Moving Apps to Cloud
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This document discusses moving applications to the cloud, including: - Assessing whether an application is suitable for the cloud based on business need, feasibility, and technical fit. Not all applications need to or should move. - Identifying applications that are good candidates based on factors like usage patterns, requirements for scale, and external usage. Applications with many users or public usage are better candidates. - Defining an approach that involves assessing business value, technical fitment, identifying suitable cloud providers, migrating or reengineering components, testing, and managing applications in the cloud. The approach should be aligned with the organization's cloud strategy.
Moving Apps to Cloud
- 1. Moving Applications to the Cloud Abstract: This white paper talks about various aspects of moving application to the Cloud along with some recommendations. Will start with accessing the need for any organization to move their application to Cloud and various parameters that they need to consider while doing so. Authors: Kamalakar Devaki TechMahindra
- 2. Tech Mahindra Limited Contents What is Cloud, Why Cloud ............................................................................................................................... 2 Why Cloud........................................................................................................................................................ 3 Deployment Models (Types of Cloud) ............................................................................................................. 4 Do I need to move my application to Cloud? .................................................................................................. 4 What kind of applications or products can be moved to Cloud? .................................................................... 5 Define your Journey / Approach...................................................................................................................... 6 References ....................................................................................................................................................... 9
- 3. Tech Mahindra Limited What is Cloud, Why Cloud The Cloud is an evolved paradigm which aims at providing unlimited computing power in a completely virtualized yet manageable way by aggregating various resources under single umbrella by hiding how the internals work. Cloud aims at bringing sophisticated on-demand computing services and applications offered by various “providers”. It is bringing paradigm shift the way applications has been thought and developed. Advancements in various technologies especially Hardware (Virtualization and Multi-core Chips), Internet technologies (Web 2.0, SOA), advancements in Data Center Technologies, Distributed computing and Systems Management combined with advancements in communication technologies made Cloud a possibility. It brings benefits not only to the “providers” but also to the “consumers”, here consumer can be an enterprise or an individual who is trying to use / buy a Cloud is bringing paradigm shift the way applications has been thought and developed
- 4. Tech Mahindra Limited “service” from the Cloud services provider. Consumers can attain reduced cost in getting the service needed where as the providers can benefit from reducing the operational costs. Providers can provide 3 types of offerings (or the 3 tenets of Cloud) Why Cloud Reduces IT Costs to manage your assets and also increases business affordability and agility
- 5. Tech Mahindra Limited Reduced IT Costs (Easy to Manage, Improved efficiency) Increases Business Affordability and Agility Maximized reach and availability Reduce Development efforts Deployment Models (Types of Cloud) Private: deployed and managed with-in the premise of an organization / enterprise Public: services available to public over the internet and is available for public Hybrid: services offered in combination of Private and Public clouds Do I need to move my application to Cloud? Not every application is required to be on Cloud and one should understand the need to migrate to the Cloud. To migrate to cloud Organizations should first try to have answers to the following in place Need:
- 6. Tech Mahindra Limited 1. Either to save the operational or infrastructure costs 2. Increase the reach 3. Innovative business modals Feasibility: 1. Check for all the dependencies 2. Architecture fitment analysis (with emphasis of Non Functional Requirements like Scalability, Availability, Security, Response time etc.) What kind of applications or products can be moved to Cloud? Market survey companies like Gartner had come up with the following magic quadrant to help you decide on applications from organization app portfolio to the Cloud This essentially convey that applications which are used by both internal and external users or applications targeted at huge consumer base (which essentially means that they need huge Storage, Compute and High Availability requirements) are the first picks to migrate to the Cloud and, it also says that Organizations should look at the Business Value that is going to be derived by moving the applications to the cloud. Not all Applications can go to Cloud; a thorough analysis on the Business need and Value proposition to be considered.
- 7. Tech Mahindra Limited Define your Journey / Approach If you or your business decides to move certain applications or products to be moved on to the cloud it means that your organization has a cloud strategy and the applications under consideration would add a bigger business value by doing so. Before moving your applications, prepare a checklist which helps you qualify applications whether can be moved to cloud or and prepare a subset of check list which helps in qualify components and subsystems to be moved to cloud and your approach to migration can go in stages – Asses, Identify, Migrate, Test, Deploy, Manage Assess Business Value Do the fitment analysis on how the migration can help your organization or its implementation complexity Technical Fitment and Risk Analysis Your starting point would be doing the architectural analysis or fitment analysis and while doing so, you should consider the following 1. Is the application under consideration is a Web application or Thick client application 2. User class 3. Non functional requirement a. No of users going to use the application(s) b. No of Concurrent users c. Response time d. Security assessment (Threat Modeling) 4. Are there any platform dependencies 5. Does the application or applications under consideration use any 3rd party tools and if so are they available on Cloud? How the movement is going to impact your licensing cost or terms with the vendor. If they are not available on Cloud, are there any alternatives available 6. In case you have an increased scope or additional functionality, prepare impact analysis and corresponding regression, functional test cases along with security and performance Identify / Evaluate right Cloud Provider and components It is very important to evaluate the Cloud provider and the deployment model you might want for your application to be developed or deployed on and you can look at parameters like Business Value and Implementation complexity are the two major parameters that help you identify applications which can be moved to Cloud.
- 8. Tech Mahindra Limited 1. Your providers SLAs 2. Technology stack 3. If they offer any API to develop the application 4. Compute size and charge, this might influence your end licensing and development cost 5. Type of Deployment a. If you don’t want to put your sensitive customer data, you might choose a hybrid approach 6. Back end provider 7. aPaaS components provided by your provider a. Some vendors provide Message Bus or Queues which can be used to decouple your Presentation to Back end or, if their pricing is cheap than the middleware you are using 8. Security providers 9. Their patch update policy Migrate or Re-engineer 1. While doing the architecture analysis, identify and qualify components which can be moved the cloud as is based on the check list created 2. Consider re-engineering those components which doesn’t qualify to be migrated to cloud 3. Which components to be moved first can be decided on a. Top down approach : where in the presentation layer shall be migrated first and the rest Pros: 1. Look and feel doesn’t change or unified look and feel across the application Cons: 1. Have to wait until the whole Presentation layer migration happens b. Bottom up approach: where in the DB or Modal shall be moved first and then the rest 1. Look and feel doesn’t change or unified look and feel across the application Cons: Evaluate and choose the right Cloud provider. Align with your Organizations Cloud Strategy.
- 9. Tech Mahindra Limited 1. Have to wait until the whole DB or back end migration happens c. Use Case based approach: where migration happens use case by use case 1. Can happen in stages so that any Risks or issues can be identified and course-correction can happen Cons: 1. Certain amount of rework keep happening as and when new use cases are added 2. In case you are moving to a completely new platform, there would be look and feel issues or integration over heads etc. 3. In case, you decided to revamp the look and feel, this approach doesn’t come handy 4. Prioritize your new component or functionality development in the middle or last Whatever the approach you take, ensure that you follow a stage wise approach where in you can test the development and ensure that you are in line with your cloud migration strategy. It is important to be in line with your Organization’s cloud Strategy and ensure that you have your IT / Support team buy-in to take the responsibility of supporting the application, it might very well happen that you would end up re-looking at your promised SLAs to your Have a managed services / application support strategy in place. Your provider SLAs can influence your SLAs with yours Customer
- 10. Tech Mahindra Limited customer such as Availability, Reliability etc as you application is going to live in the environment which is totally not in your control or your Cloud provider components doesn’t support such an SLA. References 1. Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing 3. Gartner