GMO Cloud

Migrating Legacy Systems to the Cloud

Cloud computing can save a lot of headaches when managing a server. By offloading hardware and software management to an offsite provider, cloud computing enables companies to focus better on core business services and management issues.

Cloud helps businesses save on software licensing costs as well as overhead and IT costs by allowing them to pay for only the online applications they use. At the same time, businesses can increase productivity from software use, as cloud computing provides employees with unlimited access to shared resources and databases. Cloud-based services are also scalable – you can expand in a snap as your business grows.

Cloud computing has thus proved particularly attractive to start-ups and small businesses who have neither the budget for maintaining an onsite IT team nor a dedicated physical infrastructure to depend on.

Migrating to the cloud, however, is much more complex for companies with legacy systems. How do you relocate the old systems and software to the beaming new world of cloud?

With proper planning and execution, these hurdles can be easily overcome. Here are the steps on how to migrate legacy systems without a fuss:

Create a Plan of Action

Migration of legacy systems differs from business to business. Each will have different system specifications and requirements, meaning you need to devise a solid strategy.

Sound planning of legacy system migration allows businesses to determine the functionalities they need. More importantly, it enables them to improve on processes to increase their chances of migration success. When creating a plan of action, you should:

Determine the resources you need. Identify your current workloads, configuration, licensing requirements, apps, hardware, etc.

Categorize workloads into “easy,” “slightly complex,” and “complex” to migrate. Determine this by looking into the following elements: type of application (e.g. web server, streaming service); resource usage (e.g. CPU, memory); shared components, etc.

Set a schedule for migration. Migration means server downtime, so decide on a date or time where migration would minimally interfere with business operations.  Start with workloads that are easy to migrate: basically those that use fewer resources, run on a single server, or are low-risk applications are easy ones.

To migrate or to not migrate. You should understand that not all can be migrated to the cloud. You may succeed to migrate some applications through recompilation, while other operations should remain as they are. Some assets you may want to keep include HR payroll software and Photoshop. Others are best relocated to the cloud, particularly if you have workers from different locations or constantly roaming. Before deciding whether to keep or migrate, be clear on the risks and merits of your choices. An experienced IT team can help you identify migration needs.

In addition to the technical requirements, you should also determine whether business organizational objectives are in line with the scope of private cloud? Some of the criteria you need to review include infrastructure cost and acquisition times.

Act on the Plan

Now that you have a plan, you need to put it to action. First, you have to look for cloud providers you can trust. Inform business departments as well as stakeholders about the big change. Ask them to refrain from making urgent requirements of IT staff until after the migration process has been completed.

Finally, you need to train managers and operational staff on how to use the new cloud-based system.

Monitoring Results

Cloud computing is a relatively new technology. Though your cloud provider may have the best intentions, things may go wrong during the relocation so you need to monitor post-migration events.


Some of the issues you may encounter include over-configuration of virtual servers, and missing records of old versions. These problems should be addressed immediately.

In today’s enterprise, people have their own roles to play, which might pose a problem on who will master cloud implementation, migration and maintenance. You may also greatly consider a service provider that has these capabilities. For instance, GMO Cloud offered add-on services for customers who would like to reduce on labor costs and still keep their systems well-maintained and monitored. To find out more about GMO Cloud’s additional services, visit the Add-on Services page.

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About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

5 Business Applications You Can Safely Migrate to the Cloud

Many enterprises are recognizing the benefits of migrating legacy IT systems to the cloud. However with some organizations, concerns over security and privacy still prevail, especially in a public cloud environment. Although this is a legitimate concern requiring extensive organizational planning, there are applications which are suitable for the public cloud even if cloud hosting is located near to your competitors. According to studies conducted by Gartner and others, more than three quarters of enterprises are either currently using the public cloud for applications, or planning to use it in future. 

