The pace to move the applications to the cloud is accelerating to the extent that by end of 2018 more than 75% of all IT budget will be around cloud solutions. In this blog we are going to talk about top three impediments to moving to the public cloud. The blog will not delve into private cloud.

The first impediment to migration continues to be the concerns around security. This, however, is rapidly changing due to secured and fully integrated IaaS layer. “Cloud at Customer” is an offering from Oracle wherein the entire infrastructure is hosted within the four walls of customer and managed like a cloud by the vendor. This provides a convenient pathway to eventual cloud migration since the on-premise hosted infrastructure has same specifications as that of cloud infrastructure. The fact that the infrastructure is exactly the same as what the cloud provider puts in its cloud differentiates Cloud at Customer from more traditional hosted environments.  HEXstream, an Oracle Platinum partner, has assisted many clients in migrating and deploying the applications to cloud while mitigating the security concerns.

There is hardly any serious conversation on migration to cloud without a mention of cost. But one thing that all our clients agree

on is that cloud expenses are covered under OpEx whereas on-premise expenses are mostly under CapEx. Often OpEx is a better option than CapEx as OpEx frees up the precious capital reserve of the organization. Our Advisory Services help customers understand how labor, licensing, hardware, and facilities costs impact the total cost of operating the infrastructure needed to run different applications.  HEXstream can also help customers by performing a detailed Virtualization vs Core analysis that provides a cost comparison while adhering the vendors’ often complex licensing requirements. This allows for reducing the migration costs and the overall cost of ownership and advising where cost models do not recommend a migration to the cloud at this time. Our experience and expertise in “Bare Metal” platforms invariably result in a very rich discussion with our clients leading to a solution that meets not only the business requirements but also the needs of IT and Finance. We also take into consideration the data volume, the data usage, data users and need to download the data. Because data storage and movement of data is an expensive proposition, careful analysis is performed prior to developing a migration path.

Another trend that is developing is the “Cloud-to-cloud” migration. This is purely a cost decision. As the ease of migration increases, while reducing the cost of migration, this trend will gain traction. There are several factors that we consider while developing a migration strategy such as server type, number of virtual machines, number of CPU cores, storage capacity, data clustering etc. Additionally, we emphasize discussion and understanding of the use of tools supporting the migration and cloud solutions. One important consideration that is often overlooked is the use of proprietary versus open cloud management tools. While consensus appears to be around using open source tools, there are circumstances where the use of proprietary tools is warranted.  However, organizations need to understand when they opt for cloud vendor specific tools the degree to which they are locking themselves into a vendor’s cloud and reducing their leverage to insist on cost reductions as technology moves forward.  HEXstream can advise on this topic.

HEXstream is fast emerging as a leader in providing the migration of application whether they are on-premise to cloud, Cloud to cloud or Cloud to on-premise. One key differentiator that we have is our ability to implement a “hybrid” model wherein we can help customers keep multiple environments synchronized with each other in near real time. This is critical from the point of view of developing trust in data while performing parallel runs to ensure the completeness of the migration.

Finally, the key benefits of engaging with HEXstream are: