.0% of the market.

Organizations are relying on the public cloud for a successful digital transformation. Many organizations have established a cloud strategy and business plan for moving workloads and applications to public cloud infrastructure, but are still working to determine the migration plan to support that strategy. But not all workloads and applications may be suitable for public cloud infrastructure services.

According to ESG Research, 91% of organizations expect to have substantial on-premises infrastructure deployments for the next five years. Most, but not all, applications and workloads can be migrated to public cloud. But just because you can migrate workloads and applications to public cloud doesn’t mean you should. As indicated, most organizations will have hybrid IT environments for the foreseeable future.

3 Essential Steps for Migrating to AWS or Azure Public Cloud

Step 1: Take inventory

The first step in a migration to public cloud is understanding the applications you have, the on-premises infrastructure resources supporting them, and the workload interdependencies. The best way to accomplish this is by using a discovery tool that automates the discovery and dependency mapping process. A discovery tool should provide an accurate inventory of infrastructure that includes:

• Servers (physical and virtual, hypervisor, OS, CPU, RAM, disk)
• Software (+EOL), databases, web sites
• Network devices (switches, load balancers, etc.)
• Storage (devices, but also their logical partitioning)

Discovery tools will collect server specification information, server to storage relationships, performance data, and details about running processes and network connections. Use the learnings from the discovery tool to help establish a migration sequence, minimize downtime and assist in test plans.

Step 2: Evaluate applications

Not all applications and workloads are well suited for public cloud. When developing a migration plan, it is essential to evaluate the workloads and applications that are candidates for moving to the public cloud. The considerations must be measured against the goals of your cloud strategy and the potential business risk. The key is to examine all applications and workloads under a consistent framework – not on an ad hoc basis.

When assessing the readiness for running applications in the public cloud, all the options need to be considered – from retaining as is, to replacing.

Rehost

Redeploy an application to a cloud-based platform without modifying the application’s code. The reason for doing a lift and shift can be to quickly scale in order to meet a business need. Established applications that were not designed for efficient use of infrastructure will most likely cost more to run in a public cloud. Because of this, a simulated migration is recommended for rehosting applications to prevent cost surprises.

Refactor/Rearchitect

Refactoring/rearchitecting involves making modifications to the application, application framework or runtime environment. This can include making application code or configuration changes to attain some tangible benefit from moving to public cloud platform without making major changes to the core architecture of the applications.

For example, you may swap out a database server for a cloud service equivalent to reduce the amount of time you spend managing database instances. The goal is to get some optimization benefit from public cloud service with very little code change to the application.

Rebuild

For applications that you wrote, redesigning and rebuilding a cloud-native application on a provider’s PaaS may be worth the investment. This typically provides better performance and lower costs (if done correctly). This may be the right choice for applications that are business-critical, but not designed to take advantage of the services offered on a cloud platform. In addition, non x86-based applications, like mainframe and midrange applications that rely on operating systems other than Linux and Windows will need to be rewritten. This is the most expensive option, but the investment to rewrite an application may be worth it if looking to boost agility, reduce costs and improve business continuity.

Replace/Repurchase

For commercial, on-premises applications, replacement with a SaaS offering may be the best solution. Many vendors offer both SaaS and on-premises solutions now. And even if the preference is to run on-premises, many ISVs have upgraded their applications to better run on cloud platforms and it could be a matter of upgrading the application to a more current version.

Retain

Running applications on-premises is always an option. It may make good business sense to keep some applications on-premises. Lower costs and better security and compliance are strong considerations for doing so. Not every application benefits from a cloud platform. Applications that have static workloads with no agile demand, and that are running on stable systems, are good candidates to be retained on-premises.

The application evaluation phase also provides an opportunity to identify applications and workloads that are no longer needed or lack the business justification to warrant the ongoing cost to support them. This is a great time to rationalize your portfolio.

Step 3: Analyze cost

Migrating applications to public cloud platforms is a business decision that requires both financial and technical assessment. This is particularly important if the migration includes rehosted or refactored applications. If a preliminary assessment of the cost difference for running these applications on-premises vs. in a public cloud is not done, you will most likely get a big cost surprise later.

In a recent BMC survey, 40% of respondents stated they are unclear of their costs associated with cloud – even though lower cost was the primary driver (45%) for moving to public cloud.

