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DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO

MIGRATING YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE TO THE CLOUD

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TABLE OF CONTENTSExecutive summary

Exploring cloud motivations and benefits

Dispelling myths and misconceptions

Selling your executive team on your cloud strategy

Getting started with cloud migration

Conclusion

About Xtium

Appendix

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYWhat’s fueling the move to the cloud? You name it: Bring your own device (BYOD). Big data. Mobile computing. Business analytics. These trends are not mutually exclusive, nor are they going away. What they are doing is adding complexity to IT infrastructure, from every angle.

As increasing numbers and types of internal and external devices join company networks, the data generated by these devices grows in parallel. This ups the ante in terms of storage, computing power, analytical capabilities and security, as well as the bandwidth of both supporting technologies and IT staff.

With the power to change the face of business, cloud computing can be a powerful strategy for building a next-generation infrastructure – one that can handle what’s happening today as well as one that is ready for tomorrow. The decision and process of migrating to the cloud doesn’t have to be complicated, or stressful.

Given the rate of today’s changing technologies, new regulations, and increased security demands, taking advantage of the flexibility and efficiency of the cloud just makes sense. Implementing managed cloud

services boosts application and data availability and redundancy, reduces total cost of ownership (TCO), enables internal IT to offload everyday tasks, and provides an infrastructure that can scale for current and future business needs.

Now is the time for IT to develop real strategies to embrace the cloud, administer cloud-based application deployments and empower their organizations to stay agile, according to James Staten, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.1

Xtium commissioned a Spiceworks survey of 474 U.S. IT pros to learn about their IT infrastructure, challenges faced with their current solutions, and their interest in managed cloud services.2 We found that more than three-quarters of the respondents surveyed (77%) are using on-premise IT infrastructure solutions exclusively – and just one percent are using managed cloud hosting exclusively. Almost a quarter (22%) are using a combination of on-premise and managed cloud hosting solutions. Of the respondents who use both, the breakdown of what they keep in house and what they outsource is interesting.

Did you know...Cloud computing can be a powerful strategy for building a next-generation infrastructure.

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These results suggest that many IT pros think of managed cloud hosting providers as go-to resources for backup and application hosting, but not for other critical IT functions. Among other things, this guide will address common cloud myths and misconceptions, and why IT pros might want to reconsider their resource allocation.

Xtium has designed this guide to help you on your journey to the cloud. You’ll discover reasons to migrate your IT infrastructure, how to choose a managed cloud hosting provider, and ways to sell your cloud strategy to your executive team. The guide will also provide an overview of a typical cloud migration process.

Did you know...Many IT pros think of managed cloud hosting providers as the go-to resource for backup and application hosting.

Applications

IT servicesDay-to-day IT management responsibilities and functions

IT function

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EXPLORING CLOUD MOTIVATIONS AND BENEFITSIf you’re considering cloud services, you’re in good company. Gartner has predicted that by 2016, the bulk of new IT spending will be for cloud-computing platforms and applications, and that almost half of large enterprises will have cloud deployments by the end of 2017.3

However, the decision to move IT to the cloud can seem daunting. Where should you even begin? Many business scenarios can trigger a need to move to the cloud. Often the issue is raised when data needs to be ultra-secure and accessible, such as during an office move or a company merger. Another common trigger is when existing on-premise servers near end-of-life and require replacement, or when other new hardware is needed.

New mission-critical business applications requiring high availability might also cause IT to ask the question, “Is it more cost effective to host it in-house or deploy it in the cloud?”

The benefits of the cloud are well documented, and include ease of operation, deployment and licensing advantages. Moving IT functions to managed cloud hosting environments can help IT pros escape the constant cycle of hardware refreshes, software upgrades and security patches. This preserves precious time that can be focused on new initiatives for business growth. That’s great news, given that our survey revealed IT workload as the top challenge (almost 70%) regarding IT pros’ current on-premise solutions.2

Migrating to a hosted cloud can also bring peace of mind by providing extreme availability and redundancy of your applications and data. Mission-critical data is always accessible, even in the event of a disaster. And by using a managed cloud setup, you can quickly expand your infrastructure without buying and implementing the resources yourself.

Our survey of IT pros supports these facts. Those using or planning to use managed cloud hosting list the following factors as the primary advantages to these solutions:2

Backup/disaster recovery/failover/redundancy

Frees IT staff to focus on core business applications

Reduces need for additional staff

Efficient scalability

71%

68%

58%

52%

Did you know...Managed cloud hosting environments can help IT pros escape the constant cycle of hardware refreshes, software upgrades and security patches.

