Cloud migration is a growing trend, and it offers clear benefits to the companies that make the transition. Little or no investment in hardware, the ability to scale services, and the providers’ handling of all updates and implementation mean that moving to the cloud is often a great choice for companies.
In a cloud migration, however, there are often requests to simply “lift and shift” an application to the cloud. For obvious reasons, line-of-business managers are often attached to the systems their employees already know, and it seems easiest to move those systems to a cloud environment.
In many situations, though, this switch eliminates the benefits associated with cloud technology. The cost of duplicating the system in the cloud and the loss of elasticity that should be a cloud benefit are not realized and, in most cases, the IT team will determine that a lift and shift is not beneficial.
Elasticity Provides Significant Cost Savings
Elasticity is likely the most impactful benefit with a move to a cloud solution because it allows you to only pay for the resources that you need. Consider a company with a variable processing load, like an accounting firm that specializes in public accounting.
From January to April, this firm may require 500 servers, but from August to December they only require 20. From May to July, they require 100 to handle extensions and corporate returns. This type of variability would normally require an on-premise system to invest in 500 servers because that’s what’s needed at the busiest time.
With a cloud system, the accounting firm enjoys variable server accessibility and no longer pays to use 500 servers all year. A company with variable business processing time should keep an eye on their cloud system usage to be sure costs are being optimized.
Applications That Do Well in a Cloud Environment
If you’re new to cloud migration, you may be examining which types of processes can best be completed in the cloud. There are three main components that should be evaluated to determine whether they align well with cloud usage:
Horizontally scalable: The service must be horizontally scalable, which means that a single instance can handle a small number of requests at the same time that thousands of instances are handling many requests.
Fast startup times: If the application isn’t able to quickly start, it won’t do well in the cloud. In order to alleviate the load, it must be able to seamlessly fill the gap without any delay to handle variable demand.
Resilient to server activity: In order for an application to be appropriate for cloud migration, it must be able to handle servers coming and going at will.
Infinium Communications is your source for all of your customized solutions. Talk with one of our consultants to learn more about the variety of services we offer, including cloud communications.