Demystifying IaaS Adoption for Enterprise Applications

Abstract

Despite the growing spend on cloud technologies,

enterprises worldwide are plagued with this

question, “Which among the many is the best

solution for us?” There are no straight answers,

and very few have embarked on this journey,

confident of the cloud solution chosen for their

environment. For the majority, a possible

approach would be to partner with technology

specialists to find the most suited cloud service

suite.

This paper discusses how an Infrastructure as a

Service (IaaS) model of cloud computing could be

a viable option for mid-size enterprises on their

path to cloud adoption. Most businesses may

disrupt their application environment moving to a

model like Software as a Service (SaaS). With

IaaS, however, you can migrate stable

applications to a private cloud environment and

experience immediate benefits. We have laid out

a pragmatic approach for enterprises across

industries that will accelerate their journey

toward cloud adoption.

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Confronting the Fear of the Unknown

Considered one of the major disruptions in the IT industry, cloud

computing makes IT infrastructure, software platforms, and

applications available, round-the-clock, and with much ease.

However, like any other new technology adoption, this also

comes with a host of challenges, such as high costs, numerous

subscription models, lack of a holistic support service, and so

on. Which is why organizations must address these concerns

before taking the plunge:

n What is the right cloud solution for a certain business

environment?

n What is the right time to do the transition?

n Will this disrupt business continuity?

n Are the projected benefits (commercial or operational) real?

With these questions, you may think risks far outweigh the

benefits. However, the numbers paint a different picture.

Gartner predicted that the highest growth in the public cloud

services market in 2017 will come from IaaS, projected to reach 1

$34.6 billion. The problem, therefore, does not lie in the

solution, but the lack of planning.

Perhaps, organizations should then prepare to answer:

n Is their current application landscape stable? Does it have the

required features for ensuring seamless operations?

n Are the application license costs optimized?

n Is IT elasticity needed for the enterprise application

landscape? In other words, will infrastructure requirements

fluctuate frequently or will they be stable with some need for

data growth?

n Does the application landscape change so dynamically that

on-demand provisioning is needed?

These may provide the necessary rationale for adopting IaaS

with minimum disruption and risks, especially if the answers for

the first two queries are affirmative.

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Transitioning with the Right Approach

It is clear, enterprises across industries are at the tipping point

when it comes to building and investing in 'cloud first'

strategies. As public cloud services mature, most companies are

operating in a hybrid IT ecosystem, while maintaining their 2

traditional, on-premises hosting environments. For those still on

the verge of making a decision, it is important to ensure:

Perfect timing—specifically, when the current on-premises

infrastructure is scheduled for a refresh. Financially, it makes

sense to plan for the migration at least six months before the

refresh cycle because once the investment is done in new

infrastructure, you will have to wait for some three to five years

until the next refresh cycle.

A right-sized environment—that is, provision only what is

required. Technology specialists will analyze and recommend

appropriate compute and storage for workloads. As some

software product vendors have different licensing models

depending on the hosting environment, it's critical to analyze

this aspect to optimize the cost.

An extended network—to the private cloud environment. This

will help avoid concerns regarding application performance

owing to bandwidth issues post migration, as well as eliminate

risks related to network security. As the migration process is

resource intensive, a separate high bandwidth link between the

source and destination data centers will be ideal to ensure

business-as-usual (BAU) activities. This ensures volumes of data

from the source to the destination is transferred seamlessly

within a short timeframe. Based on heuristics, for transferring

eight terabytes of data per day, two 1-gbps dedicated links are

recommended (four terabytes per link).

Replication mechanism—leveraging the tools offered by

product vendors to replicate data from one environment to the

other. This becomes simpler when the storage and compute

products utilized are the same on both source and destination

sides. However, when the two sides are different, the process

must include a proof of concept to demonstrate the application.

This is a critical exercise, and its vital technology vendors are

consulted for selecting the right tools.

Inventory and application grouping—when migrating

applications from one data center to another. Ideally, this data

should be available in a configuration management database

(CMDB). Unfortunately, ground realities are different. Most

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companies seldom have a complete, updated CMDB. For such

cases, an IT architect familiar with the enterprise ecosystem can

collaborate with different application teams to create a

comprehensive inventory. Once done, applications move groups

can be created easily with appropriate sequencing.

Testing—to alleviate stakeholder apprehensions about

applications not functioning as-is post migration. Furthermore,

this process will be in phases, with the Development and QA

environments being migrated before Production. Testing the

applications in these environments, especially QA which is

quasi-Production, can address concerns centered on ensuring

minimum business disruption. Hence, applications and business

teams must invest time on testing, focusing on integration and

performance rather than the functional aspects.

On that note, all risk-averse stakeholders will still worry about

applications functioning in the new production environment. In

our experience, the most common question has been: What is

the rollback plan to go back to the original environment?

As part of the usual process followed by planning teams, a

detailed plan can be presented that highlights how the

configuration changes can be reverted to the source

environment. However, this is far from reality. Once the new

production environment is switched on, there is no going back.

In case of issues, these are generally fixed in the new

environment itself. This is usually because of the complexities in

configuring integration points, IP addresses, security, and so on,

are too many to seamlessly switch back to the older

environment. This might be why testing before go-live becomes

critical, with no scope for a rollback. Such transformation

projects, therefore, must be approved and backed by executive

mandates to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page.

Of course, this entire migration plan is incomplete without

factoring in the operational aspects post go-live. At the very

least, this must comprise a monitoring system and reporting of

key metrics. A cloud management portal for ease of provisioning

of infrastructure and for publishing regular reports on utilization

and showback metrics must be instituted. All these may not be

available on the first day after go-live, but there must be a plan

in place to have these up and running in a reasonable

timeframe.

Some immediate benefits, like the ones listed below, can be

demonstrated almost within a quarter of go-live:

n Capex to Opex conversion with overall TCO reduction

n Preserving the investment made in software application

licenses

n Improved performance, with right-sizing and new

infrastructure

n Showback data to report the application-wise usage of

infrastructure

n Experience of migrating to an external data center so that

future cloud strategy can be thought through judiciously.

Conclusion

IaaS and a private cloud can be a perfect launch pad for

enterprises to get over the fear of unknowns. Thereafter, the

right cloud model must be chosen judiciously, which in most

cases is a hybrid model.

We believe that if the aspects that we have outlined here are

given due attention, then there should be no reason for such a

migration to be unsuccessful.

References[1] Gartner., Press Release: Gartner Says Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market to

Grow 18 Percent in 2017 (February 2017), accessed November 14, 2017,

https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3616417

[2] Gartner., 2017 Planning Guide for Cloud Computing (October 2016), accessed

November 14, 2017,

https://www.gartner.com/binaries/content/assets/events/keywords/catalyst/catus

8/2017_planning_guide_for_cloud.pdf

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About The Author

Navin Verma

Navin Verma is the Client

Partner of two large accounts

within the HiTech business unit

at Tata Consultancy Services

(TCS). He is responsible for

revenue growth, service

delivery and operations, and

customer relationship

management in these

accounts. With over 20 years of

experience in the IT industry,

Verma has played several key

roles across account

management, consulting,

delivery, program

management, and pre-sales in

different domains including

HiTech, Travel and

Transportation, as well as

Healthcare. He holds a Master's

degree in Computer

Applications from the Institute

of Management Technology,

Ghaziabad, India, and has

completed the Tata Group

Executive Leadership course

from the Ross School of

Business, Michigan, USA.