Every IT organization should have a history of resource usage and workload patterns for their applications, along with the unit cost of infrastructure resources. Many organizations gather this information routinely and use it for chargeback or showback for IT infrastructure costs. If you do not have this information, you can still gain cost insights – they just won’t be as accurate. At a minimum, you need a unit cost for on-premises infrastructure resources and compute, storage and network resources for the workloads and applications you want to migrate. Otherwise you have no costs to compare.

The first step for determining cost of on-premises vs. public cloud costs is to identify the resources needed in public cloud. You can start by identifying the closest type of VM instance and configuration needed in public cloud. For AWS, this will be an EC2 instance and for Azure, a Windows VM. AWS has over 90 different types of VMs to choose from, and each type has multiple configurations from which to choose, and multiple locations or regions. Azure also has similar choices.

Once you have identified the compute resources, you must determine if you want to pay an on-demand price or a 40-60% discount price that you can get with one or three-year service commitments. AWS refers to these discounted VMs as Reserved Instances. If you have not yet selected a public cloud provider, you will want to compare costs across providers. Without having an automated tool to do this analysis for you, this effort can take weeks, depending on the number of applications and workloads you are analyzing.

There may be special storage, database or network resources that you need to identify and factor in as well. Once the analysis is completed, you should view it as a snapshot in time. IT environments are naturally dynamic, so costs will change over time. An ongoing cost management practice is essential to regulating operating and capital expense for a hybrid, multi-cloud environment.

Moving forward

Developing a migration plan takes time and a dedicated team. To streamline the effort and reduce time, you can use a solution like BMC Discovery to automate the discovery and dependency mapping work, and TrueSight Cloud Cost Control to automate the public cloud resource selection and pricing options evaluation. Once you are ready to begin migration, both AWS and Azure offer tools to help you move workloads and applications to their platforms.

Migration is just the first step of incorporating public cloud into your IT environment. To keep costs under control, you will need to establish a capacity management practice to ensure you are optimizing the use of public cloud and on-premises resources. And because of the change from capital expense to operating expense associated with this move, you will need to have an ongoing cost management practice to ensure that you adhere to both capital and operating budgets and maximize your IT infrastructure investment.

Source: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/3-essential-steps-for-migrating-to-aws-or-azure-public-cloud/

 

Strategize and plan workload migration to Public Cloud

Closer look at Cloud Migration

Organizations conviction in moving to the Public Cloud is getting stronger day by day. IT teams of all Enterprises today agree that cloud is becoming a key part of their IT Investments. But when it comes to the planning for the migration of the workloads from on-premise to cloud, unfortunately there is still a lot of confusion about what to move, how to move it and the best practices to follow to ensure smooth migration. A successful migration is possible only if there is a clear vision and plan for the migration defined.

Regardless of your current IT environment or your vision for migrating to the cloud, numerous strategies exist that can accommodate your cloud-migration approach. Fortunately, this range of options allows you to proceed with caution while making progress toward your ultimate objective.

Top Five Cloud Migration Strategies

1. Re-hosting

Sometimes referred to as “lift and shift,” re-hosting simply entails redeploying applications to a cloud-based hardware environment and making the appropriate changes to the application’s host configuration. This type of migration can provide a quick and easy cloud migration solution. There are trade-offs to this strategy, as the IaaS-based benefits of elasticity and scalability are not available with a re-hosting deployment.

However, the solution is made even more appealing by the availability of automated tools such as Amazon Web Services VM Import/Export. Still, some customers prefer to “learn by doing,” and opt to deploy the re-hosting process manually. In either case, once you have applications actually running in the cloud they tend to be easier to optimize and re-architect.

Re-hosting is particularly effective in a large-scale enterprise migration. Some organizations have realized a cost savings of as much as 30 percent, without having to implement any cloud-specific optimizations.

2. Re-platforming

This strategy entails running applications on the cloud provider’s infrastructure. You might make a few cloud-related optimizations to achieve some tangible benefit with relative ease, but you aren’t spending developer cycles to change an application’s core architecture.

Advantages of re-platforming include its “backward compatibility” that allows developers to reuse familiar resources, including legacy programming languages, development frameworks, and existing caches of an organization’s vital code.

