Cloud Migration Part 1: An Overview

NPR on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 29, 2008

You know it’s important when NPR covers it !! On the “All Things Consider” radio show, NPR took a look into cloud computing. I’m not sure if Computing In The…

Sun Federal Cloud Computing eBook

By G C Network | August 28, 2008

Sun Federal now has it’s ebook on cloud computing available for all. The website doesn’t really offer any new information, but it does highlight how Sun Federal is targeting the…

Amazon Elastic Block Store

By G C Network | August 27, 2008

Last week, with their announcement of Elastic Block Store, Amazon has made enterprise class storage in the cloud a reality. According to Dion Hinchcliffe of Ziff Davis,”Elastic Block Store finally…

HP CTO On the Future

By G C Network | August 26, 2008

In a recent Web Guild article, Shane Robinson, Chief Strategy & Technology Office for HP outilined his belief that we are in the early stages of a major shift. As…

Google serves as first line of defense during Russia’s invasion of Georgia (A plug for the cloud)

By G C Network | August 25, 2008

As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, “As Georgian troops retreated to defend their capital from Russian attack, the websites of their government, also under fire, retreated to Google. In…

Apptis and Servervault announce Fedcloud

By G C Network | August 22, 2008

On August 18th, Apptis announced a partnership with ServerVault to offer a trusted cloud computing environment to federal agencies. Called Fedcloud they are offering a federally compliant, on-demand infrastructure that…

SOA-R Educational Series Schedule Changes

By G C Network | August 21, 2008

Since launching the SOA-R series back in July, cloud computing has become a hot topic among national security professionals. Evidence of this high level of interest is obvious from the…

Comments from Mr. Robert Carey, DON CIO and Army COS General George W. Casey, Jr

By G C Network | August 20, 2008

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to listen to both Mr. Robert Carey, CIO, Department of the Navy, and General George W. Casey, Jr., Chief…

Akamai at SOA-R Session

By G C Network | August 19, 2008

Had another very enlightening SOA-R session last week. Of particular note to me was Akamai’s vision of cloud computing. As presented by Fran Trently, Sr. Director Public Sector, Akamai is…

Six Benefits of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 18, 2008

A Public CIO magazine article, to be published later this fall, will highlight six main benefits of cloud computing. Reduced Cost Increased Storage Highly Automated Flexibility More Mobility Allows IT…

Cloud Migration Part One: An Overview

 

Business is all about efficiency and effectiveness.  In today’s world, however, those twin goals almost always lead to cloud migration.  This anecdotal observation is supported by Gartner which sees worldwide public cloud service revenue jumping to over $300B by 2021.
Independent research from Market and Markets echoes this expectation in its cloud migration services forecast which sees this market subset growing from $3.17B in 2017 to $9.47B by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24.5%.  With migration being such a high priority activity, many organizations are looking for the most efficient and effective cloud migration strategy.
In addressing this query from thousands of customers worldwide, IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) has migrated applications in just about every industry.  These migrations have targeted global service providers like AWS and Azure, as well as regional and local ones.  The best practices GTS has honed through these experiences include:
  • How to understand and classify business critical data;
  • Executing an efficient process for screening and selecting applications for cloud migration;
  • Following a methodology for discovering the most effective strategy for each application migration; and
  •  Selection of the most cost-effective and industry aligned cloud service provider(s).

Experience has also shown that businesses are in different stages of their “Journey to the Cloud.”  These initial stages often include:

  • Planning and designing common foundational infrastructure services;
  • Pattern and Template based automated deployments for public clouds;
  • Migrating workloads to the most appropriate cloud through a standardized, repeatable tool driven framework;
  • Monitor and Manage workloads using standardized tools and process aligned to cloud platforms; and
  • Governing, tracking, managing and optimizing cloud usage and spend.
These common best practices and initial stages are common to the most successful cloud migration projects.
This series, presented in four weekly installments, lays out the details of how leading organizations have transformed themselves through cloud migration and how GTS has embedded industry best practices into their hybrid cloud service delivery model.  “Part Two: Classifying Organizational Data,” covers the identification of key business processes and their associated data types.  The article also the outlines the importance of identifying process data owners and the required security controls for each data type.  “Part Three: Application Screening,”looks at determining the most appropriate target deployment environment, each application’s business benefit, key performance indicator options and target return on investment.  That segment also shows how to select the most appropriate migration strategy for each application.  “Part Four: Executing The Migration” presents experience informed guidance on how to effectively and efficiently execute a cloud application migration strategy.  This segment includes selecting the most appropriate cloud service provider and technology services, reviewing and verifying available data security controls and suggested steps for SLA negotiations.  It also addresses business/mission model alignment, organizational change management, and migration project planning.
The series also presents the three most common cloud adoption paths for business, namely:
  • Innovation:Building cloud-native applications using the DevOps model;
  • Agility:Modernizing and migrating legacy applications and infrastructure to a native cloud model; and
  • Stability:Managing workloads and infrastructure in clouds and on premises

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.

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