Cloud services has emerged as one of the major preferences for the business associates to meet up with the organisational operations with minimum effort and investment. The investment here refers to the all the organisational resources rather than just the financial resources. One of the major construction firms of US have planned to move their services to the cloud platform. Hence, the discussed report is aimed at offering an insight into the processes and measures that should be undertaken by the firm to have a smooth and successful movement to the cloud services. The focus of the paper has been laid over the migration of the payroll system of the organisation over the Azure cloud. Different sections and sub-sections has been accounted for to discuss the migration process. Diagrams are also part of the paper to cite reference to the cloud based payroll process before concluding the paper.
The selected case for the paper is of a major construction industry of US that is headquarter at Bethesda, Maryland and has 10 regional offices throughout the country. The company is well-known for the complex construction works and the intricate interior renovations that it had carried out throughout the country. The prominence that the firm is enjoying is due to the world-class services it provides and the capability of managing projects of different sizes and complexity. To further enhance, its service offering the firm is planning to move its services to cloud.
It has been discussed above that the cloud services offer prominent benefits to the users in terms of resources, maintenance and others. Hence, the selected case of the paper is planning to move their services to cloud so that their IT staff would spend more of their time on productive means rather than maintaining the 50 servers that are stored in its data centre. It would provide the firm with ample of opportunity to enhance its productive business operations. Hence, all the data and applications will be moved to the cloud and one of the application (payroll system) has been considered to discuss the migration process.
It has been stated above that the cloud services offer benefits however, the discussed section has detailed the benefits that will be offered by the cloud services post migration and they include.
Hence, it would be justified to state that the cloud services will offer prominent advantage to the organisation and hence, the following section discusses about the requirement and process of migration.
The discussed section details the factors and aspects that needs to be considered pre migration on the cloud. It would be adequate to pursue the iterative migration process and the following sub-sections details it.
Pre-migration of the services, it would be adequate to develop a virtual data centre in the cloud that includes identity, storage, networking and connectivity. The discussed measure will ensure that the support of business processes will be maintained by the application without any surprises.
Identity: Development of the virtual data centre will ensure that the users who are identified and authenticated to access the data and applications of the organisation are the only ones using it.
Storage: Another crucial need is the storage that will ensure that the expected performance for the migrated workload is met. On virtual storage the it is usually known as page blobs or simply blobs depending upon the data type that is being stored.
Networking: Virtual networking is crucial because the networking completely alters after migration over the cloud because the need for physical topology is omitted however, the former could offer assistance in managing the on-premises network architecture. The virtual network merges the old network that includes retaining of the networking’s subnets and the IP addresses.
Connectivity: The virtual networks could be utilised for transferring of small data sizes however, the performance may get affected in case of bulk and massive data. Hence, adoption of tools such as Azure ExpressRoute is a nice option and should be considered.
The discussed section is aimed at detailing an insight that needs to be considered before migrating to the cloud services. The discussed phase could also be considered as the planning phase because it details the movement strategy and how it could assist a smooth migration of the data and application to the cloud. The data here refers to the data relevant to the employee and their past performances based on which the payroll will be drafted while, the application here is referred at the payroll application. The discussed section will consider four aspects that are crucial for the migration and it includes assessment of the payroll, identification of the application needs, configuration requirement, cost planning and the tools that could be used for assessment. The discussed measures have been detailed as follows:
The discussed assessments could be done with assistance of Azure migrate that will assess all the above discussed aspects of the organisation and accordingly present a migration plan.
The discussed section holds the highest significance because it initiates the migration process and is divided into different steps to enhance the understanding of the process. The first discussion is regarding the redesigning of the application to ensure its compatibility with the cloud services followed by other crucial aspects.
The need for the redesigning of the application has arrived because the current payroll application of the organisation is supported by the Oracle legacy and its migration to Azure will need redesigning. Hence, the following measures will ensure a successful and feasible redesigning and migration of the application to the cloud.
