Is Cloud Migration Becoming Easy?

Among some of the challenges one could encounter when taking the road to the cloud that I have mentioned in one  of my earlier articles, 5 Challenges in the Journey to the Cloud, there is one that is purely technical and practical, specifically the complexity of the integration and migration process.  And yes, there is no denying, these are issues not to be taken lightly.  However, as I said in the same article, the IT industry is definitely rising to the challenge and finding innovative solutions.

Interestingly, some of the innovative solutions emerging may be able to help with more than one challenge. I have mentioned that lack of industry wide standards is perceived to be one of the weak links in the cloud computing offering and that an urgent issue would be standardization at platform level, which would allow for greater flexibility if a company wants to move from one cloud provider to the other.

But, as always, there is another way and some emerging new technologies are providing an answer to both issues, like RiverMeadow Networks’ Shaman, an innovative virtualization technology solution that can transform and migrate physical and virtual applications, „as is”, to the cloud.  The solution can enable migration from cloud provider to cloud provider, or from physical systems or private cloud, for example, to a cloud provider, in a very quick, efficient and cost effective manner.

What does this mean? Well, I think it means flexibility, now I’m not held hostage to a provider, I might want to keep some of my low risk virtuals on Amazon EC2 and keep my mission critical virtuals at Windstream, NaviSite or Terramark for example.  And I believe CTO’s/CIO’s are more likely to migrate to cloud and even a specific provider, if they know they have the flexibility of moving their parts or all of their cloud environment.

Cloud providers that embrace this type of solution will find that they will migrate more customers because it makes it easier for the customer and gives them additional options.  Cloud customers will most likely pay for this type of service, so it is a benefit not only to the customer but also the providers.

I believe this technology will have a big impact on the cloud computing industry.   It makes migration to the cloud easier, which will make the process seem less daunting. Also, it comes with the promise of enabling “as is” migration, which means that all the hard work and investment in IT solutions up to that point can be retained and leveraged.

These are very important issues, but I think that the most important advantage is that it will increase the degree of flexibility in the cloud, and, as we all know, with cloud computing flexibility is the name of the game.

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1382395.