The majority of these enterprises have more than 600 staff members and seek cloud help for CRM, email and other purposes.  Some applications are SaaS (Software as a Service), while others are not mission critical to company operations. There are, of course, certain enterprise applications which are suitable for a public cloud model regardless of your type of business.

Pay as You Go Development Apps

Development and testing can be a costly proposition for enterprises but necessary for growth and expansion. When it comes to business applications and SQL, amount of server sprawl can be significant, resulting in under-utilization of server resources.  Instead of this unpalatable situation, development and testing can be accomplished using a pay-as-you-go cloud model for public cloud services.  This alleviates concerns over performance and storage when implementing ongoing integration and agile methodologies.

CRM Apps

Customer relationship management is typically delivered via an SaaS model not directly connected to other enterprise applications except email, order tracking and management. This allows a CRM solution to be easily migrated to a public cloud service. Importantly, this does not include customer data since there are compliance regulations regarding security and privacy.

Message Archives

Many enterprises operate under regulations on archiving email messages for a specified length of time. These are daily correspondences which are typically managed on an internal server but in recent years have been moved to a cloud environment. By using public cloud storage, message archives can be easily managed and stored at a much lower cost than an in-house infrastructure.

Occasional Apps

Applications used infrequently for enterprise operations should be moved to a public cloud environment. Since public cloud services are typically pay-as-you-go, you can save on costs while increasing space and improving the performance of mission-critical applications accessed on a daily basis.

Large Data Archives

If you have a massive amount of data which must be placed in the archives within a relatively short period of time, moving it to the public cloud simplifies the process while saving time and money. Large amounts of data could potentially require several hundred servers. Archiving the data to a public cloud can accomplish this process in a matter of hours, and without the exorbitant cost of procuring the hardware infrastructure to archive the data.

Finally, supportive applications which are not mission critical are good candidates for the public cloud.  These include website components such as PDF documents and images which are public information, customer support applications, training server applications, and other apps which can safely be moved to a public cloud service while utilizing the level of security offered by the service. Many public cloud services are deploying new technologies for security and privacy, meaning senior managers and IT professionals will be making more use of the public cloud in future.

A careful review of the purpose of different business applications avoids a lot of concern surrounding security and privacy. As a result, these applications can be easily moved to the public cloud with a flexible payment arrangement, saving on cost while increasing productivity.

Another concern for putting these applications on the public cloud is the network reliability and infrastructure maintenance. This is one of the essential factors that make up GMO Cloud’s service. To have a better idea on how much GMO Cloud values these aspects, visit the Network and Data Center Specifications page.

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About the Guest Author:

Aeyne Schriber has more than two decades of accumulated experience in IT security, computer technology, and internet marketing. She has also been educated in both technology and administrative fields at public school and college level. She works worldwide helping companies establish an online presence, working with small businesses and large enterprises.  Her skills as a published copywriter and marketer also include consulting and training corporate personnel and entrepreneurs. Visit her site at www.digitalnewmediamarketing.com

Use Multiple Cloud Providers for Redundancy

Not too long ago, organizations would wrestle with the opportunities and negative consequences of cloud technology. Back then, many had qualms about placing valuable data in a faraway storage location that, when jeopardized, could potentially cause a major operational disturbance. Similar doubts are surfacing about the cloud now. Its intangible nature obviously means that there’s no hardware to monitor 24/7.

Faced with such doubts, the logical conclusion is spread the risk either over several cloud providers, off-cloud infrastructure, or do both. With SLAs and redundancy being offered by most cloud providers today, such a move may be unnecessary. However, we ignore historical events at our peril. Remember the Amazon EC2 outage last year?

One cloud still poses risks

Several cloud providers claim to have an all-in-one package that’s simple yet scalable, powerful, and easy to install. However, such providers don’t really suggest distributing cloud-associated risks over multiple solutions, instead offering a combination of private and public clouds – or hybrid clouds. At the end of the day, it’s still one and the same cloud they’re offering you – just with an extra location.

