Every Cloud Migration Project Should Ask These Four Questions

I was pleased to recently read about the growing importance of Cloud Migration in the GDPR era, with companies like TCS being recognized by NelsonHall for their Cloud Advisory, Assessment and Migration Services.

The new GDPR regime has many banks and financial institutions asking how it will affect them. Some have turned to me to inquire how they should upgrade their IT infrastructures in order to comply with these new rules. A burden for some, for others this may turn out to be a great opportunity to modernize their legacy infrastructures into a new, highly scalable, and highly secure deployment model that will be able to run new innovations like AI and Analytics workloads faster, cheaper and more efficiently.

So where do we start? Well here are four questions you could ask right now that would determine how to proceed with your digital and data center transformation:

1) Which Cloud Is Right For My Client?

With reasonable levels of security, ease of implementation and low operational cost, the public cloud is ideal when your information and data is used by lots of people and your security standards are not high. On the other hand, if you require maximum levels of reliability and scalability, and greater control over infrastructure and access to more network and computational resources, then a private cloud would be better suited.

But what we are seeing now is the ascendance of the hybrid cloud. The best of both clouds, the hybrid cloud ensures safety, scalability and performance, without many of the pitfalls of public or private clouds. In fact, many large organizations that had invested heavily in the public cloud are now creating hybrid infrastructures and in-house data centers that offer greater control and flexibility. Known as ‘cloud repatriation’, this trend is giving businesses greater control over everything from PO requests, to news and information.

2) Which Applications Should be Migrated?

When considering which applications to migrate and which to keep on premise, will depend on the type of workloads you need to support. For mission critical workloads a public cloud may not be ideal, while some types of financial services workloads, that have spikes throughout the day, may benefit from the flexibility, scalability and increased security of the hybrid cloud.

Which applications should be migrated to which cloud will depend on the need for resource availability, the ability to integrate seamlessly with existing applications and infrastructures, as well as the need to respond quickly to changing demands. With many years of experience advising businesses and organizations on their transition to the cloud, I’ve been able to help them select the right cloud for their needs.

3) Which Instance is Best for My Client’s Workloads?

A “cloud instance” refers to a virtual server instance from a public or private cloud network. Cloud instance computing is highly dynamic, can reassign resources as needed, and allows for the movement of servers as they run in the cloud. The latest instances from specialty public cloud providers are highly optimized for specific workloads such as AI, Analytics or even SAP Hana.

One of the advantages of having Intel as a partner is that we have visibility into which instance is based on what infrastructure. Once we determine what applications are being migrated, each workload can be optimized for every application according to your cloud migration strategy.

4) Which Deployment Model Is Right For My Client’s Business?

The final consideration is what types of cloud services are right for your business based on your unique needs. IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service aims to manage and monitor remote data center infrastructure for compute, storage and networking. Platform as a Service (PaaS) runs on top of IaaS and is mainly targeted towards developers as it allows them to build applications and services over the Internet. Finally, Software as a Service (SaaS) eliminates the need to install and run applications on your computer, making it easier for businesses to streamline their maintenance and support. Again, which deployment model is right for you will depend on what benefits your business needs.

Coming Full Circle

This then comes full-circle back to our first question and the organizational goals you set from an IT perspective. And finally, once you’ve decided on your cloud and deployment model it doesn’t end there. It is crucial when managing workloads across public and on-premise infrastructures, (i.e. in a hybrid cloud), that you have a partner with the ability to analyze telemetry data and make on-the-spot adjustments.

At Intel, we work together with our partners and solution integrators to ensure every cloud deployment is successful. Solutions such as the Intel? Data Center Manager provides real-time power and thermal consumption data—giving you the clarity you need to lower power usage, increase rack density, and prolong operation during outages. And with a modern IT infrastructure, integrating AI apps becomes easier. Our Intel? AI Builders program is an ecosystem of partners that are working to create solutions that make every cloud deployment successful.

If you or a client are considering a cloud migration I would be happy to share how Intel can help. Please leave a comment below, send a personal message or contact me at [email protected].