5 Big strategies that teach you how to "get into" the cloud

Companies that plan to migrate apps into the cloud it was supposed to be a very simple and decisive choice, and now there are 5 different choices, namely, re-hosting to the schema (IaaS), refactoring the platform as a service (PaaS), fixing the IaaS or PAAs, and rebuilding on the PAAs Or as an alternative to SaaS. Let these enterprises helpless, each choice has both advantages and disadvantages, it is difficult to choose.

even Gartner Architects are embarrassed when Gartner research director Richard Watson said in a statement: "The CIO easily publishes a simple directive: ' When moving applications into the cloud ', they have a lot to consider, such as business needs, evaluation criteria, and architectural guidelines. "But there is no other better way." All methods require an architect from multiple angles and multiple standards, such as what is IT staff skills? The value of existing investments and whether the application architecture has been met. ”

Gartner gives the IT enterprise the following five migration strategies:

Re-hosting--means redeploying the application to a different hardware environment and changing the application's schema configuration. Re-hosting applications on the basis of not changing the architecture is a fast cloud migration solution.

However, the main advantage of IaaS is that the team can migrate the system quickly without changing the architecture, which can be a major flaw. Because it can affect scalability.

Refactoring platforms--in other words, running applications on the cloud vendor's architecture. The main advantage is that the backward compatibility of services is conducive to the emergence of innovative products in a familiar environment. PAAs means that programmers can reuse language, architecture, and the vehicles they invest in, so they can leverage code that the enterprise deems strategically significant.

The flaw in this approach is the loss of some functionality, the risk of transition, and the architectural lock-in. The PAAs market is still in its infancy, and the functionality that some programmers need to use on existing platforms may not be available in PAAs products.

Fix--Modify or extend existing code to meet the requirements of technical updates, and then complete the migration in a way that hosts or reconstructs the platform. The enterprise can optimize the application by this method, and take advantage of the function that the supplier architecture has cloud characteristic.

The drawback is that starting a development project requires upfront payment to the development team. Modifying the code may be the most time-consuming method, and the size of the modification determines its duration.

Rebuilding--Rebuilding a solution on a PAAs means abandoning the code that is used for existing applications and then rebuilding the application. While rebuilding will lose familiarity with existing code and architecture, the advantage is that rebuilding an application is a way to gain innovative functionality on the vendor's platform. PAAs vendors can increase programmer productivity by applying templates, data customization patterns, meta data-driven engines, and communities.

However, locking is a major drawback, so if the vendor's price or technical adjustment is unacceptable to the customer, they will choose to select the partner-that is, to discard some or all of the application assets.

Substitution means abandoning existing applications and switching to paid service software. So, when business requirements change quickly, this approach avoids investment in development.

The disadvantage is inconsistent data semantics, data access problems and vendor lock-in.

Watson believes that the best option for applying a migration scheme should not be made under isolated conditions. The choice of any cloud migration scheme, which is essentially the decision to modernize the application or architecture, requires the relevant application management manager and the architect management to discuss.