But apart from hedging outage risks, there are other reasons why your organization should opt for multi-cloud providers. For one, you’ll benefit from geographical diversity, being served from different data centers found in separate locations. For another, you can choose which provider will equip you with the best infrastructure for specific workloads. Think of cloud providers as suppliers. Keep your independence and prevent supplier lock-ins by sustaining good relationships with many providers. This way, you’ll be able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each and choose which of them will be able to cater to your requirements. Then there are also legal issues such as country laws stating that data originating from a specific country (i.e. Germany and the UK) should remain within it.

Multi-cloud platforms are becoming the trend

The 2012 State of Cloud Computing research conducted by InformationWeek reveals that a staggering 73% of survey respondents are utilizing several cloud providers. With IT teams of most organizations now supporting different applications, hardware infrastructure, and operating systems, this is probably not surprising.

Having multiple cloud providers has a downside too

Happily, there are many deployment platforms that seek to facilitate multiple clouds. But even with such platforms in place, you still need to fully understand the requirements of each and every cloud provider you choose.

While the main objective of a multi-cloud solution is to minimize risk, complexity is inevitably increased. You might double, triple, or greatly multiply the configurations and changes needing to be constantly monitored – depending on how many cloud providers you want. More difficult still is the need to deploy your system across different cloud platforms, and thus pay closer attention to specific requirements of a particular stack.

If your organization is unable to contend with the added complexities of a multiple-cloud approach, the reliability of cloud applications will be jeopardized. Performance and security issues may arise from failure to properly identify and track changing configurations specific to cloud platforms.

Use multiple cloud providers to achieve redundancy

Redundancy in applications, data, and systems in the cloud simply cannot be attained via a single cloud provider. Several cloud providers are needed to achieve true redundancy, entailing greater monitoring of servers, bandwidth, application performance, configuration, and more. There are services that will help you look after cloud deployments and guide your infrastructure plans for specific organizational requirements. Investigation of such services will best ensure that your multi-cloud vendor works well for you.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

Nintendo offers Wii U Cloud Storage for Saved Games and Profiles

According to Gartner, Inc. - the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company – up to one-third of consumers’ digital content will be stored in the Cloud by 2013! This is certainly an optimistic view of how cloud computing is being broadly accepted by corporate decision-makers! What’s certain is that the unprecedented use of cloud computing in all categories of businesses is no better evidenced than by the gaming industry.

It is not surprising that frontline game company Nintendo is using 2013 to provide a Wii U “cloud storage” feature for its new console, reassuring gamers that their saves and player profiles are securely stored through the New Nintendo Network. This Network is reportedly under construction with the help of Mozy, Inc., — a Seattle-based company offering cloud and backup storage facilities to consumers since 2005. Nintendo is expected to offer 512MB of online storage for each gamer for saved games and profile data, a benefit projected to be available to Japanese gamers in 2013 before being launched globally.

Nintendo presumably embarked on offering online storage to keep pace with competitors giving game players similar benefits for optimum satisfaction. Currently, Microsoft offers its game players free 512 MB cloud storage for saved games and user files through Xbox Live. Sony offers likewise by releasing the PS3 Firmware 3.60 for its PlayStation Plus users, which allows for easy upload of game saves to Sony’s Cloud storage, where they will be universally accessible for the players concerned but also securely protected.

While consumers may applaud these moves, the budget for this process will eventually become exorbitant for gaming companies, possibly running into millions of dollars a year. Outsourcing this cloud storage process to third parties may well save these gaming companies hoards of time and money.

There is no doubt that cloud computing can impact the gaming industry in a positive way, driving the discovery of better ways to offer protection for player data. Initially, cloud storage will spare players the extra cost of setting up physical back-up systems or overcrowding their computer hard drives with saves and other important data.

Cloud also provides larger storage capacity for both game players and companies, meaning they need not fret over how much data can be stored as digital consumer content increases. Players can thus rest assured that their data can still be accessed after a long period of time, rather than frantically hunting around for that ailing Playstation hard drive that has been gathering dust since five years previously.

