The Big Enterprise cloud computing road needs to bypass seven dark pits

Today, more and more big companies are tempted to apply the temptation of software vendors to start thinking about migrating large applications that run in private data centers to the cloud. and the business value of cloud computing, a variety of cloud service providers will often tell the enterprise: Cloud Computing can help enterprises to save costs, enhance IT systems and business flexibility, accelerate application deployment speed, enhance business innovation capability ... Compared to complex traditional applications, using cloud computing services is as easy as turning on an air-conditioning switch, and even corporate CMO and sales executives can handle it themselves. But in reality, the road of enterprise "Cloud Walk" is never the way, but hide all kinds of traps and difficulties.

In fact, the success of building a cloud computing platform or migrating a application to the cloud can never be taken to "touch a stone across the river," the lucky mentality. CIOs should first have a clear understanding of the hidden costs of cloud computing and the implementation planning approach. According to a survey by IDC on China's cloud computing, the immediate need for China's potential cloud computing enterprise users is a comprehensive and clear implementation planning standard to help them put cloud computing from the concept into practice.

A senior IT expert-neil Cavanagh, who is involved in implementing the UK's largest Oracle Business Suite Cloud Computing Migration project, disclosed the complex issues involved in the migration of enterprise applications to cloud computing.

First, the original IT investment problems

The future runs large applications that support thousands of of users, and businesses typically invest heavily in existing IT infrastructures, including resilient server infrastructure, storage systems, and software licensing.

If you migrate an application to the cloud, you need to take a moment to think about how this will affect your existing IT infrastructure, as these moved applications share processing performance, disk resources, and expensive database licenses with other (local) applications.

In addition, if you remove an application, you may have to transfer the existing software license to the cloud service provider, and if you are hosting multiple applications from different vendors on the same cloud computing platform, it will mean that you may be able to pay the software license fee repeatedly.

Second, the supporting application of the problem

Most large systems do not work alone, and you may have many supporting applications from different vendors such as enhanced reporting and data import tools.

So if you're going to migrate apps to the cloud, you need to make sure that the cloud is configured to maintain a normal connection between these apps and the main application. Remember how much of the previous data transfer occurred in the wee hours of the morning? But unfortunately, the early morning is often the cloud service provider to do maintenance time.

In addition, an application suite often requires support from multiple vendors. Before migrating to the cloud you'd better read your cloud contracts and make sure your vendors get access to technical support.

Third, PAAs or SaaS, see labor Law

For the "cloud" of hyper-scale systems, you can usually choose between SaaS (software as a service) or PAAs (platform-as-service) cloud computing models, and you also have to take into account the problems posed by IT staff in both modes.

Your organization may have hired enterprise application experts, database administrators, and other IT infrastructure technicians. If companies choose SaaS cloud Computing Services, many of these it technicians will be dismissed. Many countries currently protect employees through the transfer of operator regulations (transmits of undertakings). This will be a tricky problem for companies that can't get their jobs out of the cloud by embedding them in other departments.

Iv. demand Forecasting and multiple environments

Enterprise application examples are usually divided into "production", "development", "training" and "testing" four categories. For companies with the necessary tools, it is easy to set up these application instances, which is important for testing critical application releases or patches.

For example, business people can visit the "lab environment" to approve major changes to the application, especially when it comes to legal issues.

But application vendors are often reluctant to migrate all of your current instances to the cloud, so you need to assess the impact of the cloud on your release management process and the impact on employees in other parts of the enterprise.

Also remember to check disk space and backup at any time, and try to predict the requirements of the data storage space to ensure that your budget can support this growth, the cloud computing era demand forecasting ability will be the core value of the CIO. Keep in mind that major upgrades, improvements, and changes for compliance often have a significant impact on data storage.

V. Connectivity

Cloud computing is a remotely provided network service, so ensuring connectivity flexibility and reliability is an important metric for evaluating cloud computing services.

Many application providers offer IPSec VPN services, but you still have to make sure that your Internet connection, proxy server, and firewall are reliable enough.

Vi. Component Issues

SaaS Cloud Computing solutions help you solve software management challenges, but you still need to ensure that end users can access and use these SaaS services.

When a local FAT client application is upgraded to a web version of SaaS service, you need to consider some of these issues:

Browser upgrades

Oracle Java

Citrix

ActiveX components

Sometimes some of these components need to be upgraded to the operating system or hardware, so you need to investigate whether the enterprise's desktop environment meets the needs of SaaS services and whether the required components of SaaS conflict with the internal application of the enterprise.

Vii. Evaluation and contract misunderstanding

The migration assessment of cloud computing should be viewed as an independent project.

Large-scale SaaS migrations are often enterprise-wide decisions, not just IT departments, but also the IT sector, especially to avoid the five pitfalls of cloud computing service contracts

For companies that want to avoid changing the cost of a business suite through SaaS, a short look at PAAs could be a quicker way to cloud computing.