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DISPELLING MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONSIn our survey, we asked IT pros using solely on-premise infrastructure solutions – and those using a combination of on-premise and managed cloud-hosted solutions – what factors were behind their decision to use on-premise versus outsourced solutions. In this section, we will reveal and discuss the top cloud concerns we discovered.

Security and compliance Regarding the use of managed cloud hosting providers, 71 percent of those we surveyed were very to extremely concerned with security/privacy issues, and almost half (46%) were very to extremely concerned with compliance restrictions.2 While concern about these critical issues is understandable, the truth is, in many cases the cloud is actually safer than on-premise solutions. For example, managed cloud hosting providers typically have the most up-to-date patches, better anti-spam filters and the most recent antivirus protection. Forrester’s Staten says, “If you’re resisting the cloud because of security concerns, you’re running out of excuses.”1

Even highly regulated industries are turning to hosted clouds for their efficiency and cost benefits. The key is to clearly communicate your industry-specific compliance guidelines to your cloud provider, which directs them to adhere to security best practices and governance controls based on your requirements. Some industries, such as healthcare, have even stricter guidelines. The HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule defines data centers and cloud providers servicing this industry as “business associates,” and requires them to comply with all HIPAA privacy and security requirements.

With all the different flavors of compliance – from government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, to industry regulations such as PCI DSS for payment cards and HIPAA for health data – it’s critical to align your business with a cloud provider that has experience dealing with the needs of your industry. To make this assessment, start with your own risk-benefit analysis to determine if your vendor’s standard contract is adequate for your compliance needs. If it’s not, you can negotiate the contract as necessary to meet industry standards.

Ultimately, data security is the responsibility of the business, but partnering with the right managed cloud hosting provider can make all the difference in how well you sleep at night.

Control of sensitive dataAlmost three-quarters (72%) of those we surveyed were very to extremely concerned with relying on a third party to deliver critical services, 63 percent were very to extremely concerned with lack of control over infrastructure, and 61 percent were very to extremely concerned with availability.2

In reality, managed cloud hosting solutions provide around-the-clock data access – as well as around-the-clock support and infrastructure management. And as part of the migration process, you will give input for the new virtual environment that your managed cloud hosting provider builds to meet your performance specifications. Those specifications will be incorporated into the service level agreement (SLA) with your provider. For example, the SLA will define your requirements around recovery time objectives (RTOs)

– the amount of time it would take to recover your systems in the event of a disaster – and recovery point objectives (RPOs) – the points in time from which your data would be restored.

As for availability, data hosted in the cloud is subject to multiple layers of redundancy, including geographically dispersed data centers and multiple backup methods. Managed cloud hosting providers are in the business of ensuring complete availability and recovery for your critical assets. Plus, any requirements around highly available applications will be also included in your SLA. By working together with your cloud provider to define these goals, you’re able to set realistic expectations for accountability and responsibility.

Existing hardware investmentsOur survey revealed that 65 percent of IT pros using on-premise versus managed cloud hosting services do so because of their existing hardware investments.2 But cloud migration does not equal “rip and replace,” by any means.

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There is no rule that dictates cloud migration is all or nothing. Many organizations begin with hybrid environments, gradually transitioning functions to the cloud to preserve their existing investments. There are many paths to the cloud, some beginning with WAN optimization, online backups, or disaster recovery before they ever lead to hosted applications and other IT functions. You can take it a step at a time, keeping your long-term strategy and business goals in mind.

Cost/TCO More than 60 percent of our survey respondents were very to extremely concerned with the cost of using managed cloud hosting services.2 In reality, cloud solutions are often more cost effective than on-premise solutions over time.

Most organizations tend to replace on-premise systems every five years or so – any longer than that can incur risks due to system failure, lack of support, or increased migration costs due to obsolescence. By going with a managed cloud hosting provider, their economies of scale typically offset this five-year upgrade mark. Even in situations where on-premise solutions may seem less expensive than the cloud on a monthly basis, the cloud is often still the better long-term option if you add up future costs of upgrading hardware.

By contrast, an on-premise private cloud will still require in-house IT resources to manage it. Another option is the hybrid cloud model, which includes both on-premise and hosted cloud solutions. This model offsets some of the costs, but still requires in-house staff and possible hardware upgrades.

Using managed cloud hosting solutions, organizations can save money on everything from expensive hardware upgrades, to licensing costs, to additional staff, to the latest and greatest security and storage requirements. And let’s not forget the significant savings in electricity needed to power a data center. According to ZDNet, an average in-house server in the U.S. costs roughly $731.94 a year for both direct IT power and cooling.4

Perhaps the most important cost benefit of the cloud is its flexible pricing model that allows companies to save money while enabling scalability to match the ever-changing needs of the business. Storage, for example, is much cheaper – and easier – in the cloud. As employees and customers continue to generate more data, from more devices and more locations, it’s going to become increasingly difficult, and expensive, for organizations to keep all of their storage on-premise.

