You are ready to migrate your product to the Cloud. You have carefully analyzed all the factors, collected the necessary data, and analyzed it from different angles, and you made all the calculations. Now you can proceed with confidence on a well-thought decision. But the Cloud can be alluring as well as intimidating. There are a lot of cloud words out there that you need to know before making a move, but don’t worry — we’ve got you covered.
Here’s what you need to know before moving your product to the cloud.
1. Get Your Product And Its Architecture Ready
The first step is ensuring that your product is designed for scalability and high availability and is ready for the cloud. This means that it should be able to handle multiple requests at once without slowing down or crashing. Make sure that all your data is stored securely so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users or lost due to hardware failures or network problems.
How the cloud treats data can be different. For example, they may be data-intensive and require high availability and security. They may also be more complex and have more dependencies than traditional applications.
In addition to these architectural considerations, you also need to make sure that you understand how your customers use your product and how it will perform in production under load. You’ll want to know how often each feature is used and how many people use each feature so that you can plan for peak usage times in the cloud environment.
For example, if your application has an enrollment process that requires users to enter their driver’s license information before using the system, then you should be aware of how many users will be enrolling at one time so that you can ensure there are enough resources available during those times.
Also, user technology ecosystems can be quite complex, replete with multiple applications and systems. You also need to ensure that any code changes you make are compatible with other applications running in the infrastructure.
2. Choose a cloud platform that fits your needs
If you’re building your application or service on top of a public cloud such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, or IBM Cloud, there are already many options for choosing a platform provider. You should choose one that meets your requirements, including cost, performance, and scalability needs.
3. Check the compatibility of your application with cloud services
The next step is to check that your existing applications work with the technology stack of the well-known hosting providers. If they don’t, you’ll need to find alternatives or adapt your application accordingly. Look at the potential to adopt new approaches like serverless. How easy will it be?
For example: If you’re using Microsoft Azure, check if your applications are compatible with Azure by using the Compatibility Checker tool provided by Microsoft. This tool lets you enter details about an application — such as its architecture — and receive recommendations on which Azure services would best suit it.
4. Every Transformation Has Risks, So You Must Plan For Them.
Here are some of the things you should consider:
1. Make sure your data is in a format that can be moved to the cloud and that you have backups of all data in case something goes wrong during migration.
2. Know what services you want to use in the cloud and how much they will cost.
3. Develop an implementation plan outlining what needs to happen and when it needs to happen, including steps like moving existing data into the cloud, configuring existing applications for the cloud, and testing new applications running in the cloud environment.
4. Consider whether your company will be able to handle potential downtime during this transition period or if it will affect your business goals negatively if there’s downtime during this transition period.
5. Get the right tools (DevOps tools)
If you’re not ready for this change, it can be challenging to know where to start. The good news is that several tools can help you make the transition from on-premises software to SaaS, including:
DevOps tools like Jenkins and Ansible allow developers to automate the deployment process so that they don’t have to worry about moving code manually every time they make a change. This makes it easier for teams to work together and collaborate on projects. It also means less downtime when deploying new features because everything happens automatically at the click of a button.
Configuration management tools like Puppet and Chef provide an easy way for developers and administrators to ensure consistency across servers by enforcing best practices around configuration management, security, and availability. They also allow teams to quickly spin up new servers when needed—whether for testing or scaling purposes.
6. Change your database for the Cloud
Some databases are built for on-premise use only, or they have limitations in terms of scalability and performance. Many products use relational databases that have been optimized for local execution. These databases can be difficult to scale up when moving to the Cloud. In addition, the database structure may not be optimized for queries over large amounts of data.
If you’re using a database like Oracle or SQL Server, it may be time to think about moving to a more modern solution like Cosmos DB, MongoDB, or NoSQL. In fact, one of the key assets provided by the cloud is the availability of many tools and technology systems within the cloud ecosystem. Cloud products also have different performance and scalability requirements. To accommodate such fundamental differences, not just the database but the entire architecture may need to be revamped for full benefit.
7. Have your assets hosted in a CDN
The most common way of delivering your web application is through content delivery networks (CDN). CDNs allow you to distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide, making it faster for users in different time zones or countries to access your website. You’ll also want to make sure that all of your assets are hosted on a CDN so that they get served from the nearest server possible — this will reduce load times for users accessing your content from anywhere on Earth. In the Cloud, it just needs configuration settings.
8. Use managed containers
Managed containers allow you to deploy any type of application using container technology without worrying about how it will run on the server. This allows much greater agility and scalability in the application while allowing you the benefit of running on the most modern technology out there.
9. Prepare for more frequent releases
In the Cloud, it’s easy to change or update code, so you should be ready for that. If you don’t have a smooth workflow, it will be hard to quickly roll out new features and bug fixes. You’ll also need to be able to prepare for more frequent releases than before.
Make sure you have enough time and resources for testing before each release.
10. Security configure rules from an application perspective
Protection of the data at rest and in transit is important for any application, but it is especially critical for applications that handle sensitive data. For example, if you’re building an application that runs financial transactions or personal information like medical records, you will want to ensure that this data is secured.
An effective way to ensure your application meets these security requirements is by configuring rules for these settings in the cloud provider’s console. These rules can be defined at both a per-instance level or aggregate level across all instances of a particular type. You should also consider encrypting any sensitive data stored in memory or on disk so that it cannot be read by unauthorized users if they gain access to your server or database.
11. Build, Test and Deploy – Automate everything that can be automated
It allows you to scale up and down as needed, pay only for what you use, and focus on building great and amazing products instead of managing servers.
Once you have built an application ready for the cloud, you need to test it thoroughly before moving it over. This will help ensure your product works as expected in its new home. Testing is an important part of your software development lifecycle (SDLC). For test automation, use tools like Selenium or Appium for mobile app testing in the cloud. These tools allow you to create automated tests that can repeatedly execute against multiple browsers and devices without manually pressing buttons or entering text into fields!
Conclusion:
If you want to migrate your product to the Cloud, there are some things that you should do first. Imagine a day when your users will use various cloud platforms. Then think about what they will expect from you. Agile Performance. This is where Zingworks comes into the picture. We look at your product’s small and big aspects and capabilities to help design and deliver a smooth transition to the Cloud.
