Successful Cloud Migration Practices And Strategies

Cloud migration is the process of migrating the company's data, applications, services etc. from its local premises to cloud servers. The reason for migration is to avail the services or applications or related data of an organization over internet but only to a closed group of users. After cloud is deployed in an organization’s working processes, the effect of pre and post-cloud deployment must be analyzed.

Cloud migration is based on five simple steps of Purchase, Plan, Assess, Execute and Monitor. Each of it is supposed to be a stage of practicing efficient cloud deployment.

• Purchase, the service from the cloud computing companies. Renting cloud in working is not about renting servers but the whole management system needed to manage the servers properly. Company should analyze that cloud providers are serving with the services like user administration, help desk, compatibility for existing system etc.
• Plan, the usage of services by thorough assessment of organizational processes and other resource utilization.
• Assess, to use the platform not only as a cost saving media but also to make revenue out of it.
• Execute the security measure other than those drafted by the cloud provider. Encrypt the data at local machine, at local cloud to secure data at every terminal it passes by.
• Monitor, or measure the success rate after deploying the cloud in working process. Check to see if there is any considerable amount of change in productivity. Deploying cloud is the not the main goal of organization. Rather, to improve the productivity is the crucial task for a company.

A large numbers of cloud vendors are present in the market with strategies of their own. Each cloud facility comes with the level of security and customization to its customers. Some cloud strategies from different vendors are:

• Microsoft's Hyper-V cloud, built using server 2008 and Microsoft Azure, the little inter-operability between them is what it lacks.

• Red Hat's cloud strategy is built around JBoss middleware for promoting this interoperability and portability with the goal to offer various programming languages, frameworks over the cloud.                                           

• Eucalyptus provides an open source product of its cloud with the commercial version, Enterprise 2.0, availing the features not present in the open source version.                                                   

• VMware Cloud Strategy is mainly focused on Public Cloud attribute. It provides the full control over web-applications and cloud server. Companies can customize and scale the services according to their changing requirements.                 

Cloud migration could help software development firms to improve their working capability with strategic utilization of different resources to maximize the productivity. At the same time it could be painful for the company to deploy cloud if requirements are not studied properly in order to figure out the optimum strategy and which vendor to associate for the services.