Did you know...The cloud is often still the better long-term option if you add up future costs of upgrading hardware.

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SELLING YOUR EXECUTIVE TEAM ON YOUR CLOUD STRATEGYNow that you have seen the benefits of migrating your IT infrastructure to a hosted cloud solution, we’ve put together some tips for getting your executive team on board. Consider these points when approaching your higher-ups with a strategy for migrating IT functions to a hosted cloud solution:

Find a competitive edgeThe cloud offers opportunities for your company to be more competitive by helping you deliver products and services to market faster, improving customer interactions and reducing costs.

Increase productivityThe ability to access advanced IT solutions through a pay-per-use model enables employees to work faster, more productively, and with greater accuracy. In addition, hosted services can be accessed online from almost anywhere, allowing employees – and customers – to get more done, no matter where they’re located.

And in the event of a disaster and recovery scenario, cloud backup will help restore your team to normal productivity levels as quickly as possible by providing access to data and applications – not to mention saving your organization the cost of expensive downtime.

Lower costs As explained above, managed cloud hosting solutions can save your organization money on everything from hardware upgrades to software licensing to IT staff. This should be a pretty compelling argument for your organization’s decision makers.

Support current trends like mobility and BYODA managed cloud hosting solution can ease your organization’s struggles to manage an increasingly distributed workforce, BYOD, and the data generated from new devices joining your network.

Did you know...Managed cloud hosting solutions deliver products and services to market faster, improve customer interaction and reduce costs.

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GETTING STARTED WITH CLOUD MIGRATIONMigrating IT infrastructure to the cloud doesn’t have to be a complex process. In fact, using a managed cloud hosting provider can make it simple, while saving your organization time and money. The key is choosing the right provider for your organization, based on your needs and the managed cloud hosting provider’s capabilities.

According to our survey, the top five features IT pros look for when selecting a managed hosting provider are:2

• Backup/disaster recovery/failover/redundancy

• Reliability/SLAs

• Security capabilities

• Price

• 24x7 service/support

The migration processOnce you have made the decision to move your IT infrastructure to the cloud – and chosen a managed cloud hosting provider to help you – it’s time to begin the migration. To give you an idea of the general process, the following is a list of steps your organization and your managed cloud hosting provider will take during a typical migration.

Step 1: Determine environment scope

Upgrades may be required as part of your move, especially if you are running older operating systems on any machines within the scope of your migration. Migrating to the cloud is a great opportunity to upgrade – even if your software isn’t out of support. In addition, you’ll need to ensure that any applications you’re running are compatible with the target environment. While many major applications like Microsoft SQL Server

and Office are industry standard, make sure you evaluate all the applications that run your business – from the software your accounting department relies on to that in your end-user environment. When taking these applications into account, you may need to reach out to your third-party vendors to determine if a change in license is required or if there will be any complications in migrating the application into the cloud.

Step 2: Verify software compatibility

In this step, you will decide what portion of your environment will be involved in the migration. Depending on the portion of your environment you’d like to move, the scope can vary in difficulty. For a full environment migration, the scope is simple. But if you’re planning to move just certain parts of your environment, you’ll need to consider how the individual pieces interoperate. For example, if you want to migrate an application server, and it relies on a database stored on another server, you need to ensure that

the database server is migrated as well – otherwise you run the risk of introducing inherent latency into the environment that could affect performance. Your cloud hosting provider can help you make these calls.

Upon completing this step, you should have a list of all servers that will be involved in the migration, the resources they currently use (or at least a rough estimate), and which applications and/or services will be needed in the new environment.

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At this point you should have supplied enough information for your cloud hosting provider to provide a quote for the final resource footprint that will comprise your new cloud environment. This quote

should include more precise values than the initial scoping, so you can ensure that it works within your allotted monthly cloud service budget.

Step 3: Receive resource quote

After you obtain a quote that works for you and your project, it’s now time to plan the actual migration. Working with a migration team from your cloud hosting provider, you’ll lay out the steps and timeline into a workflow specific to your project. Be sure to document the size and location of the directories you’re going to migrate, as well as any changes to software installs or configurations you’ll need to make. Plan for any possible third-party involvement, such

as application vendors. As the customer, you will maintain the relationship between your cloud provider and your third-party vendors.

At the end of this step, you should have a customized scope of work and a project plan that identifies the resources and steps required for a successful migration, as well as acceptance criteria upon completion of the migration.

Step 4: Scope and plan the migration

By this point in the process, the cloud hosting provider has a signed and executed service agreement for both the service and the migration. The provider will now

build the cloud environment to a standard configuration, then hand it off to the migration team to complete.