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About the Guest Author:

Jerry Olasakinju, (B.Tech), is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing seems unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

The Service Level Agreement – Understanding a Critical Document

When companies migrate their business processes to the cloud, CEOs need to be reassured that a minimum acceptable level of service will be provided and that legal safeguards will accompany this. Only when a vendor offers guarantees instead of disclaimers will any prudent CEO agree to move away from the certainty of on-premise IT.

All competent cloud services providers understand that a well-written Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that instills confidence in the corporate user and is instrumental in getting more customers. There are also nuances to the SLA that must be understood by users if they are to get the best out of their solutions.

In a number of cases, vendors specify an uptime of 99.5% or more for your service. They also say that to get to this level, you need to hire the service so as to operate from two different geographic locations. Obviously, if you do not hire the service correctly, you will not obtain the guaranteed up-time. This is a typical area of the SLA which needs to be better understood.

There are several issues in cloud SLAs that are different from other service level agreements due to the very nature of the cloud itself, and these factors need to be understood well and carefully handled. Some of these issues are discussed below.

Who owns the Metadata?

The first of these relates to the ownership of data. If you were simply hiring storage space in the cloud, things would be straightforward. Whatever data you store is yours. But if you are hiring Software as a Service, things can get more complex. The business-related data that the software generates is obviously yours, but what about other data that the software creates – the data related to usage trends, failed login attempts, metadata, user feedback, preferences, complaints and traffic statistics? Do these belong to the client hiring the software, or the company hosting the software? You will need to understand these issues and the criticality of these to your business before drafting the SLA.

What happens if the government wants to see your data?

Your service level agreement must define what will happen in case a government agency makes a request for your data. While the service provider may be legally bound to comply with the government request, your SLA must clarify that your company will be informed before any data is actually handed over. This is, of course, so that you have the opportunity to contest the demand or seek legal counsel. On the other hand, there are legal requirements for archiving and maintaining your data, especially for financial or medical data. The service provider must be told this specifically through the SLA so that he or she becomes duty bound to protect the data. Also make it clear that in case there is a failure to meet these obligations, what would be the extent of legal penalties etc for which the service provider would be liable?

Well-Defined Metrics

The SLA must also describe in detail how the level of service and the uptime that the vendor is providing will be measured. How will service requests be handled, and in what timeframe? What would the penalties be for not meeting them?

Data Security

Other important issues that the SLA must address in detail are levels of data security and segregation that the vendor will provide, and what will constitute a security breach. While it may seem unnecessary to define what a breach would be, it is important to do so because at times there could be an incident that does not result in a loss of data or business but is nevertheless important. The SLA must specify that every breach or incident affecting your company or its data is reported to you along with the remedial action taken. You must also ensure that the provider gives you advance warning of any maintenance being carried out that may slow down your service.  It is also critical to define in case of a disaster – natural or man-made – what the service provider’s role will be in supporting your business continuity.

Termination

In the event of termination of the relationship, what assistance will the vendor provide in case you want to migrate your applications to another vendor or bring them back in-house? Can the vendor outsource your work to another cloud provider? If so, what terms of the SLA would apply to the new vendor? These must all be clarified in the SLA.

Is all of this possible?

Will you be able to meet all these terms and more when you set out to move to the cloud? If you are a small company without much leverage, the chances are you will not. You may not even get to meet any of the staff of the cloud company since all activities may be completed on-line with a standard SLA. However, these are issues that you must think about. Obviously, if you are a large company giving big business to the vendor, you will have more leverage, but whether you are big or small, the importance of understanding the SLA clearly cannot be overstated.

GMO Cloud ensures its clear-cut provisions on Terms of Use and the SLA, to give you a better idea, you may download the Terms of Service provided by GMO Cloud America.

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been highly active in computing infrastructure for several years, participating in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. His military background has influenced his focus on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of the local rural population.