AWS

Cloud Migration: Choosing a Cloud Service Partner

Bobby Varghese

Cloud computing is changing how IT service is developed, deployed, scaled, maintained and paid for. Synergy research declared 2015 as “the year when cloud became mainstream” According to a research report by Synergy, from Q4 2014 to Q3 2015 cloud revenue has increased exponentially. Despite the proliferation of cloud usage, its full potential still remains relatively unexplored.

Part 1: Are You Cloud Ready?

A cloud service partner can guide you through the limitless possibilities with cloud and can help you achieve the guaranteed efficiency effectively. Your cloud partner must be able to support you meticulously, following the SLAs from sales through service, which is not something every vendor can achieve. The right choice will mean a mutually beneficial partnership, while the wrong choice could mean a disaster.

Choosing a cloud service partner involves deeper considerations than selecting a standard vendor, as you will be putting entire aspects of your cloud business model in their hands. The inundation of new entrants in the market means that service partner has little to no experience in hosting or application delivery, thus raising concerns not only about their current service performance but also the ability to evolve their services to meet future needs.

 

What to look for in a Cloud Service Partner?

The primary challenge for the enterprise is to identify a cloud service partner with a portfolio that includes expertise in a full range of environments for its workloads. Also, the portfolio should extend beyond today’s vision and offer a foundation for your future cloud strategy. Specifically, look for the following characteristics:

    • Interoperability: To make the most out of cloud services, enterprises should select a partner that enables workloads to span across multiple environments.

    • Security: When a cloud service partner enters the cloud, you are entrusting the information with them. Businesses should make sure that the cloud service partner keeps security as a priority.  Ensure that they build the cloud architecture for optimal protection, including measures to isolate enterprise workloads on physical servers, protections against Internet-borne attacks, and clear administrative access controls.

    • Cohesive and Dynamics Migration strategy: Is the cloud service partner’s cloud offering a hastily launched effort to survive the current momentum, or is it a diligently built foundation for future services? Cloud service partner that is committed to the transformational potential of the cloud will be able to articulate a clear vision of the future and will invest development resources to ensure they are leading—not following—the trends.

    • Experience: The cloud service partner should have a track record in managing enterprise data centers, providing secure hosting, and delivering mission-critical applications.

    • Flexibility: Just as different workloads are suitable for different environments, they also require different configuration and delivery parameters. As such, the cloud service partner should offer a menu or range of options related to performance, security, and resiliency, enabling the enterprise to select—and pay for—just the settings it requires for each workload.

    • Technical Expertise: Make sure your cloud solution partner offers a range of managed and professional services to help you develop a cloud strategy, migrate to the cloud, and maintain optimal cloud performance

The key to making this decision work is to forge effective partnerships.

Sysfore, a Microsoft Gold partner, uses leading network, technology, and service expertise to deliver our service anytime, virtually anywhere, quickly and efficiently. Contact one of our experts today and we will help you find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555.

Cloud Migration: Are You Cloud Ready?

Bobby Varghese

A cloud adoption assessment will help your enterprise determine whether the organization is ready for cloud, type of cloud, cost estimate and the areas that need the most attention to successfully adopt cloud.

The result of the assessment will provide your organization with pros and cons to support a business case – cloud migration.

are you cloud ready?
 

Cultural readiness

An important measure while considering a migration to the cloud is the acceptance of cloud among your organization’s staff. Due to the proliferation of cloud use in our everyday lives, personally and in business, acceptance generally has increased.

‘Cloud’ and ‘digital’ have become widely used words, but mean different things to different people. Do your stakeholder priorities align with the benefits your project should bring?
 

Needs assessment

Mapping the needs and wants of directors, heads of service and other stakeholders into an assessment (in relation to cloud) enables you to plan exemplars and use cases that are the best fit for cloud. Showing value early is a great way for organizations to buy into the benefits and so identifying services which are ‘quick wins’ will certainly help your cause.

This process also identifies the areas of the organization that don’t see the relevance of cloud.

Disseminate the digital vision clearly to heads of service and other stakeholders. In parallel, seek to understand their goals and priorities and relate those to characteristics of cloud
 

Technical readiness

A detailed assessment of the business’ ICT landscape should be carried out because your ICT landscape would be a mix of applications, operating systems and hardware versions. A methodical approach and a mix of the right tools and expertise is required to assess the ICT estate

The assessment should look into the networks, servers and applications against a range of cloud options to identify incompatibilities and other gaps which will need to be remedied if the systems are migration candidates

Before thinking about adopting cloud, legacy systems should also be checked to ensure they will work effectively with your chosen cloud provider. If it is discovered too late that they are not compatible, the implications on cost and time could be dramatic.
 

Budgetary readiness

Cloud is a rental model. This could be a change in the way your organization funds projects, these rental commitments must be understood by finance directors. For cloud adoption to succeed long term, it must be able to demonstrate an improvement in cost control and financial forecasting.

A comparison of the enterprise’s current ICT spending alongside the projected cloud deployment and service expense can give the business insights on the most cost-beneficial plan.

Transformational projects are investments, there must be acceptance of the necessity for investing to save and investing to focus on the organizational mission.
 

Resource readiness

Can you realistically achieve your goals on time, using your existing resources?

Understanding your current commitments is key to knowing if you can also balance the demands of cloud migration project. If there is a time pressure it is unlikely that internal teams will succeed in balancing business-as-usual commitments against the burden of cloud-related training, planning and execution.  

Choosing a credible and reliable service provider can help you in this situation and add value to the organization.

The cloud readiness assessment is as much about philosophical readiness as much as system readiness. Open minds to cloud technology, and you open up possibilities.

Sysfore, a Microsoft Gold partner, uses leading network, technology, and service expertise to deliver our service anytime, virtually anywhere, quickly and efficiently. Contact one of our experts today and we will help you find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555.

Azure Vs AWS: The Cloud Battle: Part 2

Bobby Varghese

In the second part of the series Azure Vs AWS: The Cloud Battle, we talk about the ease of use, the advantages you get being a Microsoft product consumer and the verdict.

Read: Azure Vs AWS: The Cloud Battle: Part 1

Gentle Learning Curve

AWS is widely perceived as being complicated. This is evident by the numerous tutorials, user guides, and troubleshooting documents that are out there.

Conversely, Azure allows the utilization of the same tried and trusted technologies that several businesses have used in the past and are still using today. These include Windows and Linux, Active Directory, and virtual machines.

Build and iterate faster

Azure’s integrated tools and services help ISVs build applications faster; by contrast, Amazon Web Services puts the burden of integrating different services on their users.

 

The ‘Enterprise Agreement’ Advantage

If an organization already uses Microsoft software, then it likely has the ‘Enterprise Agreement’ with Microsoft. It is entitled to obtain discounts on the Microsoft software being used as Microsoft usually tweaks these agreements to lower the pricing of Azure. Thus, with the enterprise agreement, enterprises can typically obtain significant incentives for using Azure.

Ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies use Azure.

Why Azure

The most intelligent Cloud

Azure is the only public cloud that provides  Cognitive  APIs,  Bots,  Machine  Learning,  and Blockchain as Service capabilities for developers and data scientists.

Innovations of the future

Microsoft offers the most complete set of technologies to enable breakthrough innovation in a mobile first, cloud first world, including IoT, Bots, and HoloLens.

Easily scale up or down

Azure delivers the flexibility to easily scale up or down to meet demand, including expandable  block  storage volume

Industry-leading security

Microsoft leads the industry in its commitment to data protection and privacy. Azure has the most comprehensive compliance coverage of any cloud provider

 

How Sysfore can help

We are passionate about using the best technology and tools to achieve results for our customers. We call Bangalore, India as Home. We have worked with customers from across the globe, successfully delivering quality work products and making a positive contribution to their businesses.

At sysfore, we make this transformation easy by building bridges between business and information technology. Sysfore continues to focus on web technologies, but with Cloud, the complexity and scale have grown exponentially. We have successfully grown in the Indian and International markets, specifically catering to the people who understand the true value of web technologies.

Partner with Sysfore to build and launch your next cloud application

We can support you on your cloud journey by:

Sysfore, a Microsoft Gold partner, uses leading network, technology, and service expertise to deliver our service anytime, virtually anywhere, quickly and efficiently. Contact one of our experts today and we will help you find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555.