Those applications that are suitable for migration

To enable it to transfer some of the application and infrastructure management work to another service provider. Some applications have been replaced with SaaS models, such as e-mail, but there are applications that they still want to be firmly in their hands without having to deal with the underlying infrastructure. As a result, applications are not converted to SaaS models, such as human resources and enterprise monitoring. Dealing with this microsecond balance is the best thing to do right now, so consider the use of public cloud to implement infrastructure as service (IaaS).

With the public cloud IaaS, businesses can be very handy when it comes to dealing with their own things, because they are hosted on a per-use basis or by each resource group, hosting their virtual servers to an external cloud service provider. There are a few companies using public cloud, and such services can be obtained from Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, RackSpace, Sun, Teremark Global and telecoms companies.

In this way, an enterprise's IT department can maintain control over the application, without worrying about server configuration, upgrades, patches, and other infrastructure maintenance efforts. If a department is to deploy a new application, IT department only needs to upload the application to the service provider's virtual server, and the application can be used by the user.

A recent report by Forrester found that about 25% of the surveyed companies plan to use external providers to achieve IaaS.

Most of the companies ready to adopt IaaS are expected to save a lot of costs, Lynda Stadtmueller, a senior research analyst at Frost &sullivan's stratecast department. In a recent study, she found that a small business, after migrating 4 servers into the cloud, essentially shut down the data centers within the enterprise, achieving a 50% cost savings. Although the study involved only a small business, she said the statistics here are valuable because "it is impossible for big companies to migrate all the infrastructure of their data centers into the cloud at once." ”

In other words, even large companies can migrate only a small number of servers at a time, so the statistics can be seen as something that big companies can do.

The main sources of cost savings are the upgrades and maintenance costs of equipment, the delay in electricity costs, and the reduction in labor costs. Most data centers are configured for peak operations, but day-to-day operations are based on low usage rates, thus wasting valuable resources.

Bernard Golden, the CEO of Hyperstratus Consulting and the author of the virtual Dummies, also agreed that IaaS would provide a lifeline to the cost of data centers, which could be extended by property restrictions. It also provides enterprises with the opportunity to reduce the burden of data center management and improve customer service.

Focus on Compliance

However, Golden cautioned that there are many other factors to consider, such as how to effectively migrate data to the cloud, how to address data security issues stored in the cloud, how to meet compliance requirements, how to avoid software license confusion, how to test delay issues, etc. And how to recycle applications and data when it managers change their minds, or when their relationships with cloud services break down.

Amylin Stewart says he and his team have solved all these problems before migrating the traditional apps of the enterprise to the cloud. In fact, before he started migrating a byte, he formed a "tiger team" that examined 50 to 60 services that his IT team could offer and then decided which services were appropriate for IaaS. We examined in detail the costs of licensing, maintenance, labor, electricity and infrastructure support services. Then sort by the cost of each service to see if you can save costs by implementing IaaS services, "Stewart said.

"Unless you have a good feeling about the spending that you use, it's impossible to really make a sensible decision," he said. It is this foresight that allows Stewart and his team to explain to business leaders the impact of migrating enterprise applications beyond the enterprise. "Companies may want 5, 9 reliability, but a lower-cost IaaS might be more attractive," he said.

Amylin's IT team ultimately determines that applications such as testing and research, human resources and enterprise monitoring are key applications for the enterprise, but do not require infrastructure support within the enterprise. He advises companies to think more about apps that are more backend and less consumer-oriented.