An unfortunate downside to this strategy is the nascent state of the PaaS market, which doesn’t always provide some of the familiar capabilities offered to developers by existing platforms.

3. Repurchasing

This solution most often means discarding a legacy application or application platform, and deploying commercially available software delivered as a service. The solution reduces the need for a development team when requirements for a business function change quickly. The repurchasing option often manifests as a move to an SaaS platform such as Salesforce.com or Drupal. Disadvantages can include inconsistent naming conventions, interoperability issues, and vendor lock-in.

4. Refactoring / Re-architecting

This solution involves re-imagining how an application is architected and developed, typically using the cloud-native features of PaaS. This is usually driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.

Unfortunately, this means the loss of legacy code and familiar development frameworks. On the flip side, it also means access to world-class developer’s tools available via the provider’s platform. Examples of productivity tools provided by PaaS providers include application templates and data models that can be customized, and developer communities that supply pre-built components.

The primary disadvantage to a PaaS arrangement is that the customer becomes extremely dependent on the provider. The fallout from a disengagement with the vendor over policies or pricing can be quite disruptive. A switch in vendors can mean abandoning most if not all, of a customer’s re-architected applications.

5. Retiring

Typically, the initial step in the cloud migration process is the discovery of your entire IT portfolio. Often, this discovery process entails application metering to determine the actual usage of deployed applications. It’s not unusual to find that anywhere between 10 to 20 percent of an enterprise IT estate is no longer being used. Retiring these unused applications can have a positive impact on the company’s bottom line; not just with the cost savings realized by no longer maintaining the applications, but by allowing IT resources to be devoted elsewhere, and by minimizing security concerns for the obsolete applications.

Source: https://www.imperva.com/blog/2018/01/five-cloud-migration-strategies-for-applications/

