In the modern connected world, businesses across the globe are embracing the operational efficiency and financial predictability enabled by cloud computing. The prowess of cloud has divided the businesses (and software vendors) into two camps – those that have already adapted & migrated to it and those that are yet to. While some of the latter might find some solace in ‘milking’ the investments already made, the cost many-a-times is more than the ‘evident’ dollars on their P&Ls. As IT becomes core to most businesses today, cloud has the potential to render greater agility, better efficiency and improved RoI to give you the competitive edge needed. Here is how…
Breaking Myths
Businesses often don’t know what they are missing out on and lose their competitive edge. Based on hearsay, a lot of businesses today have a lot of misconceptions about cloud. We thought it might be a good idea to break some.
Lack of Security
As the solution and data reside on cloud, they are susceptible to security breaches.
On the contrary, safeguards that cloud providers (MS, Amazon etc.) offer are better than what individual organizations can afford. Data masking, encryption, multi-factor authentication, security center for infrastructure security etc. are part of their services. Also, through legal contracts, you de-risk yourself from security incidents’ liabilities.
Too expensive
Because it involves ongoing license fee and rented rack space, it must be more expensive.
Not quite true, if you factor in all expenses. Also, capex investments accounting for future requirements imply expense on stuff that you aren’t using most of the time. With cloud, you can you’re your commitment level (Reserved or on-demand) for resources while ensuring capacity, availability and reliability.
Scarcity of Skills
Current resources/employees supporting the solution aren’t equipped to support the migration to cloud.
Though cloud is a revolutionary model, implication for developers isn’t grave. It does demand knowledge of tools and design but doesn’t imply a major departure from conventional programming skills. In fact it makes eases development as with out of the box capabilities like search, authentication, caching, notification, queue management etc.
Lack of Connectivity
Connectivity to the internet which is implicit for Cloud places a restriction on businesses.
Few businesses today are ‘disconnected’ from internet, so for most part, this reasoning is unrealistic given the way businesses operate today. For unavoidable circumstances (such as out in the field), a good design can ensure ‘offline’ availability of solutions. Cloud providers offer data and storage sync services out of the box.
It’s all or none
If you move to cloud, you have to take everything you have to it.
Not true. All leading cloud providers allow for a hybrid approach. You can retain the resources/infrastructure (Confidential Data, Directory servers, source control etc.) that you have already invested in. Applications on cloud can communicate with your on premise applications and vice versa. This allows for a gradual complete transition to the cloud.
That’s great,
but why should I move to cloud?
Scalability & Performance
On demand scaling up/out (automatic or manual for CPUs, Memory, Storage, Services etc.) ensures that you pay for the resources when you use them. You are assured of predictable performance as the only variable with cloud that you need to worry about is the bandwidth at the point of usage.
Easier maintenance
On demand scaling up/out (automatic or manual for CPUs, Memory, Storage, Services etc.) ensures that you pay for the resources when you use them. You are assured of predictable performance as the only variable with cloud that you need to worry about is the bandwidth at the point of usage.
Security
No more nightmares of managing solutions with multiple versions across customers. With automated processes and dev-ops tools for roll out to QA, staging and production, a release is a matter of a few clicks. Notifications for failures, exceptions, peak-usage, changes in infrastructure topology and user profiling/diagnostics make health monitoring of the application simpler.
Predictable expenses
All cloud vendors provides upfront break-up of the likely costs based on your needs. There is provision for scaling up/down and in/out resources you need by the minute. Knowing your usage profile and making a longer term commitment to resources can further boost your savings. You won’t spend a dime on resources meant for contingency that never produce any tangible value.
Ubiquity of access
If you would like your staff and customers to be able to access your solution in a secured way from anywhere, cloud is the way to go. This eliminates the unnecessary need for age-old VPN setups and other controls before one can gain access to El Dorado! Now, a crashed laptop or a broken mobile device need not make business wait.
