Migrating into a Cloud Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing Definition

It is a techno-business disruptive model of using distributed large-scale data centers either private or public or hybrid offering customers a scalable virtualized infrastructure or an abstracted set of services qualified by service-level agreements (SLAs) and charged only by the abstracted IT resources consumed.”

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▪ Cloud computing turned attractive to large enterprises because they could pass on the additional demand from their IT setups onto the cloud while paying only for the usage and being unencumbered(no restrictions) by the load of operations and management.

The Promise of the Cloud

▪ In small and medium enterprises, cloud computing usage for all additional cyclical IT needs has yielded substantial and significant economic savings.

▪ Cloudonomics – – This economics and the associated trade-offs, of leveraging the cloud computing services, now popularly called “cloudonomics”.

The Promise of the Cloud

The Promise of the Cloud • Many startups opened their IT departments exclusively using cloud services—very successfully and with high ROI. • Having observed these successes, several large enterprises have started successfully running pilots for leveraging the cloud. • Many large enterprises run SAP to manage their operations. • SAP itself is experimenting with running its suite of products: SAP Business One as well as SAP Netweaver on Amazon cloud offerings.

The Cloud Service Offerings and Deployment Models

BROAD APPROACHES TO MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD ▪ migration of an application into the cloud can happen in one of several ways: – application is clean and independent, so it runs as is Or

– some degree of code needs to be modified and adapted Or

– design (and therefore the code) needs to be first migrated into the cloud computing service environment; Or

– finally perhaps the migration results in the core architecture being migrated for a cloud computing service setting, this resulting in a new architecture being developed, along with the accompanying design and code implementation. Or – while the application is migrated as is, it is the usage of the application that needs to be migrated and therefore adapted and modified

BROAD APPROACHES TO MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD

▪ migration can happen at one of the five levels ▪application, ▪code, ▪design, ▪architecture, and ▪usage.

▪ migration of an enterprise application is best captured by the following: ▪ P - application before migration running in captive data center ▪

application part after migration

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part of application being run in the captive local data center

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application part optimized for cloud

▪ Migrating into the cloud is driven by economic reasons (Cloudonomics) – Cost cutting in both the IT capital expenses (Capex) as well as operational expenses (Opex). – short-term benefits - opportunistic migration to offset seasonal and highly variable IT loads – long-term benefits

▪ If the average costs of using an enterprise application on a cloud is substantially lower than the costs of using it in one’s captive data center and ▪ if the cost of migration does not add to the burden on ROI, then the case for migration into the cloud is strong.

▪ factors that play a major role in the cloudonomics of migration – licensing issues – SLA compliances – pricing of the cloud service offerings

Deciding on the Cloud Migration ▪ WideBand Delphi Techniques - to make decisions – A questionnaire with several classes of key questions that impact the IT due to the migration of the enterprise application is posed to a select audience chosen for their technology and business expertise. – M – No. of classes – Bi – weightage – maximum of N questions

▪ weightage-based decision making as M 3 N weightage matrix as follows:

Xij – degree of relevance of answer to question

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD ▪ Step 1:Cloud migration assessments – understand the issues involved in the specific case of migration at the application level or the code, the design, the architecture, or usage levels. – In addition, migration assessments are done for ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

the tools being used, the test cases as well as configurations, functionalities, and NFRs of the enterprise application.

– Result of Assessment formulation of a comprehensive migration strategy.

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD ▪ Step 2:Isolating all systemic and environmental dependencies of the enterprise application components within the captive data center.

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD ▪ Step 3:Generating the mapping constructs between what shall possibly remain in the local captive data center and what goes onto the cloud. ▪ Step 4:substantial part of the enterprise application needs to be re-architected, redesigned, and re-implemented on the cloud. ▪ Step 5:leverage (use) the intrinsic features of the cloud computing service to augment our enterprise application

▪ Step 6:validate and test the new form of the enterprise application with an extensive test suite that comprises testing the components of the enterprise application on the cloud as well. – These test results could be positive or mixed.

▪ Step 7:Iterate and optimize as appropriate. After several such optimizing iterations, the migration is deemed successful.

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD ▪ typical components of the best practices accumulated in the practice of the Seven-Step Model of Migration into the Cloud.

Typical migration into the Amazon AWS ▪ six steps ▪ First Phase: cloud migration assessment phase wherein dependencies are isolated and strategies worked out to handle these dependencies. ▪ Phase 2: Try out proof of concepts to build a reference migration architecture. ▪ Phase 3: Data migration phase wherein database data segmentation and cleansing is completed. This phase also tries to leverage the various cloud storage options as best suited. ▪ Phase 4: either of the following 2 strategies are used – A “forklift strategy” of migrating the key enterprise application along with its dependencies into the cloud is pursued. Or – “Hybrid Migration Strategy” ▪ the critical parts of the enterprise application are retained in the local captive data center while noncritical parts are moved into the cloud.

▪ Note:– The typical migration into the Amazon AWS subset of our Seven-step Migration Model and is very specific and proprietary to Amazon cloud offering – Seven-step model is more generic, versatile, and comprehensive

Migration Risks and Mitigation ▪ Migration risks for migrating into the cloud fall under two broad categories: – the general migration risks and – the security-related migration risks.

Migration Risks and Mitigation ▪ General Migration Risks – identifying all possible production level deviants; – the business continuity and disaster recovery in the world of cloud computing service; – the compliance with standards and governance issues; the IP and licensing issues; – the quality of service (QoS) parameters as well as the corresponding SLAs committed to; – the ownership, transfer, and storage of data in the application; – the portability and interoperability issues which could help mitigate potential vendor lock-ins; – the issues that result in trivializing and noncomprehending the complexities of migration that results in migration failure and loss of senior management’s business confidence in these efforts.

Migration Risks and Mitigation ▪ security-related migration risks

– issues of trust and issues of privacy – legal compliances ▪ rights to all audit trails at a detailed level

– Key aspects of vulnerability management and incident responses quality are yet to be supported – IT data leakage in the cloud computing environments is acknowledged – Issues of consistent identity management