Understanding
Enterprise‐to‐Cloud
Migration
Costs
and
Risks




Overview

Migrating
to
Infrastructure
as
a
Service
(IaaS)
is
an
attractive
option
for
corporations

that
want
to
shift
from
a
capital
expense
to
a
pay‐as‐you
go
model.
Regardless
of
the

business
driver
for
cloud
computing,
of
which
there
are
many
including
reducing
costs

and
adding
nimbleness,
large
enterprises
are
now
faced
with
re‐evaluating
their
core
IT

assets
with
an
eye
towards
enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
for
improving
business

efficiencies.
However,
beyond
qualitatively
appreciating
the
benefits
of
cloud

computing,
IT
executives
lack
the
ability
to
quantitatively
assess
the
risk‐reward

structure
of
which
application
should
be
migrated
from
the
enterprise
to
a
cloud.

Without
having
a
quantifiable
impact
assessment
of
migrating
enterprise
resources
to
a

cloud,
enterprises
are
faced
with
ad‐hoc
decisions
during
their
cloud
migration
process.





Core
Migration
Questions

For
CIOs,
CTOs
and
business
application
architects,
cloud
computing
has
become

inescapable
aspect
of
their
overall
IT
strategy.
As
businesses
consider
approaches
to

migrating
parts
of
their
infrastructure
to
the
cloud,
IT
organizations
wrestle
with

fundamental
questions
such
as:



i. What
applications
or
its
components
should
be
migrated
to
the
cloud?

ii. What
should
be
the
order/priority
of
migration?

iii. Which
IaaS
cloud
provider
should
be
selected
based
on
application
performance

and
reliability
requirements?

iv. How
do
I
mitigate
enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
risk?



Without
addressing
such
questions,
enterprises
are
faced
with
ad‐hoc
decisions
during

their
cloud
migration
process
that
can
add
immeasurable
risks
to
their
business

operations
and
undermine
the
efficiencies
that
they
seek
by
migrating
to
the
cloud.



Typical
Migration
Process

In
a
typical
enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
process,
a
corporation
will
identify
candidate

components
based
on
drivers
such
business
continuity,
scalability
or
lower
overall
cost

of
ownership.
The
selection
of
cloud
vendor
then
requires
moving
service
components

such
as
database,
application
servers,
ESBs,
and
identity
stores
to
the
cloud

environment.
Once
a
full
reference
system
is
deployed
in
the
cloud,
the
behavior
of
the

enterprise
application
interacting
with
the
cloud‐based
components
has
to
be
tested.


Testing
a
reference
system
deployed
in
the
cloud
with
an
IaaS
provider
enables
an

enterprise
to
evaluate
the
class
of
servers,
memory,
CPU
and
storage
behavior
in
a

multi‐tenant
environment.

IaaS
providers
also
have
to
be
benchmarked
at
various
times

to
ensure
consistent
behavior.




To
understand
the
risks
of
moving
application
components
to
a
cloud‐based
deployment

requires
quantifying
the
implications
of
adding
additional
hops
from
the
corporate
data

centers
to
cloud
providers.
Network
latency‐based
timeouts,
message
delivery
errors,

performance
and
security
profiles
have
to
be
coded
by
hand
into
a
new
'test
version'
of

the
deployment,
starting
from
the
production
version
image
that
was
ported
over
to
the

cloud,
to
check
for
“what‐if”
scenarios
while
interacting
with
the
cloud.
This
adds
a

significant
development
burden
on
customizing
the
cloud‐based
components
for
the

purpose
of
simulating
failure,
performance
and
scalability
scenarios.

Once
the

enterprise
is
happy
with
the
interaction,
the
code
added
for
the
simulation
has
to
be

removed
or
turned‐off
to
ensure
that
applications
are
in
production
and
not
in
a
debug

state.



Efficient
Migration
Evaluation
Alternatives

Cloud
simulation
and
migration
modeling
provides
a
more
efficient
and
nimble

alterative
to
building
a
full
cloud‐based
reference
infrastructure
for
evaluating

enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
risks.

Through
enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
simulation,

organizations
can
simulate
services
in
the
cloud
prior
to
implementation.
Simulation

enables
enterprises
to
benefit
by
not
having
to
touch
production
code
–
while

eliminating
the
substantial
time,
capital
and
IT
staff
resource
expenses
related
to

creating
a
distinct
cloud
test
environment.

Expenses
that
can
be
eliminated
through

simulation
include:



i. A
full‐scale,
redundant
architecture
that
involves
hardware
acquisition
and

software
licensing
costs

ii. Hiring
dedicated
development
teams
to
perform
testing
and
benchmarking

iii. Custom
hand‐coding
“what
if”
scenarios
to
determine
error
conditions
related
to

latency,
performance,
scalability
and
security


Through
simulating
application
components
in
the
cloud
prior
to
implementation,

organizations
can
view
real‐world
information
about
cloud
providers
including:



i. Performance
metrics

ii. Geographic
latency
and
service
initiation/“spin‐up”
times

iii. Failures,
outages
and
application
error
states

iv. Security,
capacity
and
interoperability




Armed
with
enterprise‐to‐cloud
interaction
data
under
various
operational
scenarios,

companies
can
make
decisions
on
their
cloud
migration
strategy
without
moving
all
or

part
of
their
application
to
the
cloud,
modifying
their
production
code
for
“what‐if”

scenario
evaluation
and
incurring
significant
development
and
infrastructure
costs

during
the
evaluation
process.



Cloud
Migration
Trade‐offs
Factors



The
information
gathered
by
simulating
enterprise‐to‐cloud
interaction
enables

corporations
to
make
key
decisions
on
the
cloud
migration
strategy.

Simulations
may

reveal
a
significant
trade‐off
between
key
cost
and
risk
factors.

Such
trade‐offs
can
help

companies
decide
whether
to
maintain
status
quo
or
move
application
to
a
cloud

provider.




Cost
factors
determined
by
simulating
an
application
within
a
cloud
may
reveal
that
the

server
class
required
within
a
cloud
provider
to
maintain
the
required
application

performance
thresholds
may
be
cost
prohibitive.

IaaS
vendors
provide
a
variety
of

options
based
on
CPU
and
memory
sizes.

The
cost
ratio
between
a
top‐end
server
with

the
maximum
available
resources
and
an
entry‐point
server
can
be
as
high
as
30.



Through
detailed
simulation‐based
analysis,
the
right
server
class
can
be
identified
and

its
costs
can
be
appropriately
modeled.





Corporations
may
choose
to
pick
multiple
cloud
providers
for
redundancy
and
failover.


Inter‐cloud
cost
analysis
enables
companies
to
decide
asset
migration
across
multiple

vendors.
In
addition
to
the
pay‐as‐you
go
costs
associated
with
picking
one
or
multiple

cloud
providers,
a
number
of
other
cost
factors
have
to
be
considered
including
the

costs
of
securing,
managing
and
monitoring
enterprise‐to‐cloud
interaction
and
the

actual
cost
of
migration.



Risk
factors
associated
with
migrating
application
components
to
IaaS
providers
need
to

be
clearly
understood
and
quantified.

Additional
hops
from
the
enterprise
to
the
cloud

providers
change
the
topology
and
risk
by
inserting
a
new
point
of
failure
that
has
to
be

addressed.

The
additional
cloud
“node”
has
performance
implications
especially
within

a
multi‐tenant
cloud
environment
where
performance
of
the
cloud
infrastructure
can

vary
dramatically
based
on
the
number
of
parties
sharing
the
same
infrastructure.


Selecting
a
larger
server
class
with
high
memory
and
large
CPU
seems
like
the
obvious

choice
for
reducing
performance
and
availability
risks,
however,
the
cost
implication
of

such
choices
have
to
be
closely
calibrated
before
committing
to
a
migration
process.



With
a
clear
understanding
of
cost
and
risk
factors
associated
with
enterprise‐to‐cloud

migration,
an
enterprise
can
quantitatively
evaluate
the
tradeoff
between
such
factors.

Through
such
trade‐off
analysis,
corporations
may
arrive
at
a
number
of
unanticipated

conclusions.

For
example,
the
candidate
application
may
not
be
suited
for
cloud

migration
given
the
costs
and
risk
profile.

The
application
may
only
be
suited
for
private

clouds
with
only
capacity
issues
offloaded
to
cloud
vendors.

The
latency
added
by

enterprise‐to‐cloud
interaction
may
be
beyond
acceptable
tolerances.

A
different

asynchronous
or
batch
processing
type
application
may
have
a
lower
migration
cost‐risk

profile
than
a
real‐time
application
with
millisecond
response
time
requirements
that

may
require
cost
prohibitive
servers
with
redundancy
across
multiple
cloud
providers.






Conclusion



Simulating
enterprise‐to‐cloud
migration
offers
a
simple,
cost
effective
and
flexible
way

of
modeling
the
costs
and
risks
associated
with
migrating
applications
to
multiple
IaaS

vendors.

Enterprises
appreciate
qualitative
drivers
for
cloud
migration
but
lack
the
tools

and
techniques
for
gathering
quantitative
data
to
assess
the
impact
of
enterprise‐to‐
cloud
migration
on
their
business
operations.

By
including
simulation
tools
and

techniques
in
their
assessment
process,
corporations
can
make
well‐informed
decisions

regarding
their
cloud
migration
strategy
without
adding
unnecessary
cost
and
risk
to

their
operation.