Migrating To Cloud Computing: Strategy And Issues To Consider

About MetaSoft Ltd.

The aim of the Meta soft board is to create a strategy that will help in migrating their web services in to the cloud server, so that they can get better flexibility and the efficiency will also get increased. Before migrating to the cloud server, there are some major concerns that are needed to be considered to be as the essential part. This are as follows:

• Loss of control
• Security
• Reliability of the cloud server
• Managing the possible irks
• Provider lock-in

In order to overcome these problems and issues the Meta soft needs to be more careful and needs to hire an expert who will be able to solve the problems faced after migrating to the cloud server. Proper migration planning is needed, so that the organization can avoid issues (Hashem et al., 2015). In spite of having a consultant or an expert to help, it is equally necessary to plan the migration. Basically while implementing some changes into the organization or migrating to some other sever, there are two ways of approaching to the pan of migration, this are:

Approach from the business perspective: this will help the organization to understand and analyse he need of the business. The benefits that are going to come with migration and the technical requirements are kept forward. This are given first priority, when approached from the business perspective. There is a need to describe a plan that will be beneficial for the business for long term.

Approach from the perspective of provider: These will help the organization to have a better solution from the technical side.  

From the business perspective of migration it can be divided into six approaches

1. Assess applications and the workloads: this typically includes what are the main findings and consideration required for the business. In addition to this there are several considerations including data consideration, technology, security and integration considerations. However, with implementing this their arises some questions that are needed to be answered while developing this server. The critical application that are needed for this organization needs to understand.
2. The organization needs to build business case:the business case will have a cost analysis section that will look after this once the system gets migrated in the sever. This includes the cost related to on- going cloud service costs, managing the service, managing the license, redesigning the application, testing the sever and maintaining it with proper administration. There is need to aware the employees with the use of these technology, so that they can easily access it (Balalaie, Heydarnoori & Jamshidi, 2015). These can be done with providing trainings towards these. Moreover, apart from these costs, there is need of implementing HR policies and costs. The impact that will create on the business is related to the impact on the revenue also needs to look after the customer satisfaction.
3. Technical approach:before migrating the server, they needs to choose appropriate solution that will help in providing better facility. The company needs to understand and choose between IaaS and PaaS, so that better facility can be implemented for the business model. The technical approach needs to estimate the skills that are required for easy accessing and migrating the server. But with the migration steps, there are some issues faced that are needed to be configured.
4. Flexible integration model:These helps in finding an integration model that will in return Flexible integrating model: this is divided into three parts. That is the process integration and the data integration and presentation integration (Wei et al., 2014). Process integration involves invoking another application in order to execute the work flow whereas in the data integration application is used to share or one application is being used to provide the another one with the input. Presentation integration is referred to as the dashboard that is being filled with multiple applications at a time.
5. Addressing the Security and the privacy issues:this becomes very much necessary to understand the security issues that may arise with migrating into the cloud server. Thus for better operation, one needs to review the risk management plan and the TRA. After learning about this plans, the server need to implement this controls. This will help in developing risk management strategies for the cloud server and will help in avoiding the risks for the organization.
6. Managing the migration: after all these steps these becomes necessary to manage the migration steps for the company. These steps includes

• Deploying the environment maintained in the cloud
• Installing and configuring the application for better use
• Helps in hardening the environment for the production
• Planning needs to be done for trial migration, so the steps involved can be understood easily
• Reviewing and executing the migration plan is needed  

There are several steps related to the migration planning from the provider perspective. This includes

1. Cloud assessment phase:this involves assessing the financial and the security involved in this.ther3 is also need to assess the dependency before creating any system
2. Proof of concept:before executing, plan and build POC application that will help the server. There is also a need to understand the authentication and the authorization process (Kavis, 2014).
3. Data migration phase: these deals with understanding the space that is required to store the data. The analyst should understand the database options well so that it can migrate the data easily.
4. Application migration phase:these stage includes choosing a strategy for building up the system from scratch to successfully build. There are two types, hybrid or the forklift.

There are several critical issue that are needed to be encountered while migrating the system to the cloud sever. The organization needs to understand the critical implications that will be created with the implementation of this technology. The organisation and the expert needs to determine the stability provided by the cloud system. That is they needs to be sure, that the cloud server will be reliable or will require some more developments. The organization needs to understand that there is any need to redesign or re- architecture the migration plan. This issues are needed to be fixed by the organization so that maximum efficiency can be achieved. There always lies a chance that the new developing system can replace the existing one, so before migrating to the cloud sever facilities and the possible drawbacks needed to be recognized. The organization needs to understand the cost analysis. As this is a major factor, developing every software or migrating needs huge financial support (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016). So before migrating the organization needs to have a brief about the cost indulged in developing this.

The Strategic Proposal to Migrate to the Cloud

The second issue that arise with the implementation of this technology is that, which one to choose among the technical architecture IaaS, SaaS or PaaS. The organization needs to understand which one will provide better reliability and flexibility. The employees hired should have the skills so that they can operate these server easily. Moreover their arises some security issues that are needed to be overcome. As privacy and security are needed be guaranteed with implementing any kind of software. The risk management needs to be done properly so that they can restore or get the data whenever they wish to have them. The issue that arises with the security purpose is that whether to use the pre-existing security or model or the organization should built an new security model  the company needs to understand the need of encryption and the need of authentication so that they can maintain the security.  Before implementing the changes or migrating to be cloud server there is a need to test the plan, so that they can have an overview of the outcome received (Boutaba, Zhang & Zhani, 2014).

The migration will also involve some issues like time taking and security issues. That is for migrating to another system their will be need of some extra time. At this time the customer may not be able to get proper service, thus it is necessary to prepare a backup plan for the company. Moreover the security with the cloud computing is needed to be checked as data and information related to the customers are most important facts for every organization and this needs to be protected. This points are critical issues as before migrating to a system an organization needs to have a thorough information, so that their does not arise any problem in the future (Singh, Jeong & Park, 2016). The migrating plan is very much necessary in order to achieve a better future for the company. As cloud computing technology provides several benefits, thus it becomes necessary to be clear with the issues that are likely to come along with this. The issues that are associated with the security are the main concern, because every organization aims at providing the best service and wishes to maintain the confidentiality of their customer’s data. Customers will choose those organization that will provide the better security and privacy, as maintaining the confidentiality is very much important for the customers, thus this problems needed to be overcome by the organization.

References

Ali, M., Khan, S. U., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2015). Security in cloud computing: Opportunities and challenges. Information sciences, 305, 357-383.

Almorsy, M., Grundy, J., & Müller, I. (2016). An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.

Balalaie, A., Heydarnoori, A., & Jamshidi, P. (2015, September). Migrating to cloud-native architectures using microservices: an experience report. In European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (pp. 201-215). Springer, Cham.

Boutaba, R., Zhang, Q., & Zhani, M. F. (2014). Virtual machine migration in cloud computing environments: Benefits, challenges, and approaches. In Communication Infrastructures for Cloud Computing (pp. 383-408). IGI Global.

Hashem, I. A. T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N. B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A., & Khan, S. U. (2015). The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information Systems, 47, 98-115.

Kavis, M. J. (2014). Architecting the cloud: design decisions for cloud computing service models (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS). John Wiley & Sons.

Singh, S., Jeong, Y. S., & Park, J. H. (2016). A survey on cloud computing security: Issues, threats, and solutions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 75, 200-222.

Wei, L., Zhu, H., Cao, Z., Dong, X., Jia, W., Chen, Y., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2014). Security and privacy for storage and computation in cloud computing. Information Sciences, 258, 371-386.