for a successful shift to the cloud May 2014 1
CONTENTS Introduction Challenge 1: Application security Challenge 2: Complexity Challenge 3: Applications not optimized for cloud Challenge 4: Cost Challenge 5: Code compliance Challenge 6: Application lifecycle Unlock your cloud potential 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2
INTRODUCTION Over the past few years, we have typically seen businesses embrace the cloud by virtualising existing infrastructure that contains their legacy apps and putting their infrastructures into an IaaS service - but they are still not realising all the advantages that cloud can offer. The explosion of mobile devices, big data, social and cloud are driving the accelerating pace of business. As a result, businesses are now moving even faster, spurring IT to pick up the pace even more to further increase business agility and speed of innovation. 2014 is the year PaaS goes mainstream The emerging cloud computing trend for 2014 is Platform-as-a-Service and the migration of applications into PaaS. Many enterprises are preparing to move their legacy applications to cloud-based platforms and this cloud layer will become the choice for many businesses and IT decision makers. Why? Because it supports better and faster application development, agility, analytics, cloud-based cost-advantages and vast scalability. According to analyst firm IDC, the PaaS market is expected to grow from $3.8 billion to $14 billion by 2017. (http://www. forbes.com/sites/sungardas/2013/12/10/seven-cloud-computing-trends-in-2014/) And effectively, we are already seeing a massive shift of applications going straight into PaaS - Platform as a Service - and skipping the mature IaaS layer. PaaS is a much more efficient delivery method for software. In fact, PaaS is the ideal solution to centralise, modernise and integrate an otherwise disparate in-house software toolkit. So, can you shift your in-house developed legacy app to The Cloud? Yes, you can - and it just may save you money. So what s stopping you? Are those legacy apps holding you back? Here s how to make the move to the cloud successfully by overcoming the six most common barriers: WHAT IS PAAS? Platform as a Service (PaaS) is designed for the software development world. PaaS can be defined as a computing platform that allows the creation of web applications quickly and easily and without the complexity of buying and maintaining the software and infrastructure underneath it. PaaS is comparable to SaaS except that, rather than being software delivered over the web, it is a platform for the creation of software, delivered over the web. WHAT IS THE PAAS PROPOSITION? The PaaS value proposition is simple: Bring your code, and we ll handle everything else for you -- Internet connectivity, power, hardware, operating system, software, monitoring, backup, restore, failover, scaling and more. 3
CHALLENGE 1: APPLICATION SECURITY Our apps won t be as secure in the cloud As companies seek to move their existing applications to the cloud or develop new cloud applications, the subject of security is often at the forefront of any decision. Unfortunately, most organisations focus on the physical and network perimeter security of the cloud service provider, when in fact the largest security risk is an electronic attack from unknown neighbours, especially when running on a multi tenant platform. It is important that any applications moving into any public cloud environment are secure and protected against known and unknown vulnerabilities. The successful CIO will be looking how to expose any potential security vulnerabilities within the application source code prior to deploying to the cloud, in order to guarantee a smooth and effective transition. CHALLENGE 2: COMPLEXITY Our legacy applications are too complex to move to PaaS Integration complexity is effectively a major barrier to PaaS adoption. This is because typically organisations do not understand the full picture of their IT environments and application infrastructure. How does each app interact with other services? And which apps talk to external services such as APIs, databases and other critical touch points? Simply extracting the existing app and putting it into the cloud will break all the integration points and have a disastrous effect on business continuity. Companies want to avoid taking legacy spaghetti and simply making it cloud spaghetti! The successful CIO will need to build up a picture of all the integration points, creating a complete map of key application elements to identify the optimal strategy for cloud adoption. 4