Why Adopt a Public Cloud

by: Ajay Khankhoje

Cloud and Virtualization- the buzz words of recent years have put many of us fazed in multitude of ways – What Cloud Means to our company? What Cloud offers to our product? Do we really need this? How to virtualize our existing servers? How to make load balanced servers? How to migrate existing application to cloud? What about cloud certifications? What about security of data in cloud? My client is a bank, should we migrate them to cloud without compromising on data security? We Offer complete range of cloud services from Planning Services, Lift & shift Services, Application Development, Integration Services, Build & Deployment services and Migration Services. Cloud Services leverage the new paradigm of cloud development helping customers overcome the limitations of existing IT architectures. Our Development process our fine tune to speed up the project’s time to market. PaaS: Compute | Spike | Scale Compute Overview : Most companies are undergoing a tough phase during the software development lifecycle. The key issues include setting up the server that hosts the web application, install and configure operating system, run time environment, setup test environment and other required middleware. Companies spend most of their time and resources to set up the development platform which is expensive and tedious process. These issues can be addressed by building and deploying applications on Cloud. Synergetics PaaS delivers a robust platform, allowing developers to build, test and deploy applications with ease. Letting the enterprises focus on application and innovation, rather than managing complex computing resources. Benefits : Application development framework : Our PaaS solution supports any frameworks that are based on the language of choice for that platform and lets you to build and run any number of applications as per your requirements. Improved resource utilization: Our solution streamlines application management by providing a stable and homogenous platform. Allowing enterprise to improve infrastructure utilization and speed up the productivity. Reduced cost: PaaS solution eliminates the cost of buying and managing hardware, software, platform tools and kits needed to build apps. Instead, all these are delivered as a service and offers a pay-as-you-go model. Spike Overview: Organizations have their business applications running on different workloads, that completely rely on the usage patterns. Some applications have stable users and some spiky and others unpredictable loads. For example, any eCommerce or gaming sites might experience spiky loads during holidays or time of day or day of the week. So, building and running application with on-premises infrastructure during spike demands incurs high up-front cost and requires additional resources to accomplish high performance. Synergetics addresses this by providing a highly scalable PaaS environment that ensures auto scaling of network, storage and compute resources as per the growing business needs. Benefits: Continuous delivery of products by overcoming any system crashes from unexpected spikes in demand Eliminates the downtime issue, customers can access applications comfortably during optimal usage periods Improve the speed of your production and outsome by letting the customers have a better access experience without any outages issue Scale Overview: Companies using complex and expensive on-premises infrastructure are likely to experience peak traffic issues. Due to the fluctuations in traffic pattern, there would be low utilization rates of high cost computing resources and maintaining them is also a huge hassle. Synergetics provides the reliable, scalable, secure, and high performance infrastructure required for the most demanding web applications. Enables Auto Scaling of servers that can grow or shrink on demand, that is it launches or terminates instances based on load. This shared platform automatically allocates the resources without changing the existing infrastructure, allowing users to deploy easily regardless of any application requirement changes. Benefits: Faster time to market: We provide highly scalable and automated PaaS solutions for developing applications efficiently, irrespective of any frequent changes made with the application requirements. Best fit for Agile: The scalable feature of our PaaS solution suits well for Agile application methodologies, by provisioning necessary platforms with an iterative and incremental development process. Improved collaboration: With PaaS solution, developers build applications rapidly by having an effective collaboration with the dev teams working at different geographic locations. IaaS: Core Infrastructure | Storage | Identity | Hybrid IT Core Infrastructure: Overview: Some recent research reports say that businesses are experiencing critical pressure in managing IT infrastructure efficiently, with a huge concern over cost savings and speed-to-market. Enterprises invest more than 75% of time and budget in managing the IT infrastructure such as servers, storage, identity and security services, networking and IT processes and compliance. This is essential to manage efficiently in today’s highly business competitive environment. Synergetics helps you understand and strive for a more secure, well-managed, and dynamic core infrastructure that will help enable you to reduce your overall IT costs, make better use of IT resources, and make IT a strategic asset for your business. Also, it supports IT professionals in the management of servers, desktops, mobile devices, and applications and in achieving high utilization rate of resource usage to eliminate unnecessary IT resource costs and complexity, ensuring your continuous business growth and outcomes, and establishing a responsive infrastructure. Synergetics delivers highly secure, scalable and well-managed core infrastructure with on-demand access to virtual servers, helping enterprises achieve extraordinary business value. Benefits: Highly scalable: We provide a flexible and scalable compute infrastructure, wherein you can quickly provision resources to meet your on-demand business requirements. Reduced cost: Core infrastructure minimises overall IT cost by offering a pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for what you use. It also eliminates the complexity of unmanaged IT management by moving it to a dynamic Cloud environment. More secure: The dynamic core infrastructure is more secure and less vulnerable. Thus, the highly automated and proactive infrastructure management improves the speed of production and hence, outcomes. Storage Overview: As business technology continues to evolve, facing major challenges in storing and managing large volumes of data, the volume of information available to businesses continues to grow exponentially and needs to be stored, managed, and used by the business to drive future decisions. This storage management process is tedious and expensive. The main drivers for this information explosion include: Compliance – the requirement for legal and regulatory needs to store essential information; Business Value – the more a business knows about its markets, customers, competition, and overall business climate the better decisions they can make for the future; Customer Satisfaction – as business technology has increased, so too has consumer technology. Customers in all markets are becoming increasing tech savvy and demanding more from the businesses that serve them. This challenge can be addressed by Cloud storage. Synergetics Cloud storage provides a scalable and secure data storage, allowing you to access and manage your critical data efficiently. Benefits: Fast data access: Synergetics Cloud Storage provides fast and easy access to your data stored in multiple geographic locations. High utilisation rates: With Synergetics Cloud storage, soaring data can be moved to the Cloud, allowing you to store and manage the data efficiently. This increases utilisation rates without the hassle of maintaining the storage space. Robust storage: We ensure highly robust storage for your high potential data with a perfect data-backup solution to manage and maintain data with ease. In addition to this, unlimited storage capacity to scale up and down as per business requirements is available. Cost saving: Synergetics Cloud storage reduces costs through automation of storage management functions. This storage is highly elastic and provides virtualised resources to optimise cost and performance. Identity Overview: Industries started moving their workload to the Cloud, witnessing a real challenge in authorisation and access models in a Cloud environment. The primary issue is identifying users and creating appropriate access to enterprise resources while maintaining control and security. To accomplish this, Synergetics provides the organisation with a simple and strong Identity and Access Management solution to perform secure Cloud access with protection against threats. The highly secured solution creates value-added services that plug-in to any enterprise system and quickly integrates with a broad range of commercially available enterprise software packages. This results in reduced complexity, operational maintenance and business process costs. All leading to minimize on-going capital expense and rapid up time-to-market. Synergetics IAM solution provide all the benefits of the Cloud and achieves simplicity and robustness in every deployment, allowing enterprises to focus more on product innovation while seamlessly maintaining the highest level of security. Benefits: Increases productivity: We enable organisations to increase productivity by providing users self-service capabilities to manage their profile accounts independently. Users can enable single sign-on, instead of using multiple usernames and passwords. Faster synchronisation: Our IAM service extends your on–premises directory to automatically sync up with the Cloud. In addition, it simplifies the user and access management to Cloud resources. Meets on-demand business needs:The entire process of Identity and Access Management is critical for a growing, on-demand business. Our IAM solution helps easily reconfigure existing processes with new business processes. Hybrid IT Overview: Businesses often struggle finding an ideal solution to handle infrastructure for delivering heavy projects and scaling up, as per business requirements. By providing a common platform that spans private and public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud enables organizations to dynamically scale their IT infrastructure without changing the existing technology. Write, deploy, and manage applications in the Cloud the same way it is currently done. Synergetics delivers a solution for this by providing a secure and reliable Hybrid Cloud service, which supports your current workload and runs a number of applications effortlessly. Synergetics Hybrid IT advice is built on a seamless architectural solution that is quickly customizable to support your application and security needs. We can stretch your network layers seamlessly from your data center to a Cloud platform Hybrid service without the need for manual configuration changes. Network virtualization enables us to configure your security firewalls and network as on-premises data centers so that you can replicate the network your applications need to operate. Common Identity and Access Management across your onsite and offsite Cloud locations are provided. Benefits Core benefits of Hybird IT include: Quick shift of existing technology: With a Hybrid Cloud, enterprises can move their existing infrastructure quickly without any changes and provide a flexible application availability to experience the maximum benefits. Cost saving: Hybrid Cloud saves costs of buying an in-house server and allocates resource for scaling on-demand projects without investing in the local IT infrastructure. Data security: Hybrid Cloud provides high data security by keeping potential data behind the firewall and outside the public Cloud with proper data compliance.

