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Although some companies have the sophistication to build their own clouds, they're the exception. Most companies need help, so don't go into this alone. An entire industry is just waiting out there to help you. Don't ignore it. Beg, borrow, steal, but get help. Talk to your peers who have done some early cloud projects. Consult with systems integrator, technology companies, and other consultants who have solid experience with best practices. Some cloud Web sites and organizations have great ideas and collaboration opportunities.

Cloud computing will be around for a long time, so get experience now. Start with a pilot project. For example, you might want to start with a Software as a Service platform. You might use a public cloud for testing a new application before it goes into production. This gives you a feeling for what it means to give up this level of control. NOTE You are still responsible for the integrity and security of your information. Finding out how to manage your cloud vendors is an important starting point.

It's easy to make the assumption that if something is in the cloud, you don't have to worry about managing it. This isn't true. Although many cloud providers allow you to have a portal view of their own service levels, it's your responsibility to keep track of any service you have put into either a public or a private cloud. Because many companies inevitably have a hybrid environment, you need to manage your overall service level.

Don't get carried away. Not everything belongs in a cloud. For example, your data center might have a large, complex, and customized application used by a dozen people. It's critical to your business. You have no economic or business reason to move that application to the cloud. Do your homework so you have guidelines to help you determine if an application or a function belongs in the data center, a public cloud, or a private cloud.

It's easy to get caught up in the mix-and-match euphoria and forget about the nitty-gritty issues. Pay close attention to the security implications of moving to the cloud. You still need a well-planned security strategy.

Start with the business process that you want to automate with your cloud initiatives. No matter which form of cloud you're considering, process is the building block. If you haven't figured out how business processes will be managed in this new distributed world, your business could be at risk.

If you don't pay attention to compliance and governance, you're putting your company at risk. For example, some industries require that you store data in a very specific way. Some countries require that your customer data never is stored outside of its territory. You still have to comply with government regulations. These issues don't disappear into a cloud.

Just because you're thinking about moving into the cloud doesn't mean architecture is no longer important. In fact, it's more important than ever. You'll probably have business services that are designed for reuse that should be stored in a private or public cloud that need to be designed for reuse. You will likely have a hybrid environment that needs to be well planned to conform to your company's service level agreement and performance requirements.

You might start looking at some approaches to the cloud that sound really good. But before you jump in, do the math. How large is your company? What's the nature of your computing environment? How many applications do you support? How much does your current environment cost? How much spare capacity do you have in your data center? Are there applications that can cost effectively be moved to a Software as a Service model? Before you do anything, follow the money.

Many business people who want to save money fast are tempted to throw out the data center and put all computing into a public cloud. Although this might sound good for a few hours, it isn't a thoughtful approach. In the end, you might decide which capabilities that you should put into the cloud, but you need to do your homework first. For example, do you have compliance issues to consider? What is the difference in cost between a public, private, hybrid, or even a traditional data center? You need to make sure that all the possible impacts have been considered before you spring into action.

Migrating to the cloud is a major move for any organisation. It impacts all stakeholders including the employees, the clients, the executive team and the cloud service provider. So, it is extremely important to consider all the relevant factors before moving to the cloud. The most important ones are:  Business considerations  Data safety and security  Interoperability, portability and integration  Service level considerations  Pricing and commercials  Hosting and geographical considerations  Contingency and recovery management  Ethical and legal considerations  Scalability and flexibility considerations Business Considerations Organisations move to the cloud to overcome certain inefficiencies and achieve higher operational parameters. If the cloud vendor is too focused only on delivering technical outcomes, chances are that they may not really understand the business needs of an organisation. Such a partnership that fails t...

Organisations move to the cloud to overcome certain inefficiencies and achieve higher operational parameters. If the cloud vendor is too focused only on delivering technical outcomes, chances are that they may not really understand the business needs of an organisation. Such a partnership that fails to deliver services streamlined to business objectives becomes meaningless. If you are an organisation in a specific market vertical such as healthcare, banking or retail, it is recommended to choose a cloud service provider with vast experience and expertise in the same industry. Such niche providers deliver optimum results even while playing along with other cloud partners of the organisation.

