Cloud Migration: Benefits, Strategies, and Precautions

Cloud migration is the process which involves the transmission of applications, data or additional business elements to the cloud computing environment. There are several benefits from the cloud migration. Major benefit is that it is capable of hosting the data and applications in an effective manner within the IT environment depended upon certain factors like cost, performance, scalability, flexibility and security. There are various types of cloud migration available in the market, like lift and shift, shift to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), application refactoring, and replatforming (Kavis, 2014). Different clouds have a different way of performing and discrete strategies to execute the task. There are several advantages of the cloud migration but while moving towards the cloud migration once should be concerned about the type of migration to be executed for the particular task with common challenges as it might degrade the workload performance with increased cost-reducing the benefits of the cloud migration (Rouse, 2020).

Cloud computing is the services provided by the cloud, which eventually releases an initiative IT group from the liability of the management of the time. Migrating data to the cloud facilitates us in various ways and allows the growth of the organizations. The migration of data and resources to the cloud facilitates us with a flexible amount of work. Public cloud provides scalability via pay-per-usage model, while private cloud provides us with extra control and increased security level and hybrid model provides us with the benefits of both and the best though the performance and connectivity may suffer. Moreover, the top cloud services available across the globe, i.e. AWS, Microsoft, Google, and IBM facilitates us with the services to perform different kinds of work over the cloud with the facilities of the tools to move the applications effectively to the cloud system (Rouse, 2020). Thus, with such benefits available in the cloud system and to investigate in detail the overall working mechanism and the types of services provided by each section motivates me to carry out this research. This research is generally focused on the determination of the best cloud migration services provided by the cloud service provider companies. This research is also focused on the precautions to be followed by any business company to move from the on-premises to the cloud environment.

The major aim of this project is to determine the cloud developed environment and the overall migration process model involved in it. It is also focused on regarding the development of the cloud environment with the various strategies and the migration methods used for the successful completion of the migration process. This project is also depended upon the types of services and securities provided by the cloud system in its environment to execute the task or perform any task from its access.

Cloud Development

There are various objectives of this project which is based upon the above-mentioned aims. The objectives of this project depending upon the above aims are listed below: -

• To critically explore the process of cloud development and cloud migration process.
• To identify the benefits obtained from the cloud migration.
• To examine different types of cloud providers and migration partners.
• To examine different types of services and security provided by cloud-based environment.
• To recommend the strategies of improving effectiveness of cloud computing system for the users.

Following are different research questions that will be answered by successful completion of this research project:

• What are the major benefits of cloud migration?
• What are different types of services and security provided by cloud-based environment?
• What are the major companies which provide cloud migration services?
• What is the model which was used for cloud migration illustration for your research?
• What is your proposed cloud migration processed model?
• What strategies can be recommended for improving effectiveness of cloud computing system for the users?

In today’s growing era, we could observe the ultimate growth in the technologies and infrastructures around us. Any operating business firms or organizations needs to be updated with modern technologies and infrastructures. Those organizations should also be updated about the latest ongoing changes with the system, networks and optimum availability of the storage for their data and resources. Its other computing resources should also be managed and updated based upon the requirement of the organizations. Managing and controlling all those computing services by the organization only is found to be difficult and challenging. So, the cloud system develops the easier and most prominent ways to keep updated and regular maintenance and up-gradation of the system with the facilities of the scalability within the reliable cost for those services (Arora et al., 2013). To resolve all these problems faced by the business organization in today’s era cloud system allows the facilities of the flexibility, performance, cost and scalability which allow updating the system with the optimum storage of their data and higher security to those stored data of any business firms.

Brief Introduction of Structure of the research.

In the words of Armbrust et al., 2010, cloud computing can be defined from a variety of perspectives at the exploratory stage. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed general ideas about cloud computing and has been generally accepted by the public. The cloud can be defined as a model that allows various computing resources to be shared as services to different customers. With this need in mind, customers can easily modify or adjust their services in this model. Along with this, Dillon et al., (2010) have stated that cloud computing is a service provided with applications and software systems in the data center, and it pays special attention to the meaning of services related to cloud computing. The cloud involves software and hardware that can be used and accessed by virtualized resources, and illustrates changes in cloud computing and other paradigms.

Cito et al., (2015) have demonstrated that cloud development involving integrated and enhanced environments, all aspects of application lifecycle management, such as quality testing and management, source code, configuration management and continuous delivery applications, and security test applications. In addition, Lim and Hong (2010) have depicted that the process of effective business interaction in a cloud environment. The integrated ontology will integrate service providers, as cloud customers and business processes are required.

Cloud Migration

It is pointed out by Jamshidi et al., (2013) that cloud migration is related to the process of transferring data, applications and other business elements through the on-site computers of the business organization to the migration from one cloud environment to another. Cloud computing may include data transfer or other business elements in a cloud environment, these elements are called cloud-to-cloud migration. Along with this, Gholami et al., (2016) have demonstrated that cloud migration requires security to ensure confidentiality. Like various active attacks, the migration can be performed powerfully and effectively without data loss. There are multiple ways to ensure cloud migration. Various organization have willingness to move their existing legacy application for the cloud environment due to facing various kinds of issues while adopting new technologies, platforms and standards. The problems may include less agility, longer time for market, maintenance cost, challenges in integration and challenges in upgrading.

There are four types of process model available in the cloud system i.e. On-premises, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. There are various computing resources to be handled and controlled while handling the software. The computing resources are servers, data, middleware, O/S, runtime, virtualization, network, applications, and storage (Fowley and Pahl, 2016). In the model named “On-premises,” all the computing resources need to be handled by own self where the company itself has its own server and control all the computing resources involved in it.

It Stands for Infrastructure-as-a-Service, in this model data, applications, middleware, runtime and O/S needs to be managed by the business firm itself while the remaining section is managed by the service provider (cloud). In the words of Pahl and Xiong (2013), IaaS model allows to control and monitor applications, data, runtime, middleware and O/S computing resources of the system while the remaining section is controlled by the vendors. This system implication allows the data security as it allows managing the data and applications used in this system by the company itself.

• Provides Computing architecture and Infrastructure.
• Vendors will handle Data storage, Virtualization, Servers, and Networking.
• System administrators will use this service.

House, Amazon Elastic Compute service and Google Compute Engine.

The owner will give house with few items like bed and table to the end user to use these facilities and pay the rent, so user can setup the house as user likes. The owner was given Infrastructure to the end user in the form of service. It is free to choose the architecture that user wants and more flexible, it supports dynamic workloads (Bhoyar and Chopde, 2013). This service is basic underline structure. Furthermore, this service is much expensive than the PaaS and SaaS services.

In the words of Rani and Ranjan (2014) PaaS system manages only applications and data remaining computing resources are controlled by the vendors itself. The platform as given to the developers in the form of a service, it gives complete platform for applications development, deployment, and testing. It is highly scalable and cost effective. It simplifies the development process that minimizes the organizational costs. Along with this, Doelitzscher et al., (2011) have determined that PaaS service is faster for developers because the vendor will provide all computing resources like server-side components, they can use existed resources to build an application in a much better way along with it is easy to deployment of web applications. PaaS is also offering different flexible pricing plans for different kinds of businesses. It supports multi programming language as well as private and public cloud deployment. The cloud provider will give a platform with certain restricted languages only defined by vendor. Example: Google App Engine and AWS Elastic Beanstalk.