Integrations made easier
On premise systems introduce an added layer of complexity while integrating with 3rd parties. Management of ports, firewalls, IP addresses (and the list goes on) often stretches implementation, migration and troubleshooting. With cloud, all integrations are managed in a uniform way where you focus on whats important – business!
Better Quality control
To improve quality, it’s important to gather relevant data, analyse it and then act. It often proves to be a quandary as one needs to build diagnostic capabilities, get data feeds through firewalls and tailor analytics based on customizations. With cloud, most of it can be automated and the rest simplified as there is one source catering to many.
Disaster recovery
Those who have gone through ISO certifications might relate to this better. It’s a good business practice to have a business continuity and disaster recovery plan in place to mitigate risks your business might be exposed to. You need not build unnecessarily expensive redundancy or spend precious time for it. Cloud offers this out of the box! With predictability…
Still not convinced?
Here is an array of features & benefits that cloud providers make available to make life a lot easier!
How do we ease the transition for you?
As we said earlier there are two camps when it comes to cloud computing – those who have already made the transition and those who are about to. If you are either of those, we have something in store for you. Below is a depiction of how we help you through your journey from the shackles of ‘on premise’ era to the ‘freedom’ of the modern cloud.
Setup processes and support for DevOps
Completion of development doesn’t mark the end of responsibilities for a product manager. In fact, the rub lies in the management of the solution/product after that. We help you ease that out by implementing processes and tools in the cloud that makes release management, support and operational expense planning easier. This is enabled through
- CI/CD, cloud provisioning, scale management, security scans, vulnerability testing, performance testing etc.
- Management of scripts, databases, servers, version control systems, Load balancers, firewalls and containers
- Monitoring the production environment and configuring necessary controls to manage resources such as memory, CPU, storage, services etc.
- Maintenance and support of your application portfolio through enhancements, hot-fixes, patches and major/minor releases.
- Preparing, managing and fine-tuning cost projections based on your changing context.
Assessment & Modernization Planning
For those of you new to the concept of cloud computing, we can help you chalk out a plan for taking your existing on premise solutions to the could. The assessment will take into account your context, considerations and future needs. We perform an in depth analysis and present you with a comprehensive report on:
- Your current solution architecture and design
- Analysis of what can be reused and what needs to be modified
- Infrastructure and/or services you can leverage from your cloud provider
- Processes where challenges exist in the current setup and their repercussions
- Comparison and recommendation on cloud provider selection based on capabilities, cost and other softer considerations
Development and RoI realization
While knowing how to drive is imperative to win a race, it always helps to know the track. With the help of our experts we do all the heavy lifting and enable you to focus on business aspects that matter. We help you with development, end-to-end testing, integration with 3rd party systems, UAT and go-live support. As part of this complete journey, below are a few things that will matter to you.
- Development in accordance with coding guidelines based on industry best practices
- Structured, planned and documented trail of quality assurance processes and activities
- Transparent project management enabled through online tools that tie different pieces of SDLC together with associated approvals
- Tracking of project progress, team/individual performance and other metrics of importance from an operational and financial perspective
- Close collaboration throughout to ensure alignment of the team’s efforts with your business objectives
Design for cloud enablement and migration
We understand that sifting through tons of documentation from several cloud vendors isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Having explored these technologies for a while, we can help you short circuit that by putting our knowledge and experience to good use in a well-encapsulated manner. To help you visualize ‘how’ you can reap business benefits of cloud, we
- Put in place the solution design for cloud, customized to your application
- Plan a migration strategy for a smooth transition from you current on premise solution
- Put together cost estimation to help you forecast your operational expenses
- Identify the key metrics you will find useful to monitor different aspects such as application functionality usage, performance, resource usage, licensing, expenses and other such relevant details.
- Recommend the roles and team structure you would need during the implementation and application support later
Chalk out the processes you can implement to make maintenance and release management easier in future
To ease your transition to cloud
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