 Cloud integration is the process of configuring multiple application programs to share data in the cloud. In a network that incorporates cloud integration, diverse applications communicate either directly or through third-party software. Cloud integration offers the following advantages over older, compartmentalized organizational methods. Each user can access personal data in real time from any device. Each user can access personal data from any location with Internet access. Each user can integrate personal data such as calendars and contact lists served by diverse application programs. Each user can employ the same logon information (username and password) for all personal applications. The system efficiently passes control messages among application programs. By avoiding the use of data silos, data integrity is maintained and data conflicts (which can arise from redundancy) are avoided. Cloud integration offers scalability to allow for future expansion in terms ...

The ability to move an entity between different systems seamlessly to be used on the target system is termed as Portability. The entity could be data or application. Data stored in a particular database should be usable by many systems without the need to re-enter data. This can be achieved by using a common data format for sharing between different services. The syntax and semantics of the data are to be the same for easy of portability. XML is a common format used for data portability universally, and it works really well with multiple systems. Application portability can be defined as the ability to transfer a particular application and/or its components between different cloud services. The application should have the ability to be recompiled and re-linked to ensure ease of portability. Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are universally used routines, protocols and tools to make application portability easier. A good API contains all building blocks of that application to be r...

Interoperability is the term used to explain the degree to which different systems or components work together without any glitches. According to IEEE and ISO, interoperability can be defined as the ability of two or more systems or applications to exchange information and mutually use the information that has been exchanged. In cloud computing, interoperability can be understood as the capability of diverse systems to understand the applications and interfaces, authentications, configurations, data formats etc., between public, private and hybrid clouds. This capability helps all the systems to cooperate and interoperate to work seamlessly. For Example: Google authentication can be stated here as an excellent example for interoperability. Regardless of the device that the user has, all the Google applications share and access authentication data within themselves in a seamless manner. A user can login to Gmail from a particular device and can use all the Google services like You...

Standards and Best Practices Cloud computing delivers a fine set of benefits, however, with certain risks involved. With standard practices that have proved to mitigate risks and enhance the chances of cloud success, the move to the cloud can turn out to be a real game-changer for any organisation. Cloud Computing Standards Organisations There are a lot of cloud computing standards organisations and informal groups that are dedicated to address various standards issues that arise in any cloud environment. These groups have defined various guidelines and best practices to help interoperability and portability of data and applications. Some of the well-known organisations are as follows:  National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), United States.  Cloud Security Alliance  Open Grid Forum (OGF)  Object Management Group (OMG)  Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF)  Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)  Storage Networ...

Once you have chosen the right cloud vendor and equipped yourself with the right expertise for the cloud, here is a list of practical issues  to be remembered to make the cloud journey as smooth as possible.  Proper negotiation of service level agreement  Vendor lock-in  Change in organisational culture  Compliance and security of data  Commercial implication of shipping large volumes of data  Integration of the cloud into the existing system Service Level Agreements (SLA) Some cloud solutions providers offer higher service level guarantees in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. SLA has been defined majorly to understand the consequences of the failure of a service and has nothing to do with the actual reliability of the service. The cloud providers need to guarantee the service that they will offer in case they are hired. The guarantee of up-time and services that are hired are to be noted in the SLA. In...

Some of the best practices of cloud implementation are as follows: Best Practice #1 Choose the right cloud service provider With the checklist outlined in the first section of this chapter, making the right vendor choice becomes easy for any organisation. Assess their availability, performance and security measures well before you start working with them, and focus on crafting a foolproof SLA. Best Practice #2 Adopt a phased-in approach While moving to the cloud, organisations literally share their right of control over their data with the cloud vendors. While this may be a difficult decision to make, using the phased-in approach can reduce the mental stress caused due to physical relocation of data. In this approach, the organisation moves data to the cloud only in parts rather than putting the whole thing into the cloud. Best Practice #3 Leverage the goodness of the cloud with creativity Cloud offers an unprecedented level of flexibility and scalability to enterpr...

