Solution Provider Offers Five Tips for Getting the Most Out
of Applications in the Cloud
Farmington Hills,
MI, November 15, 2011 – Moving applications to the cloud
can result in significant improvements in resource utilization,
scalability, functionality, development/testing efficiency and
maintenance costs. Even so, not every cloud customer reports
dramatic improvements – why not? Logicalis, an international
provider of integrated information and communications technology
(ICT) solutions and services (http://www.us.logicalis.com/),
says changes have to be made to the applications and supporting
processes to leverage the cloud’s features to the fullest.
From an application standpoint, moving to the
cloud often involves rethinking how an application is built and
tested. The cloud is a great place for developing and hosting
applications. But too often, customers fail to re-architect
their application in a way that captures all the benefits the cloud
has to offer.
“Moving an app to the cloud as-is is like
using a sleeping bag on a brand-new king-sized bed. The cloud
gives an application space to stretch out, unprecedented monitoring
to be comfortable, and as many services as it needs to be warm,”
says Brian Day, director of cloud solutions for Logicalis.
“But clients have to look at the entire application eco-system as
well as their own end users to reap the rewards. It’s
possible to run parts of the ecosystem in the public cloud and
others in the private cloud, but understanding where to split
applications to minimize latency across the network is a precise
science that can have a dramatic impact on performance.
Equally important is the manner in which the end user accesses the
application. This is where a cloud-savvy solution provider
can prove extremely beneficial to the client in helping define
these parameters and make appropriate changes to the client’s
applications that will help them increase the benefit they obtain
from entering the cloud.”
Based on its cloud consulting experience,
Logicalis has outlined five important tips clients need to know
when moving applications to the cloud.
Five Tips for Getting the Most Out of
Apps in the Cloud
1. Learn to
Share: Developing for the cloud is different than
developing for in-house hardware. Rather than requiring
applications to have their own database, storage, communication and
authentication mechanisms, the cloud can offer common, shared
components accessible via an API. These common components can
then be built in a scalable, modular, secure way so that the
developer doesn’t have to worry about scaling or backing up a
database. The advantage? By leveraging common services,
developers can build more scalable applications in less time,
allowing the developer to focus more on the client’s needs than the
application’s requirements.
2. Don’t Bypass
PaaS: The end game of shared services is to provide a
suite of services which are easily accessible and a system for
managing environments, users and the deployment of code.
Developers and testers can easily deploy and promote tested code
using the auto deployment features inherent in most
platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments. This offers
additional advantages such as the ability to snap a new
functionality into an existing application; for example, if there’s
a common API on the shared platform for sending out robotic calls,
the client could add that functionality to their order entry
system, having the system call customers to tell them their orders
are ready. In a PaaS environment, time to add new
functionality can be significantly reduced.
3. Become
Omniscient: Within the cloud, enhanced monitoring tools
and dashboards give developers the ability to predict utilization
and right-size resources on the fly to meet the needs of the user
base much more easily – and cost effectively – than they can in a
physical infrastructure. This allows the developer to size
cloud applications to more nominal resource levels rather than
overdesigning the initial infrastructure because, through the
enhanced monitoring tools the cloud offers, additional instances of
the application can be spun up or down as needed. It also
gives IT pros the ability to debug issues quickly and much more
easily than in a physical infrastructure.
4.
Give Orchestration a Second Look: Clouds can
contain an orchestration layer that enables rapid provisioning of
whole environments (VMs, software, configuration). A lot of
clients believe that because an application is difficult to set up,
it is not a candidate for automatic self provisioning, but that is
exactly when it makes the most sense! Orchestration can
automate standard processes, such as deploying an entire
testing environment so, orchestration,
together with a self-provisioning portal and monitoring capability,
can be an extremely powerful tool.
5.
Rely on Self Service: Most clouds have some aspect
of self provisioning of at least VMs, and in the case of
orchestration, entire environments. This means developers and
quality assurance (QA) teams can have access to applications when
and where they need to. Having an orchestration layer to give
them a measure of controlled self service and a stable testing
environment leads to increased efficiencies in development, testing
and deployment of applications in the cloud.
Want to learn more?
- Read Logicalis’ feature
article: “Cloud 2.0” here.
- Want to meet your new secret
weapon? Watch a short video about the cloud and managed
services
here.
About
Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration, data center,
and cloud computing and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs nearly 2,500 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
over $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications solution integrators,
specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and
services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues of approximately $5 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/.