Over the past decade, the cloud has become a rapidly expanding technological phenomenon that is quickly becoming a popular tool in the software industry. It’s a type of computing that provides shared resources and data to systems connected to the cloud environment. As an application creator, you’re likely curious about what cloud computing can do for you, or why you should even consider migrating your app to a cloud service.
What is Cloud Migration?
Cloud migration is the process of moving information like computer data and applications to a cloud environment. Often this will be from on-site computers to a cloud service, or from one cloud environment to another, which is known as cloud-to-cloud migration. Sometimes, this also refers to cloud service migration, which is moving your data from one cloud service provider to another.
This can be managed internally or by working with a cloud migration service to help you understand your needs and guide the transition.
Why you Should Migrate your App
There are several reasons to do this. The obvious reasons is the ease of access. Instead of having to physically obtain data at one point and bring it to another, or go through the process of sending or requesting it from others manually, a cloud service can provide what you need on demand.
Among the first is elastic capacity. If your app requires resources (like server space) for users, then you know that there is always a risk of flash traffic, or using up too many resources, and being unable to accommodate all of the users. With cloud computing, you can instantly utilize off-site resources for the traffic, allowing you to keep them online with little to no delay or reduction in service quality. Then when they’re gone, you’re not wasting resources on traffic that isn’t there, saving you money.
Cloud services also offer the ability to make adding features to your app faster and more efficient than traditional data centers, who require a bureaucratic process. They’re also a lot more reliable, more available (given that it’s multiple locations instead of one), and are reported to have less network latency. Cloud computing also offers additional features that automate IT tasks that would normally require time and resources from your company to do manually.
Information and Application Security
Disaster recovery is an important concept in application creation, and it’s generally smart for an app creator to have a disaster recovery plan, should the worse happen. DRPs can require very diligent design. It needs to be able to react fast enough to save as much of your assets as possible, as soon as it can recognize a malfunction. Having just minor gaps in a DRP can have catastrophic consequences. Cloud computing is resilient by design, as one fault can’t physically affect the entire environment. That way, even if your DRP fails, you can still recover and improve it for the next disaster.
It might be understandable to consider that a cloud service might not be very secure. The reality, however, is that it’s no less secure than traditional services. It mostly depends on the service provider, and how well you or they maintain security for the cloud environment. Nothing is foolproof, and likely won’t ever be for a long time, but a cloud environment can offer reliable security.