Benefits of Onsite Training

The advantages of onsite training are many; first and the foremost is the overall cost and higher quality training itself. You will see your budget numbers going up when your staff will be sent to some remote location to attend a training course. Professionals do not have to leave their workplaces to receive training. That saves both time and energy and the training is proven to be more efficient as individuals receive hands-on experience relevant to their career profile.

On-site training might be right for you if there are five or more people in your group who need training on the same subject area, and you want a tailored approach to the course content around your application. Read on to find more reasons for choosing onsite training program.

Flexible: It is flexible as you will be the judge and making every decision. You will be choosing the ideal location or the environment, including the time structure and the training days i.e., evenings or weekends.

The saving: Yes, the saving aspect. You will not just be saving the cash in your pocket but also your precious time. It is time-efficient as delegates do not have time to travel usually. Based on the class size, duration and complexity you will can save a lot.  Plus, the cost of travelling and accommodation will be eliminated.

Maximise training budget: Since you will be saving around 30% to 60% of your expenses, you can spend that money in other things that really matter. You can spend on other training needs. See what your team needs the most, soft skill classes on productivity or collaborative work culture adoption.

Tailored program content: Focusing on the key points and challenges of your team and tailor the program accordingly. Tailoring your program will guaranteed make your training unique and relevant, which, in turn, will make utilizing the proven strategies highly effective during a crisis situation.

Consistent Learning: Everybody will be learning together, it will be consistent, rational and every member of the team will be on the same page. By having your employees trained at the same time by the same instructor, they will learn the same skills, essentially putting them all on the same page. Onsite training fosters teamwork as employees from different departments come together to discuss challenges faced by the organization.

Better results: This training also encourages team building. Delegates from different departments can take the training and understand each other’s role. They learn to work with each other and resolve conflicts.On-site training combines the knowledge retention gains of live training with the ability for workers to learn in their own environment, resulting in the best skills gain for your workforce.

In an effort to reach maximum number of students and provide them the training they need, Synergetics India offers several training programs. With onsite training, our instructor will come to your company’s location and provide the training that your employees need.