For several years, the cloud* has been a word served up in all sorts of ways. The Information Systems Departments eat them morning, noon and night. While the cloud is theoretically renowned for its flexibility and agility, how can you ensure a sustainable and serene migration in practice? Julien Castel, Product Owner at MIP, gives us the arguments.
*As a reminder, Cloud Computing is an IT concept that advocates the provision of a set of hardware resources or ready-to-use application services. Customers, whether companies or individuals, can host their business applications there, or directly use the available applications by adapting them to their specific needs
What are the advantages and disadvantages of migrating services to the cloud?
In the early 2000s, companies used private networks, meaning they were not shared by other outside users. Today, more and more companies are moving towards the « full Internet ». This is due to much faster integration and implementation times, as well as adaptable power or storage capacities.
Many vendors, such as Salesforce or Microsoft, offer very functional and complete packages that guide this choice. The economic advantages of these devices are well known, but the cloud also has certain limitations: the speed of the connection will have a strong impact on the performance of applications.
Prioritization is also much trickier to implement on the network. Previously, an ERP had priority over bandwidth-intensive applications such as Youtube. Today, this differentiation is more complex to implement.
As for security issues, they are multiplied tenfold, especially since we are witnessing a resurgence of shadow IT use at work. Indeed, the users are more and more demanding because of a better Internet access at home. Their patience in the case of a slow application at work is even more limited…
How can MIP help optimize a cloud migration?
The MIP solution is a tool to measure the performance of the original service over time, such as a messaging service.
During the transfer of the messaging tool, we make sure that the performance remains stable according to the new architecture chosen. The measures we provide allow us to factualize the performance and to go beyond the simple financial return on investment which is often reductive. The gains can also be measured in terms of performance and user experience. On the other hand, if the performance is not up to par, thanks to the data collected, an IT decision-maker will be able to report the problem to his supplier or justify the choice of one tool over another. Having a completely agnostic and proactive monitoring tool allows you to get to the point.
What recommendations would you make to an IT manager who has to approve the migration of several services?
When you are a company located in several countries, it is essential to ensure that all users in these countries have equivalent access to the service. Either we trust the data reported by the supplier, which does not always include user feedback, or we set up a consolidated measurement system that will monitor performance in real time. It all depends on the degree of relevance you are looking for.
Moreover, it is important to know that a malfunction is not always reported by users to the right IT contact. However, the accumulation of frustration and dissatisfaction can have negative consequences for a company. My advice is: prevention is better than cure by identifying performance problems at an early stage.
Finally, with the MIP managed service, IT departments can rely on our position as a trusted third party. This status can have benefits in terms of legitimacy of expertise and can be appreciated in the context of a more efficient application to be enhanced or, on the contrary, of a « mammoth » to be replaced.
