Taking the pain out of moving to the cloud

People get very excited about moving to the cloud – with low costs, increased efficiency, and available support, it’s one of the hottest technologies out there. But just like any other move, it can be painful and much more difficult than we initially think.

Think of the last time you got a new computer. Moving your files over was just drag and drop. But what about all those customized apps, bookmarks, and settings? Exporting them takes time, and even special migration tools. Add compatibility issues on top of it, and all of a sudden “making the switch” becomes a lot more complicated. Well, these same types of problems exist in cloud migration, whether it’s moving from your datacenter to the cloud, or even from one cloud provider to another. Moving the code is the easy part. It’s all the other settings that accompany the code that makes things trickier. For example, all the OS security settings you made initially won’t move with you. Even if you remember the exact settings, they’ll still have to be reset once you reach your new cloud. This is true for the whole list of little tweaks to accompany your code. Let’s say you’re moving from an app running on AIX in the datacenter to a cloud hosted on Ubuntu. You’ll have to configure your home directories, file systems, and networks all over again for successful cloud application deployment. And since they run on different formats you can’t just reuse files. It’s like baking from scratch every single time. This is a big obstacle for people who expect the cloud to provide them with simplicity and mobility. That’s why Makara’s cloud application management console takes all these small complexities and stores it in our platform layer. Network settings, security, file systems: we take all these small moving parts and handle them for you. Because we’re pretty familiar with all of our own environments, we’re able to provide best practices and pre-configuration. And when it comes time for a reset or another move, storage and transfer become no problem. As more and more people start looking to move to the cloud, and as the cloud continues to evolve, it’s important that the transition to the cloud (and to other clouds) is as easy and seamless as possible.