CHALLENGE 3: APPLICATIONS NOT OPTIMIZED FOR CLOUD Our apps are just too big to make any savings A Cloud environment offers a variable pricing model where you pay for what you consume, or for the resources used. Often, we see companies migrate inefficient, bloated applications full of redundant or deprecated code that consume unnecessary resources - and in fact increase the overall cost of operating their applications in the cloud as opposed to on premise. The successful CIO will need to fully understand their existing source code, identify heavily loaded code, and take the necessary steps to make their apps leaner and cleaner to be truly cloud ready and realize the immediate cost savings of cloud. CHALLENGE 4: COST Its far too expensive to redevelop my apps and make them cloud ready Many organisations believe it s expensive to move - when in reality moving to the cloud can save you money. There is a big fear of quantifying the cost of redeveloping and refactoring that legacy code to get it off that proprietary system and into the cloud. The thought estimating the effort and the number of man days required to manually analyse and test millions of lines of code, combined with the risk of human error and maybe even the cost of that flight out to India to meet your developers makes many CIOs pale and simply sit tight. The successful CIO will be seeking an automated method of analyzing and testing code to reduce effort, costs and reduce margin for error to obtain accurate results quickly and subsequently speed up the cloud adoption process. 5
CHALLENGE 5: CODE COMPLIANCE We haven t really followed best practice for our code base You are running a multitude of apps, developed and on developed by a multitude of people over time. You are unsure of the quality and compliance of the code and consistency in the code construct. In fact, you have no idea how the code was built. And you know your internal documentation is poor. You are not alone. Surprisingly, even starts ups can find themselves in this position, and often need to stabilize their code in order to secure the next round of investment. The successful CIO, especially those in more regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, will look for a solution to test its applications for compliance and consistency prior to migrating to the cloud. CHALLENGE 6: APPLICATION LIFECYCLE We won t move to the cloud until we need to upgrade Part of the reason we don t see apps aggressively moving to cloud is because of the app refresh cycle. IT teams have other things to do, and they re content to wait. If you wait to start using the cloud until the end of life for applications that may hang around for a decade, you re going to lose much of the benefit of cloud. And it s not necessary to wait. You just have to overcome the fear, identifying how to optimize your existing source code and how to move your apps to the latest version. Given portfolios of hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of applications, often on lumbering half-a-decade refresh cycles, enterprise CIOs must push to make a start on embarking on their cloud journey. But remember; don t just move because you think everyone else is. Do it when you are ready, when there are real, compelling business reasons to do so, such as reduced costs or better value, and then make the move. Only then will you see the most returns. The successful CIO won t get stopped by the application life cycle police to take advantage of the economies of scale that cloud computing delivers. 6
UNLOCK YOUR CLOUD POTENTIAL We all want to shift to the cloud, to enjoy the benefits cloud offers agility, scalability, security, control, greater flexibility - but its all about mitigating risk and getting cloud ready prior to making the move. Today s CIOs considering shifting legacy apps to the cloud need to ensure that teams set expectations, use the right tools for the right use case and analyse, test and optimise source code to completely reduce the risk before leaping. Four key steps to face your fears and unlock your cloud potential 1. Analyse and test existing code 2. Obtain accurate results quickly 3. Identify change 4. Recognize recommendations and implement them So you know what you have to do but how and where do you start? Introducing Argentum Argentum is dedicated to driving the adoption of cloud services faster through application intelligence and insights. We have 4 innovative tools, available on a SaaS basis, to address the challenges and complexity of moving to the cloud. We effectively remove the inhibitors to migrating legacy apps to the cloud so what are you waiting for? Argentum Application Due Diligence What does it do? Unravels the source code of any pre processed application Benefits: Reduce risk Argentum Cloud Security Analysis What does it do? Identifies security vulnerabilities within the source code Benefits: Reduce risk Argentum Cloud Integration Analysis What does it do? Establishes the viability and effort required to shift legacy apps to the cloud Benefits: Reduce costs, mitigate risk, improved reliability Argentum Cloud Optimisation Analysis What does it do? Optimize your apps to maximize value from pay for what you use cloud platform Benefits: Reduce cost, mitigate risk, be compliant 7
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