AEC CLOUD

4 CONSIDERATIONS
WHEN MOVING TO
THE CLOUD
A GUIDE TO SUCESSFUL MIGRATION

Contact:
Godwin J Kodan
Business Manager
 Summary

Minimize risk and increase

acceptance

Migrating your business to the cloud is a major step that requires

thoughtful consideration in order to minimize risk and increase
acceptance across the organization. Focus items include:

Cloud architecture
Data security and integrity   
User adoption
Introduction

Pursue with a strategic

approach

Cloud computing continues to be a “disruptive phenomenon” with the

potential of making your IT organization dynamically responsive. This
statement, according to analyst firm Gartner, is hard to argue against
given the potential for cloud computing to lower the cost and increase
the agility of running IT resources, while becoming highly flexible in
how you scale services.

Today, more enterprise workloads are shifting to the cloud. In a recent

survey of more than 1,000 technical professionals across a broad cross-
section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing,
RightScale [MC1]  found that roughly 17% of enterprises said that they
have more than 1,000 virtual machines in the public cloud. Another
31% said that the same number is running in the private cloud. These
numbers are up from 13% and 22% respectively, just one year earlier.

Despite this upward trend in adoption, many companies still haven’t

embraced the cloud across their entire organization. According to the
survey, only 29% of businesses fall under the category of “heavy” user of
cloud computing—those that run the majority of their business in the
cloud. In fact, 51% are either in the early stages of running a few
applications, or trialing their first applications, in the cloud today.

This means that if you are in the early phases of adoption/evaluation,

you are in good company. Still, your migration to the cloud should be
one that is pursued with a strategic approach. There are multiple
business factors that must be taken into consideration —even before
you start to consider your technology provider. At a macro level we
have identified four big considerations you need to make before
moving your business to the cloud.
Consideration
1

Cloud Architecture

Not all clouds are alike. In fact, one of the first considerations you
must make is the type of architecture you wish to adopt. This will
determine the level of investment you make in the cloud, the
amount of control you have over your cloud environment, and
perhaps even the your ultimate success with operating outside of
the physical IT environment.

There are three architectures to consider: Public, Private and Hybrid,

and are defined as such:

Public cloud : The use of services located offsite and shared among
multiple customers.

Private cloud : A personalized cloud environment that is built

specific to the needs of a single customer. One of the more well-
known private cloud models is Microsoft Azure, which is an
outsourced cloud offering that allows you to pay only for the
applications you use.

Hybrid cloud : This model blends elements of public and private

clouds. The advantage with this model is the ability to minimize the
cost and shared resources. It is a model that 71% of cloud users
surveyed by RightScale have adopted—on average these users
leverage 6 clouds; 3 public and 3 private. Major vendors like VMware
and EMC are strong in the framework of hybrid cloud.
Consideration
2

Computing Resources

Moving to the cloud has an impact on both your hardware and your
software. By definition, the cloud involves migrating your storage
from clunky physical servers that take up space and cost you money
to virtualized machines that are off-premise and out of sight.

But cloud migration also encompasses your perhaps your most

important computing resource—your data. When moving to the
cloud, be sure to map out a strong data-migration strategy. Criteria
number-one is to ensure it is not a rushed process. Being hasty with
data migration could result in overall lags in the process—or a much
worse scenario, loss of data.

Most cloud vendors will guide you through the migration process by
putting your data into tiered categories. For instance, financial and
project data being considered top-tier data that needs to migrate
right away and without any hiccup. And to ensure its smooth
migration, they would establish a direct connect between your data
center and the virtual data centers. Whereas second or third tier
data could be considered that which could be migrated slowly over
time and be migrated using various different data-replication
methods.

It is very important to understand the data migration strategy and

work with your vendor to ensure a safe and secure path that is
under your control.
Consideration
3

Data Security

It’s natural to be a bit hesitant about having some third-party in

charge of your hardware and software. Being secure in the cloud
has long been a top priority, despite the weening concern from
cloud users as of late.

In fact, roughly 35% of 2,200 CISOs surveyed the Bitglass Cloud

Security Report said they believe cloud apps had matched on-
premises applications in terms of being secure—another 17%
indicated that cloud apps were more secure than on-premises apps.

Nevertheless, it is still vital that the security policies you have in

place at your own company extend to the cloud. Major cloud
providers do invest heavily in security, however it is still
recommended that you are actively ensuring secure and compliant
use in a cloud environment.
Consideration
4

Your Workforce

Dovetailing off of consideration #3, your ability to uphold secure

and compliant use of IT is only as strong as your employees. And
mobile devices are an enabling factor in this consideration.

Chances are your employees are doing some sort of work-related

activity on mobile devices. Regardless of whether your organization
has an adopted BYOD (bring-your-own-device) policy in place or
not, there is a strong possibility that your employees are
downloading unapproved apps, accessing corporate documents or
sharing data via their own mobile device.

The bottom line is to ensure they are comfortable working in the

cloud. Bring your workforce along into the cloud environment
through education. The more your workers know about the
potential risks to security the better. Or perhaps, more importantly,
the higher their level of knowledge about their role in upholding
data security at the company—e.g., the potential risks to intellectual
property—the more apt they will be to upholding data security
policies.

Another tactic involves ensuring you are always providing the the
latest mobile capabilities, of which cloud services can make this
possible.
Conclusion

The four considerations are a

framework

Migrating your business to the cloud can be a major decision—and one

that should not be taken lightly. Its impact touches multiple parts of
your organization, from the data you are producing to the people
interacting with it on a daily basis.

While there are many things to consider when moving to the cloud,
consider these four as a framework for how to approach the market.
After that, the sky’s the limit.

AEC Cloud has been on the scene working with the largest AEC
companies in the field for  over 17 years . Leaders in the industry rely on
our expertise and proven track record to help their companies stay
ahead with their Enterprise Application Hosting needs. Just ask  Hensel
Phelps  or  Turner Construction.

Finding an experienced and reliable hosting partner is critical in

seeing a successful outcome.

Here at AEC Cloud, we know what you need before you do.  We have
been hosting applications and data for some of the largest
companies in the AEC space for over 17 years.   We can help guide
you through the maze of cloud hosting and determine exactly what
your company needs today, and what it will need tomorrow.

For consultation contact us

Phone:  (212) 505-0381
email: sales@aeccloud.com