Step 5: Build the cloud environment

Following the scope of work, the migration team will configure the cloud environment to the agreed-upon customized layout. The team will copy over your data and potentially configure it with replication to keep files up to date and help reduce downtime during

the eventual cutover phase. The lines of communication will remain open between any third parties to complete their individual tasks. At the end of the migration, the cloud environment should be fully configured, but will not yet bear the production load.

Step 6: Perform initial data migration

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Never underestimate the value of a thorough testing phase. Your cloud hosting provider will now ensure every production action is tested in the new environment. Changes to configuration or resources may be required to ensure proper functionality. Testing is

only complete when the acceptance criteria established in the scope of work has been satisfied. During this phase, the cloud hosting provider will identify any loss of functionality, examine solutions, and make adjustments as needed.

Step 7: Test and validate new cloud environment

Your cloud hosting provider should schedule the cutover window with all required parties, including notifying end users. The cutover plan should include halting production traffic, final data migration, cutover production traffic to the cloud environment, and final testing and validation. A rollback

plan should also be included in the event that the cutover fails any testing criteria. 

Following cutover, the legacy environment should be shut down but remain intact for a pre-specified period of time to ensure that the migration is fully successful.

Step 8: Implement cutover plan

Once your environment is up and running in the cloud, you are free to focus your energy on IT strategy – versus IT tasks.

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CONCLUSIONWe have created this guide to serve as a resource for migrating to the cloud, to help you create a cloud strategy and choose a managed cloud hosting provider; get your executive team on board with your migration strategy; and help you prepare for and review the steps of a typical migration process. In addition, the appendix includes a migration checklist to help you manage the details of migrating to the cloud.

ABOUT XTIUMXtium managed cloud hosting, backup and disaster recovery, and desktop as a service can help address all your key concerns about moving IT infrastructure to the cloud. Our managed services, coupled with enterprise-class virtualization technologies and top-tier data centers, give your business a secure and reliable cloud hosting solution.

Based on VMware virtualization technology, Xtium will customize the cloud to fit your specific business needs with enterprise-class service, giving you the utmost flexibility and control.

Contact Xtium to learn more. We can help you take the next step, whether that’s honing your adoption strategy or migrating some – or all – of your IT infrastructure to the cloud.

To learn more, visit our website: www.xtium.com

Sources1 James Staten, “Cloud Computing Predictions for 2014: Cloud Joins the Formal IT Portfolio,” Forrester, December 4, 2013. http://blogs.forrester.com/james_staten/13-12-04-cloud_computing_predictions_for_2014_cloud_joins_the_formal_it_portfolio

2 Spiceworks Voice of IT survey deployed to 474 US IT pros on behalf of Xtium, March 2014

3 “Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016,” Gartner, October 24, 2013. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2613015

4 Teena Hammond, “Toolkit: Calculate Datacenter Server Power Usage,” ZDNet, April 8, 2013. http://www.zdnet.com/toolkit-calculate-data-center-server-power-usage-7000013699/

Xtium, Inc. © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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MIGRATION PROCESS CHECKLIST

Scope the environment.Create a list that includes:

• all servers involved in the migration.

• resources currently used by migrating servers.

• necessary applications or services.

Verify software compatibility.• Ensure that all applications you’re running are compatible with the target environment.

• Coordinate with any third-party software vendors to update applications as needed.

Receive resource quote.• Receive and review a more accurate quote from your cloud hosting provider.

• Use these more precise values to assess and approve your true monthly service costs.

Scope and plan the migration.• Work with your migration team to customize a scope of work and project plan that identifies the resources and steps required to migrate your infrastructure to the cloud.

• Make sure your project plan includes your agreed-upon acceptance criteria for the new cloud environment.

Build the cloud environment.• The cloud hosting provider will build the cloud environment and hand it off to your migration team.

Perform the initial data migration.• The migration team will migrate your data to the new environment.

• The migration team will customize the new environment per your agreement.

• The migration team will potentially configure data with replication.

• Third parties will complete assigned tasks as needed.

Test and validate your new cloud environment.• Your cloud hosting provider will test each production action in the new environment.

• Ensure the acceptance criteria established in the scope of work is satisfied to complete testing.

• Identify any loss of functionality and work with your provider to make adjustments.

Implement a cutover plan.Your cloud hosting provider will schedule a cutover plan that includes:

• halting of production traffic.

• migration of final data.

• the cutover of production traffic to the new environment.

• the performance of final testing and validation.

• a rollback plan, if needed.

• shutting down the legacy environment, but keeping it intact for a predetermined period of time.

Here’s a checklist to help you navigate the cloud migration process.