At Finally Fast we are currently in the process of making the switch to “the cloud”. I’ve spent countless hours this week migrating our email data from our current legacy system to Gmail’s enterprise service. Personally, I’m of the opinion that “the cloud” is very much just the buzz word of choice for technology that has essentially been available since Hotmail hit the scene in 1996, but there are several smart reasons to migrate your current legacy system over to a cloud-based one. Reasons that encompass more than just the idea that cloud computing is en vogue. In order to assist my fellow IT managers who are interested in migrating to a cloud based system I’ve put together a list of 9 reasons supporting a cloud based infrastructure. Feel free to include them in a future proposal or just in your next conversation with the CEO!
Elastic Capacity – with Software-as-a-server (SaaS), there is no physical “ceiling” to hit with your IT resources. You’re free of physical server limitations, which means you don’t have to build your infrastructure expressly for peak usage times. You can simply borrow a bit more of the cloud for your peak. And that brings us to a very concrete advantage…
It’s Cheaper! – The cloud beats up physical servers in terms of marginal cost, which relates closely to elastic capacity. As mentioned, it’s more trivial to “cloudburst” and borrow more cloud than it is to build, install, and run another physical server.
OPEX Flexibility – Outsourcing cloud infrastructure is a little like running up an electric bill. You pay for what you use, as you use it. As such, it has less of the upfront, substantial, capital investments we associate with traditional IT infrastructure. The cloud can be treated like an operating expense.
Focus Where It Should be – Not that the “dirty work” of IT management suddenly becomes nil with cloud infrastructure, but with the cloud as a bit of a “black box” compared to physical servers, IT personnel can focus on high-level IT strategy rather than low-level, down-and-dirty maintenance and related activities.
Resource Scalability – in SaaS environments, your servers can be trivially “rebooted” to run with less resources at off-peak times, or terminate entirely or partially when not needed. Try pulling that off with a physical server!
Fast Launches – Remember when server launches took many days and significant manpower, kind of like the pyramids? Cloud infrastructure can be launched and implemented near-instantaneously.
Transcience – This advantage is more subtle, but nonetheless crucial. Non-physical servers can be blown up, rebuilt, and relaunched without much of an effort. The ability to design infrastructure that can be easily replaced—that’s meant to exist only for a short time, in fact—keeps your IT nimble.
Fault Tolerance – It stands to reason that a “transient” system is more fault tolerant. Just blow it up and build a new one. Plus, virtualization can give you the freedom to break up processes that used to reside on a single physical server, and split them out into many different virtual servers.
More Secure – Splitting up the systems through virtualization also means you have the capability to multiply your access controls. It’s the idea of hiding money in several places in your house. If the robber finds one stash, you’ve still got money left over.
The 9 reasons above are very much the reasons that led me to proposing the migration of our servers to “the cloud”, but as someone who is currently transitioning to a cloud system, I’m definitely curious as to what other IT managers have experienced either during the course of their migration or post-migration. If you’ve got any tips for a smooth migration or warnings for post migration please share them in the comments!
