How AWS is helping enterprise apps safely migrate to the Cloud

AWS is helping enterprise apps safely migrate to the cloud with a unique blend of management tools and services that parallels on-premise resources along with services to join on-premise and cloud seamlessly.

The cloud has been empowering new platform businesses like AirBnB and Uber to innovate beyond their industry counterparts. Many legacy enterprise business applications have had to stand on the sidelines watching their leaner competitors take advantage of the virtually limitless resources available to them.

I’ve helped many start-ups deploy quickly and inexpensively to the cloud with AWS’s enterprise grade services. I’ve also seen the reluctance of large legacy IT departments to make the switch due to the many business, technical process and security obstacles that exist for them.

Until recently, a migration to the cloud or a hybrid solution of on-premise and in cloud was impossible. Legacy systems often rely on legacy network counterparts to function properly. What would happen if a service that was running for 20 years was suddenly moved to and isolated from another facility? Would it stop working? Would they be able to monitor it? Would it be legally compliant? These and many more obstacles have been keeping many companies from migrating their resources to the cloud.

Enter companies like VMWare into the equation…
VMWare is one of the many solutions that allow companies to run virtual servers on top of virtualization software and software appliances. That means you can run the same software you use to run applications in your present facilities. Configure and Install the software on your workstation or server and the application can run exactly the same on both installs.

VMWare is also one of the most popular virtualization flavors utilized by big companies. By making these resources available in the AWS cloud, companies now have comparable target resources to make the migration possible. Previously, the bar was much higher to transition resources to the cloud. The combination of security and compatibility issues as well as the means to do data migrations had once made it virtually impossible. Now, with the new joint initiatives, a bridge exists to make it easier.

Add in the AWS Cloud infrastructure advantages…
Amazon Web Services Cloud provides a number of tools and services to help ease the transition. It’s no longer an all or none choice. The feasibility of a hybrid solution makes it easier for established enterprise infrastructures to keep some of their legacy services running on-premise while migrating other services to the cloud over a period of months or even years. For example, AWS Storage Gateway provides on-premise data storage to sync on-premise data with the cloud so that the same data is available in both places. An AWS Virtual Private Cloud network can be configured to be work securely with your network as if it was part of your existing datacenter. AWS Direct Connect can be utilized to be provide a private secure connection between your data center and the AWS region which, as an added bonus, hosts multiple data centers instantly giving you the option of scaling an infrastructure across multiple availability zones for performance, everyday availability and business continuity during disaster recovery events. Tools available in the cloud can compliment and integrate into your existing deployment processes to help migrate and sync deployments between the environments. Security based services in the cloud help maintain the compliance previously only available in on-premise controlled environments.

The Payoff.
Now IT management can take advantage of the on-demand cloud based services to augment their existing on-prem operations, combining secure integration and access together with the elasticity to grow a network without buying costly hardware. It’s an opportunity to save money that comes with the built-in opportunity to implement a redundancy of operations for continuity of business.

Remember the days of costly redundant datacenters warmed up and ready to go for DR purposes? Now, the cost is almost zero as customers are charged only for AWS resources that they use each day, meanwhile thousands of servers are ready for them to start up on demand, making the hardware costs for dormant services negligible.

Cloud native is still the way to go, giving new businesses an advantage to quickly get and up and running with their infrastructure in the cloud from day one. Now legacy enterprise businesses can enjoy some of the benefits too. It may come at a cost of time and resources but more and more enterprises are making the move towards cloud and hybrid cloud solutions as the migration to the cloud has already begun. Examples of companies already enjoying the benefits of migrating services to the cloud include Liberty Mutual, Nasdaq, Merck and Sysco.

To learn more about hybrid cloud solutions on AWS and how you can make the transition today check out : https://aws.amazon.com/enterprise/hybrid/

Posted on January 12, 2017 in my blog, Uncategorized

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About the Author

Phil is a technology expert with 15+ years experience architecting and building e-commerce solutions. He started in digital agencies like PixelPark and Xceed and has worked in creating cutting-edge web solutions, including being an early technology adopter with live events such as Intel Music Festival. He was also the founder of All Media Interactive Group. He specializes in open source development using LAMP, iOS, Node.js, Java, PHP, Magento, and Drupal. At Citigroup/SmithBarney, he served as Development Lead and Tech Program Manager for the Applications Development Division and also headed up Applications Data Security as a certified CISSP for Smith Barney, leading architecture domains and creating standards and best practices for the Applications Development group. In addition, Phil has built integrated social media, informational and commerce database solutions from the ground up for the mobile and desktop platforms of Queen of Raw and Favoire. Phil is a mentor at the Branson Centre for Entrepreneurship and was a Finalist for the $1M Verizon Powerful Answers Award and a Top 15 Fashion Tech Founders of the Future Finalist at New York Fashion Tech Forum.
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