Cloud First
At this time of year, we often meet with our customers and ask the question “What are your initiatives for next year?” Over the last few weeks, and really throughout 2017, we’ve been hearing a lot of cloud, cloud, cloud. The change in mentality is moving quickly. A year ago, a company may have said they have concerns around security and data, and they are going to stay where they have investment. Today’s meetings consist of our customers pushing us to figure out how they can get to the cloud, often with urgency.
We’ve entered a Cloud First era. Each time an application needs an upgrade, a new application is being deployed, or infrastructure needs to be replaced, the first question is whether they can use the cloud instead. These are some common scenarios:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) – Commonly this is switching from on-prem to cloud for an application. Common examples of this are people moving from Exchange to Office 365, or from Microsoft CRM to Salesforce.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – I have an application to deploy and it uses a web server, file server, and database server. Let’s build it in the cloud so we don’t need to invest in infrastructure and can convert CapEx to OpEx.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In the IaaS example above, instead of using a web server or database server hosted in the cloud, you can migrate to a cloud web and/or database offering. Azure SQL Database Service is a PaaS offering.
- Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – Replicate to the cloud. Use the cloud to store backup data and provide failover capability.
So how has Gotham been helping our customers in this space? We’ve been assisting customers with application upgrades and migrations, datacenter migrations, and product selection for 15+ years. The reality is the cloud is not much different in this respect. We’ve had recent experience with the following:
- Building a new environment using cloud only – SaaS where possible, with limited components in IaaS / PaaS.
- Migrating applications to the cloud – assessment, design, build, test, and production cutover. This includes the networking, security, access methods, backup, high availability, disaster recovery, and everything else typically involved with the rollout of an application infrastructure.
- Enabling easier backup and disaster recovery – implementation of next generation backup / replication solutions to remove tape, replicate to the cloud, and fail over to the cloud.
- Creating cloud standards for organizations – this includes a review of existing solutions for logging, monitoring, backup, IP management, DNS management, security, routing, and other core infrastructure components; and creation of a cloud first design to ensure these areas are addressed with solutions that can support on-prem and cloud.
- Providing managed services – with the push to OpEx, many customers are looking to move operational management of their cloud environments to Gotham. This includes monitoring, support, patching, backup management, and provisioning of cloud resources.
If 2017 was any indication of the momentum of cloud adoption, fasten your seat belts for 2018!
Ask Gotham how we can help your organization and implement a Cloud First strategy.