Post redesigning of the application and taking adequate care of the above discussed measures, it is also mandatory to follow the following points to ensure a successful and effective migration.
It involves copying up of the workload into the cloud and enabling asynchronous replication that will maintain the workload and the copy in sync. It will enable the synching of the server and data with the copy while the migration and execution plans are being designed and executed. It will even assist the system to keep track of the log in and work hours details of the users based on which the payslip of the users will be developed.
Testing is another crucial aspect of migration because it ensures that the health of the application before and final cut-over is acceptable. To do the testing, different migration tools can be adopted, however, it should be ensured that the testing tool are offering the productivity environment which will enhance the reliability of the testing. The dummy testing environment should be done before doing the testing on the productivity environment to assure that the testing and the application does not affect the cloud platform in any means. Regression, Adhoc and retesting could prove to be of great importance for the discussed testing.
The discussed section is aimed at detailing that post migration of the tool, the cloud platform offers security, scalability, performance and cost-saving advantages.
Security is a major concern over the cloud and has also been raised by the stakeholders of the firm. Hence, to mitigate the threat for the data and application adequate security and monitoring tools and techniques should be adopted. It will include limiting the accessibility of the users based upon their need of the system to protect the tool from potential misuse and offering system accessibility to cyber malefactors due to the error of the users. Furthermore, keeping the data encrypted during static and transmission phase will ensure the safety of the data. Regular auditing of the tool and the data could also assist in identifying the vulnerability of the system which can then be mitigated by adopting necessary tool or technique. Adoption of cloud security and monitoring tools is also recommended.
Data are the most crucial aspect of any organisation and hence, it becomes of great importance to protect them. The discussed measure could be attained by encrypting the data along with backing up the data. Azure site recovery also offers its assistance in case the data or app gets lost due to any outage or excessive workload and hence should be equipped for data protection.
Cost efficiency and optimisation is also one of the vital aspects that should be offered adequate attention and it can be attained by adopting performance monitoring. The right-sizing of the tool requirement had been assessed before migrating to the cloud services and those could be reassessed along with the final outcome post migration to the cloud to measure the performance. Several tools could be adopted to complete the discussed measure through automation or can also be done manually by using correlational or linear regression methods. The discussed measure will cite the need for adding or reducing the cost investment made by the organisation that will ultimately lead to resource utilisation and a better sustainable future for the firm and its payroll application.
The discussed section has presented the diagrams of the payroll system and it includes an activity diagram, a use case along with an entity relationship (ER) diagram of the system.
Figure 1: Use Case Diagram
(Source: Created by Author using MS Visio)
Figure 2: Activity Diagram
(Source: Created by Author using MS Visio)
Figure 3: Entity Relationship (ER) Diagram
(Source: Created by Author using MS Visio)
Conclusion
The discussed technical report could be summarised to state that cloud services are offering significant prominence to the users and hence, has and still is emerging as one of the most dominant technology in today’s era. The benefits of cost-saving, reduced effort in maintenance, management and others crucial stuffs along with saving of organisational resources are the most prominent benefit offered by the cloud services. Hence, to gain a further insight into the case, the paper has discussed the case of a construction firm of US that has planned to move its services to the cloud platform. The report in discussion has taken account of the payroll application of the organisation and discussed its migration process. The report has detailed different aspects of the paper which includes discussion about the case and the subject. Followed by the pre-migration requirements and identified that undertaking the discussed step ensures a well-informed and planned migration to the cloud services. The next topic of discussion was the assessment of the data and the tool which revealed the needs, strengths and weakness of the tool and cloud platform which could be used to make necessary changes to ensure an effective migration. The migration strategy was followed next which was succeeded by the optimisation, both of which are aimed at offering a secure and effective shifting of thee tool to the platform. Additionally, certain UML diagrams has been attached which reflects the cloud payroll application. Hence, the report could be summarised to conclude that cloud services are offering prominent benefits and the organisations should consider its service, however, they should cite adequate attention to the planning, assessing strategizing and migration to the cloud to leverage the technology.
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