Identity management needs to be centralized, but access must be federated into all the required locations. Running multiple identity services can be onerous, risky, and inefficient-and it can build back in some of the complexity you should be trying to eliminate. As you move some applications to the cloud, retire some applications in favor of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, or rewrite some applications completely, you will need to make several key decisions about user identity management. Probably the most important control you can put in place is managing user identity in your cloud environments. Fortunately, most infrastructure components are now available in the public cloud of your choice-and you can reuse your organizational knowledge, skills, and even policies in the cloud. If you want your application to thrive in the cloud, you need to move its supporting infrastructure with it. Even the basic load balancing services these applications require will be more complex than those needed by an application that was designed and born in the cloud. You need to treat them like the pampered pets they are, not like cattle.Įnterprise applications ported into cloud environments need much of the same care, management, and application delivery services (security, availability, and performance) that they receive in the data center. They keep state locally, they take time to come online after the underlying server boots, and sudden shutdowns will probably result in inconsistent data. Most enterprise applications were not designed with cloud architectures and methodologies in mind. But it can backfire if you are trying to move an application that was born and raised in the cosseted luxury of the data center into the cold, hard world of the public cloud. Don't upgrade operating systems or software just deploy new instances and terminate the old ones. If a server instance is functioning incorrectly, don't waste time fixing it-just kill it and redeploy. The concept of treating servers like cattle is often seen as intrinsic to cloud architectures. But if you're going to have a successful "lift and shift" migration, there are a few rules you should follow-and one you are going to need to break. There are a number of good reasons to explore this "lift and shift" model: It's estimated to be about 10x cheaper, 1 it's almost always a lot quicker, and in some cases it's simply not worth it to rewrite an application with a limited lifespan. Alternatively, you can simply pick up applications running in your data center and drop them into a public cloud without making large design or platform changes. You can completely re-architect the application for a cloud environment, which can result in a sleek, streamlined user experience, but can often be a time- and labor-intensive process. Migrating an application to the public cloud involves some choices. If you no longer need to manage the basic infrastructure that runs your IT, you can focus more on the security, performance, and availability of the applications that represent the real value IT brings to the enterprise.īut before you get to this nirvana of virtualized, maintenance-free infrastructure, you are going to have to work out the best way to move your applications into their new home. Getting rid of this operational headache and financial drain in exchange for a new world where an old server or application can be retired with a simple API call often makes financial and operational sense. Managing the lifecycle, maintenance, and physical housing of IT infrastructure demands skills, time, and budget that can detract from the overall mission of IT organizations: providing the applications that run the business. While these servers are running the enterprise, they are also consuming power, making heat, and demanding expensive support contracts. It enables them to dispose of the fixed costs and assets involved in running large-scale IT infrastructure, including expensive data centers packed with equipment of different generations and levels of supportability. For many organizations, moving enterprise applications to the public cloud can be a very attractive proposition.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |