For decades, infrastructure and application teams have been striving for the same thing: how to accomplish their goals “better, faster, cheaper.” It is only now, with the advent of the cloud and the alignment of IT operations and development through DevOps methodologies, that these goals can finally be realized to a degree never before imagined as possible.
Historically, application teams tried to get out a very limited number of releases each year. Three or four releases could easily push everyone to their limit. If a company suddenly found a need for a certain functionality, it would set the entire application development department scrambling.
Infrastructure teams were equally pressured to keep up with the pace of business. They needed to support the application teams with a fluid and dynamic infrastructure, but do so in a way that would satisfy security and governance requirements and have a predictable cost structure. Simultaneously, they would have to meet the demands of maintaining availability for the business, and expanding capacity to accommodate growth.
Placing your business' applications and infrastructure in the cloud may be your best next business move.
The Cloud: Changing the Rules of the Game
The cloud has changed all that – for the better. With its intrinsic automation, both the application team and the infrastructure team can drive speed and consistency in their activities. Scalability permits instant growth, coupled with predictable spend. Improved functionality permits the two groups to collaborate using DevOps methodologies to significantly compress the application development timeline, generating a competitive advantage.
Consider a simple example: the application team needs one more database server for their current work. Previously, the application team would approach the infrastructure team to request the server. Being a $20,000 purchase – a significant capital expense – the infrastructure team would have to go to the Finance group, get approval, place the order, wait to receive the server, and configure it for the application team’s use. The whole process could take weeks or months. All that time, the application team’s work is hindered or halted. And after the application team’s need for the server was finished, that same database server might sit idle 60% of the time.
With the cloud, that same database server capacity can be delivered within minutes. No capital expense required, no requisition delay encountered, no configuration needed. And the application team can get on with their development work.
Achieving Application Agility through the Cloud
Obviously, however, not all clouds are created equal. Businesses who want to leverage cloud computing capabilities should be certain that the cloud provider they choose is able to give them a comprehensive solution that meets their specific business needs. Four areas deserve particular focus, delving as they do beyond the relatively straightforward matters of price and scalability:
- Data Protection. Your data holds intrinsic value for your business. It is a financial and strategic asset. If your data isn’t productive, your business falters. Therefore, you have to ensure that your cloud provider can demonstrate that your data will be protected, whether it is in transit or at rest.
- Recoverability. The cloud is not a substitute for business continuity and disaster recovery planning. A cloud provider must be able to show that they are able to recover your data, applications, and development or production environment should an event impact either your business or theirs.
- Legacy Integration. No matter how “leading edge” some applications may be that your company uses, they probably have critical interdependencies with legacy systems that are technological “dinosaurs.” Your cloud provider must be able to seamlessly integrate web applications with the legacy tools you rely on.
- Availability. High availability cannot be overemphasized in today’s business climate. From a development standpoint alone, downtime can seriously impact a business’ ability to release updated and new applications at the speed the market requires.
The cloud makes “better, faster, cheaper” an attainable goal for many businesses. And by bringing the infrastructure and application development teams together into a new collaborative relationship, companies are able to take advantage of a whole new set of possibilities to stay competitive in a global market. The key is choosing a cloud provider who can turn these possibilities into your company’s reality.
Related Business Solution: Cloud Services
