Migration

Migrating Enterprise Applications to the Cloud

Virtual Ark is an expert in migrating enterprise applications to the cloud and then providing ongoing management of those applications to ensure optimized cloud delivery. As part of the process, Virtual Ark determines the best strategy for migrating it to the cloud. Enterprises need to consider which of their many applications belong in the cloud and then think about the strategy for how to migrate them. The applications chosen for migration and the strategy for the migration process can affect not only the ease and success of the migration itself but also the user’s service experience.

When Virtual Ark assesses the suitability of enterprise applications running in the cloud, we examine a variety of different factors. These include things like understanding who uses the application, what business value it provides, how many people use it, how big it is, what infrastructure it requires and what SLAs are currently in place. After that, we examine various parameters including code and data migration, data sensitivity, regulation requirements, platform alignment and life expectancy of the application. Is the application single tier or multi tier and how can the application be scaled up and scaled out. What geographic access is required by the application and does it need to be deployed such that it can be accessed from a single location during a specific time window or will it be accessed globally 24×7? Virtual Ark will also assess any dependencies the application has with other applications and dependencies that may exist on shared data center infrastructure.

Many existing enterprise applications have known scalability or resiliency issues. Although migration of an application to a cloud will not solve all intrinsic application scalability or resiliency issues, enterprises might be able to derive tangible financial and operational benefits in moving an application from legacy servers to a cloud. Application migration is the process of redeploying an application, typically on newer platforms and infrastructure. The process involves the staging of the new environment before the actual cutover and requires coordination of IT teams at the time of cutover.