One of the most significant benefits of cloud computing is cost savings. It eliminates the need for upfront capital investment and also cuts down on costs such as space, power and personnel. Five significant ways in which cloud enables cost cutting are: • The pay-as-go-model eliminates the need to spend on the purchase and maintenance of idle servers. • The cost of maintenance (personnel, power and space) is taken care of. • It allows businesses to focus on their core business functions, thus paving the way for better innovation and greater revenue. • It eliminates the need to spend on additional resources as the business expands. Cloud model is highly scalable at a fraction of the cost. Cost for back-up, restoration, depreciation and replacement of faulty hardware are taken care of by the service provider. This is a huge cost cutting measure as compared to the traditional on-premises infrastructure. To ensure that the move to the cloud is truly a cost efficient choice, all hidd...

Cloud providers offer a certain combination of technology and storage solution which becomes their unique selling point. The focus for some providers is majorly based on the software stack they offer. Most providers move from offering plain infrastructure as a service to offering platform as a service. The stack-specific clouds are known to align with the popular cloud solutions available. The application which is built using the software stack defined by the cloud will save a lot of time and cost. With this solution, enterprises need not use the lower-level infrastructure setup and configuration. This software stack that is provided requires the enterprises to follow certain best practices while designing and writing the apps, which in turn requires high levels of vendor lock- in. Along with software stack, storage is an important consideration. How will the data be stored in the cloud and made accessible to the enterprises? Will the storage solution make way for remote access? ...

Testing all the 3 layers of the system offered by the cloud service provider is extremely important. How well the complete system functions can be understood by utilizing the trial period/trial account for a specific unit. For example: Sales force offers a free trial to access all their features for a limited period of 30 days. Using the free trial, the organisation can easily understand how well the system performs under different loads. Depending on the type of services that an organisation wants to avail from a vendor, the resources would be allocated by the vendor depending on their service agreements for the specific time period or for a specific limit. Once the trial period gets over and all the components and features test positive, the organisation can opt for a subscription package for a  specific time period as per the business requirements.

Whenever a cloud-based application is accessed by millions of users at the same time, the load on the cloud servers increases. The server should be capable enough to handle all requests at the same time. To handle all the requests, different cloud vendors have different solutions.  One of the most popular solutions available in the market is Amazon's Elastic Load Balancing. It is a part of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Elastic Load Balancing handles all the users effectively by distributing the requests made by all the users across different virtual servers (technically called as virtualization). The organisation which anticipates high traffic to its cloud-based application has to create a load balancer (through easily customizing the AWS settings) in one or more of its availability zones. All the traffic to the application first hits the load balancer – which routes the traffic evenly to different virtual servers to process the requests. Let us take an example of Expedia whic...

Scalability is one of the most significant advantages of cloud computing. However, the scalability of applications must not compromise the quality of service offered by the cloud service provider. An adverse impact on the performance of the cloud due to increased scalability may lower cost benefits. The software features of the application and its design must be able to support the scalable architecture of the cloud. When an application is not designed to use system resources efficiently, it tends to underperform and demand more attention than required to achieve the expected level of performance.

 Due-diligence on Various Cloud Solutions Cloud computing leads to a higher dependence on cloud-based vendors and thus demands that clients ask for an evaluation of their capabilities beforehand. Optimised security measures, industry- recognised compliance standards and the ability to support the unique requirements of an expanding organisation must be analysed to mitigate the risk potential in a cloud project. Adopting Encryption Standards Encryption of data is the act of converting sensitive data into indecipherable text by using relevant algorithms. The encrypted data is called ciphertext, and the level of encryption depends on the sensitivity of the data. Encryption solutions are of two types: • Provider-side cloud encryption: The cloud service provider encrypts the data received from clients and adds an extra layer of protection from potential threats. Many leading cloud vendors in the market, such as Amazon, Microsoft and EMC, offer these solutions to their client...

