Disaster Recovery

As IT applications continue to power businesses more and more, it is becoming ever more important to ensure robust Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery or BCDR as it’s essential to preserve and increase customer and shareholder confidence.

Top 10 Reasons to Migrate your Infrastructure & Applications to the Cloud

Jatinder Virdee

Over the years we have seen the cloud debate moving from Infrastructure to Services and Applications.

More and more CIO’s and CFO’s have started looking at the cloud as a medium to transform the way existing applications are running and experienced by the user or a way to innovate and support new activities. Today, they are more open to assess the added value of migrating their existing applications to the cloud.

For instance, there are a lot of questions companies need to ask themselves prior to embarking on such a journey. For example

  1. What is the added value of moving it to the cloud?
  2. Will it reduce costs?
  3. Will it improve the agility and responsiveness of the company?
  4. Will the benefits be enough to justify the cost of that migration?
  5. What cloud model is ideal for your business? Etc

Today, majority of companies have adopted the hybrid cloud model, with the core agenda being security, governance and to keep a tab on the cost.

A lot of companies across the globe use the cloud for:

  • Web Hosting
  • Email Hosting
  • Disaster recovery and Backup
  • Security and Monitoring
  • Application Hosting
  • Content Management
  • Data Management & Archiving etc

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Understanding IoT & M2M

Jatinder Virdee

The Internet of Things (IoT), also referred to as Internet of Everything, is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors and  connectivity to enable objects to exchange data with production, operator and/ or other connected devices.

The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration between the physical world and computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit. Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to inter-operate within the existing internet infrastructure.

“Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020”

Things, in the IoT refer to:

  • Heart monitoring implants
  • Electric clams in coastal waters
  • Automobiles with built-in sensors
  • Field operation devices that assist fire-fighters in search and rescue etc.

The ability of things to sense their environment and report on it is immensely useful. Things can increasingly report on their own status, as well as tell us what they are doing and plan to do, which adds another layer of richness to the mix. Things can perform actions for us on request. And in an evolving IoT marketplace, more value can be derived from services related to those connected things than the things themselves.

Another integral part of IoT is how M2M (Machine to Machine) allows both wireless and and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same type. This integration between the two brings several benefits to the industry and business in general as it has a wide range of applications mostly for monitoring but also for control purposes such as:

  • Industrial Automation
  • Logistics
  • Smart Grid
  • Smart Cities
  • Health
  • Defence etc.

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Migrating Applications to the AWS Cloud

Jatinder Virdee

With Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can provision compute power, storage and other resources, gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. With minimal cost and effort, you can move your application to the AWS cloud and reduce capital expenses, minimize support and administrative costs, and retain the performance, security, and reliability requirements your business demands.

One of the key differentiators of AWS’ infrastructure services is its flexibility. It gives businesses the freedom of choice to choose the programming models, languages, operating systems and databases they are already using or familiar with. As a result, many organizations are moving existing applications to the cloud today.

A successful migration largely depends on three things:

  1. The complexity of the application architecture;
  2. How loosely coupled your application is; and
  3. How much effort you are willing to put into migration.

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