moving apps to cloud

Moving Applications to the Cloud

Abstract:

This white paper talks about various aspects of moving

application to the Cloud along with some recommendations.

Will start with accessing the need for any organization to

move their application to Cloud and various parameters that

they need to consider while doing so.

Authors:

Kamalakar Devaki

TechMahindra

http://www.techmahindra.com/

Tech Mahindra Limited

Contents What is Cloud, Why Cloud ............................................................................................................................... 2

Why Cloud ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

Deployment Models (Types of Cloud) ............................................................................................................. 4

Do I need to move my application to Cloud? .................................................................................................. 4

What kind of applications or products can be moved to Cloud? .................................................................... 5

Define your Journey / Approach ...................................................................................................................... 6

References ....................................................................................................................................................... 9


What is Cloud, Why Cloud

The Cloud is an evolved paradigm which aims at providing unlimited computing

power in a completely virtualized yet manageable way by aggregating various

resources under single umbrella by hiding how the internals work. Cloud aims at

bringing sophisticated on-demand computing services and applications offered by

various “providers”. It is bringing paradigm shift the way applications has been

thought and developed.

Advancements in various technologies especially Hardware (Virtualization and

Multi-core Chips), Internet technologies (Web 2.0, SOA), advancements in Data

Center Technologies, Distributed computing and Systems Management combined

with advancements in communication technologies made Cloud a possibility.

It brings benefits not only to the “providers” but also to the “consumers”, here

consumer can be an enterprise or an individual who is trying to use / buy a

Cloud is bringing paradigm

shift the way applications

has been thought and

developed


“service” from the Cloud services provider. Consumers can attain reduced cost in

getting the service needed where as the providers can benefit from reducing the

operational costs.

Providers can provide 3 types of offerings (or the 3 tenets of Cloud)

Why Cloud

Reduces IT Costs to

manage your assets and

also increases business

affordability and agility


Reduced IT Costs (Easy to Manage, Improved efficiency)

Increases Business Affordability and Agility

Maximized reach and availability

Reduce Development efforts

Deployment Models (Types of Cloud)

Private: deployed and managed with-in the premise of an organization / enterprise

Public: services available to public over the internet and is available for public

Hybrid: services offered in combination of Private and Public clouds

Do I need to move my application to Cloud?

Not every application is required to be on Cloud and one should understand the need to

migrate to the Cloud. To migrate to cloud Organizations should first try to have answers to

the following in place

Need:


1. Either to save the operational or infrastructure costs

2. Increase the reach

3. Innovative business modals

Feasibility:

1. Check for all the dependencies

2. Architecture fitment analysis (with emphasis of Non Functional Requirements like

Scalability, Availability, Security, Response time etc.)

What kind of applications or products can be moved to Cloud?

Market survey companies like Gartner had come up with the following magic quadrant to

help you decide on applications from organization app portfolio to the Cloud

This essentially convey that applications which are used by both internal and external

users or applications targeted at huge consumer base (which essentially means that they

need huge Storage, Compute and High Availability requirements) are the first picks to

migrate to the Cloud and, it also says that Organizations should look at the Business Value

that is going to be derived by moving the applications to the cloud.

Not all Applications can go

to Cloud; a thorough

analysis on the Business

need and Value

proposition to be

considered.


Define your Journey / Approach

If you or your business decides to move certain applications or products to be moved on

to the cloud it means that your organization has a cloud strategy and the applications

under consideration would add a bigger business value by doing so.

Before moving your applications, prepare a checklist which helps you qualify applications

whether can be moved to cloud or and prepare a subset of check list which helps in

qualify components and subsystems to be moved to cloud and your approach to migration

can go in stages – Asses, Identify, Migrate, Test, Deploy, Manage

Assess

Business Value

Do the fitment analysis on how the migration can help your organization or its

implementation complexity

Technical Fitment and Risk Analysis

Your starting point would be doing the architectural analysis or fitment analysis

and while doing so, you should consider the following

1. Is the application under consideration is a Web application or Thick client

application

2. User class

3. Non functional requirement

a. No of users going to use the application(s)

b. No of Concurrent users

c. Response time

d. Security assessment (Threat Modeling)

4. Are there any platform dependencies

5. Does the application or applications under consideration use any 3rd party

tools and if so are they available on Cloud? How the movement is going to

impact your licensing cost or terms with the vendor. If they are not available

on Cloud, are there any alternatives available

6. In case you have an increased scope or additional functionality, prepare

impact analysis and corresponding regression, functional test cases along with

security and performance

Identify / Evaluate right Cloud Provider and components

It is very important to evaluate the Cloud provider and the deployment model you might

want for your application to be developed or deployed on and you can look at parameters

like

Business Value and

Implementation

complexity are the two

major parameters that

help you identify

applications which can be

moved to Cloud.


1. Your providers SLAs

2. Technology stack

3. If they offer any API to develop the application

4. Compute size and charge, this might influence your end licensing and

development cost

5. Type of Deployment

a. If you don’t want to put your sensitive customer data, you might

choose a hybrid approach

6. Back end provider

7. aPaaS components provided by your provider

a. Some vendors provide Message Bus or Queues which can be used to

decouple your Presentation to Back end or, if their pricing is cheap

than the middleware you are using

8. Security providers

9. Their patch update policy

Migrate or Re-engineer

1. While doing the architecture analysis, identify and qualify components which

can be moved the cloud as is based on the check list created

2. Consider re-engineering those components which doesn’t qualify to be

migrated to cloud

3. Which components to be moved first can be decided on

a. Top down approach : where in the presentation layer shall be

migrated first and the rest

Pros:

1. Look and feel doesn’t change or unified look and feel across the

application

Cons:

1. Have to wait until the whole Presentation layer migration

happens

b. Bottom up approach: where in the DB or Modal shall be moved first

and then the rest

1. Look and feel doesn’t change or unified look and feel across the

application

Cons:

Evaluate and choose the

right Cloud provider.

Align with your

Organizations Cloud

Strategy.


1. Have to wait until the whole DB or back end migration happens

c. Use Case based approach: where migration happens use case by use

case

1. Can happen in stages so that any Risks or issues can be identified

and course-correction can happen

Cons:

1. Certain amount of rework keep happening as and when new use

cases are added

2. In case you are moving to a completely new platform, there

would be look and feel issues or integration over heads etc.

3. In case, you decided to revamp the look and feel, this approach

doesn’t come handy

4. Prioritize your new component or functionality development in the middle or

last

Whatever the approach you take, ensure that you follow a stage wise approach where in

you can test the development and ensure that you are in line with your cloud migration

strategy.

It is important to be in line with your Organization’s cloud Strategy and ensure that you

have your IT / Support team buy-in to take the responsibility of supporting the application,

it might very well happen that you would end up re-looking at your promised SLAs to your

Have a managed services /

application support

strategy in place.

Your provider SLAs can

influence your SLAs with

yours Customer


customer such as Availability, Reliability etc as you application is going to live in the

environment which is totally not in your control or your Cloud provider components

doesn’t support such an SLA.

References

1. Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

3. Gartner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

moving apps to cloud

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