10 Must Know Benefits of the Cloud Managed Services for your Business

What is Cloud Migration Service?

Typical cloud migration involves moving databases and operations to the cloud. As many companies have sent their employees to work from home, cloud adoption among enterprises has gained traction In the past, a majority of companies have depended on on-premise servers or data centers to maintain IT infrastructure. Many of those businesses have learned difficult lessons during their cloud migrations, but with our experience and expertise, we can help guide you in a smooth transition. 

Should we migrate to the cloud and how? 

As with any important transition, it’s critical to start with the most pertinent questions: Is cloud migration right for us? If yes: What do we need to do before we can migrate? Can we transition without disrupting business? How much time and effort will transition require?

While some companies push the cloud by default, we know that cloud migration is not well-suited to every part of the business or use case. We can help crunch the numbers, test configurations, explain the benefits and risks, and predict the amount of time and effort involved.

There are several transition strategies for various use cases and business needs. It’s important to understand the unique business requirements and existing infrastructure to pick the right approaches. And yes, different parts of your business may require entirely different approaches.

• Rehost

Rehosting is a minimal code-change migration process requiring the least time and resources. Applications and workloads are lifted from the current hosting platform and shifted to a secure cloud infrastructure. Rehosting is a common choice for enterprises at the start of their migration journey and can serve as a proof of concept to validate the continued migration of other services.

• Refactor

Unlike rehosting, refactoring is a major undertaking. Applications are redesigned or re-engineered using cloud-native features. This approach is usually adopted to improve the business’ offerings by adding features, flexibility, or performance. 

• Re-platform

Replatforming is somewhere in between rehosting and refactoring. This migration process doesn’t change the code significantly but some standard modifications are usually required to take full advantage of the new cloud infrastructure. For example, serverless compute services like Lambda in AWS run only when needed to perform repetitive functions like image conversion or file compression and eliminate the need and cost of a dedicated server instance. 

• Repurchase

Repurchase can be understood as a business decision to move to a better product or service. You can consider a better cloud-based alternative to replace your current proprietary application. This strategy can involve ending a license agreement and repositioning services to a new cloud platform.

• Retain

In a cloud migration process, you can choose to retain parts of the on-premise hardware. A hybrid infrastructure lets the business categorize the workloads to be hosted in the cloud and those which are to be kept with your legacy infrastructure. This flexibility proves to be substantial when you have compliance obligations, security concerns, or other constraints.

• Retire

For complex business environments with diverse application requirements, a retiring strategy is a way to simplify processes. When reviewing all the components of a database or application,  one may discover deprecated functionality that is no longer necessary to the business. Retiring means turning off unnecessary applications and services rather than migrate or maintain them.

Advantages Of Cloud Migration Services

1. Higher Levels of Physical Security

Cloud migration allows enterprises to store critical data in safer cloud computing environments and shift some of the burdens to the cloud provider. Moving infrastructure to the cloud can reduce or eliminate the need and potential expenditures for network and server hardware, on-site security, electricity, HVAC. Ending a building lease can be a tremendous cost-saving measure, depending on timing, of course.  In compliance with stringent security regulations, most cloud providers use robust firewall technology that can detect and dissect threats before they reach the server. This lowers the risk of security incidents like hacking, internal data theft, and identity theft. In some cases, they provide cloud optimization services and routinely update their systems’ defenses against the latest known cloud vulnerabilities.

1. Economies of Scale

While on-site hardware is finite at the moment, resources in the cloud can be purchased on-demand and terminated when they are no longer required. Cloud migration’s amazing feature called auto scaling allows you to acquire a pool of computational resources which you can use when needed. This characteristic lowers operating expenses and capital expenses as pay for the services only when needed, unlike physical hardware that may occasionally sit idle and collect dust for much of the year. 

1. Reduced Deployment Times

On-demand allocation means faster deployments. If an operation requires 128 CPU cores, one can allocate resources through a cloud solution to complete a computationally intensive task in an afternoon rather than waiting days for hardware delivery or repurposing a dusty old server. For tasks that require only a couple of hours of compute time, buying comparable hardware can be cost-prohibitive or wasteful.

1. Reduced Infrastructure Overhead and Complexity

When it’s done right, managing on-site hardware involves costs far beyond that of the hardware itself. Whether it’s power, security guards, or HVAC, expanding business geographically always costs more with physical hardware.  Cloud providers can usually enable geographic redundancy for backup or performance automatically or with only a few clicks.

Eventually, you save a lot of time, as you no longer have to deal with the real-time challenges of running an in-house infrastructure. 

CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) like Amazon’s S3 use tiered geographic storage to cache recently accessed files in availability zones as close as possible to the user’s location. These availability zones are located all over the globe and ensure low latency to keep users happy. But as with any powerful technology, knowing a technology exists is quite different from understanding how to build it properly.

1. Embedded Redundancy

Embedded redundancy is usually at the core of a cloud service’s high availability. Mission-critical applications need data accessibility and integrity at all times. Redundancy involves four key levels – hardware, process, network, and geography. Since the cloud provider manages and automates many aspects of these variables, the potential for catastrophic human error can be greatly reduced. 

1. Cloud Monitoring

Cloud services such as Amazon’s CloudWatch or CloudTrail analyze and report on statistics like file reads / writes and access latency or user access to specific content. These services can help with RCA (Root Cause Analysis) in case your application falls prey to malicious DoS (Denial of Service) attacks or data is compromised by a third party or disgruntled employee. Regularly inspecting and interpreting reports from cloud services can help prevent an incident from occurring in the first place. At VLink, we take a proactive approach to reduce or eliminate the risk of outages or compromised data.

Cloud monitoring is time-efficient and affordable, even more so with the added advantage of cloud cost management

1. Backup and Logging 

Automatic backup and logging of key metrics are critical to successful cloud monitoring. In the event of an outage, having a backup allows you to quickly get your machines and applications up and running. The logs will present to you an opportunity to dissect the cause of failure that led to the outage. 

1. A Unified Environment

A good cloud service is able to offer a ‘single pane of glass view, accommodating workload deployment, mobility, monitoring, and other process needs in a single location. This avoids the complexity of using multiple services that function on different interfaces.

1. Flexibility and Collaboration

Cloud-based workflows allow users working together across the globe to access the same files and applications. Teams can collaborate to make real-time adjustments, troubleshoot issues, and deploy apps without being on-site. The right cloud infrastructure means that accidentally spilling coffee into a laptop can ruin one employee’s afternoon without resulting in data loss that would otherwise affect the entire team. That’s something to think about before you reach for your next cup. 

1. Reduced Carbon Footprint, i.e., Data Centers

Using the cloud can be positive for the environment. Data centers can be powered by renewable energy or located in colder climates to minimize cooling requirements. Migrating to the cloud can make a company more environmentally friendly overnight. That’ll look great in your next environmental report, and will also bring down your business’ overall operating cost.

Conclusion

Here at VLink, we were thinking about the power and potential of the cloud long before the pandemic. Our Experts help you with complete cloud migration and cloud cost optimization services to successfully transfer your complex workloads with minimal to no disruption to your production environment. Call today and we’ll help you learn more about how to supercharge your business using the cloud.