Measurement of Risk The digital age has enabled organisations to store and disseminate data at ease. The size and volume of data that gets stored in the cloud are incomprehensibly humongous and growing in leaps and bounds. If ever there is a security breach or data leakage, it would be disastrous for all stakeholders. The organisations that have encountered bitter experiences have measured the potential risks and implemented various cloud security measures foreseeing the risks associated with them. Let us discuss these briefly: Measures related to data security such as data encryption standards, key management and hierarchical access. Client side efforts - as nothing can prevent data espionage when the customers are not vigilant enough to avert disasters. Geographical location and physical protection of data centers Service level agreements to ensure proper service by the cloud service providers Access controls to ensure efficient, effective and secure sharing of resources ...

cloud computing gains momentum, organisations are looking for a more robust way to approach the cloud. In order to leverage the benefits of the cloud, a strong cloud strategy must be in place. Based on the approach framed by the popular research firm, The Burton Group, the following five steps define the framework for a strong cloud adoption strategy: 1. Pre-work To start with, organisations must build an internal cloud team, which together will set the scope of the cloud project. Expectations, standards to be achieved and cloud objectives must be well defined during the initial stages of the cloud journey. 2. Business and Application Analysis The cloud cannot be considered as plainly a technical enhancement since it has a strong impact on the various business functions. During this stage, business applications moving into the cloud are evaluated based on the costs and architectural requirements. The operational changes to be made within an organisation are also determined. T...

Irrespective of the migration approach adopted, the Seven-step Model of Cloud Migration creates a more rational point of view towards the migration process and offers the ability to imbibe several best practices throughout the journey Step 1: Assess Cloud migration assessments are conducted to understand the complexities in the migration process at the code, design and architectural levels. The investment and the recurring costs are also evaluated along with gauging the tools, test cases, functionalities and other features related to the configuration. Step 2: Isolate The applications to be migrated to the cloud from the internal data center are freed of dependencies pertaining to the environment and the existing system. This step cuts a clearer picture about the complexity of the migration process. Step 3: Map Most organisations hold a detailed mapping of their environment with all the systems and applications. This information can be used to distinguish between the ...

The first step towards building a strong cloud strategy is planning the migration of the existing applications to the cloud. This task requires much effort, the right skill set and planning. There are three common approaches to migrate the on-premises applications to the cloud. They are: 1. Lift and Shift As the name suggests, the Lift and Shift approach involves the exact replication of the in-house applications in the cloud. There is no change made to the code or the design of applications. It involves much lesser time, cost and complexity when compared to other methods. However, applications migrated to the cloud using this technique do not take complete advantage of the native cloud capabilities. Storage infrastructure and disaster recovery are common applications migrated using this approach. 2. Refactoring Refactoring refers to changes made in the structure of the source code of the application in order to make it more efficient. The code is modified such that it become...

Organisations across the globe are in the middle of a great transformation - from building their own software products or using packaged software for their business processes to utilizing cloud-based applications for their business processes. According to economists, business processes that are available on the cloud should have a very large number of users and should be made autonomous in order to manage it and remain profitable. Productivity: Does delivering business processes through the cloud really impact the productivity of the client? Cloud service providers and organisations that offer business services from the cloud need to think from such a productivity perspective. If delivering the business services significantly reduces the burden on the client or the users and if it allows them to concentrate on more important functions, then cloud should definitely be considered as an option. Seamless Integration: Does the cloud application or platform have the ability to seamle...

Web-based business services are online services that render various functions like data storage, processing, sharing of information and so on using the world wide web. The service may be hosted in a web-based server or various servers across the globe. A user can access these services using a login and password. Web-based business services play a significant part in today’s digital world. Applications for Individuals Email systems, social media websites, data storage applications are some common web apps used by individuals. Examples include Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook and so on. Applications for Small and Medium Businesses Cloud applications have proven to be a boon to small and medium businesses that do not have the sufficient resources or funds to expand their services. Custom applications for email, billing, HR and inventory management are widely adopted by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the world. A decade ago, enterprises were investing in Microsoft Off...