Over the past several years, cloud computing has seen wider adoption within the manufacturing industry as manufacturers increasingly realize the benefits of a cloud-based services.
I recently attended Internet Evolution’s webinar on cloud computing where the benefits of cloud computing were defined as leveraging economies of scale in computing. This makes a lot of sense. Rather than build your infrastructure one hardware server at a time, you can leverage a pool of resources to maximize efficiency and lower your overall operating costs. NIST defines Cloud Computing as: Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. NIST is implying the economy of scale that goes with cloud computing when they talk about a pool of configurable computing resources. In my opinion, the benefits of cloud computing clearly include the cost savings that come with economy of scale, but also include a number of other benefits. Here are the Six Benefits of Cloud Computing as I see them: 1) Lower Costs – Cloud computing pools all of the computing resources that can be distributed to applications as needed – optimizing the use of the sum of the computing resources and delivering better efficiency and…
Microsoft’s Azure cloud offers many benefits for organizations, most notably more efficiency, agility, and lower costs. But getting to the cloud can present a huge challenge and often seems overwhelming. There are many issues that can crop up before, during and after the migration process. We’ll talk about some common issues around moving to Microsoft Azure and how to overcome them. Common issues include: Application compatibility: Not all applications are meant for the cloud, especially public cloud. It’s a good idea to test the applications in the environment you’ll be running them in before migration. If you’re planning a lift-and-shift strategy to rehost your applications, you’ll certainly want to make sure the migration is even feasible. This includes closely examining your application’s architecture to see its possible integrations and dependencies on other on-premise workloads and services, including third-party vendor support. DR planning: Data loss is always possible, especially during a migration. What does your DR plan call for in this scenario? Have you tested migration components of your applications and failing back to an on-premise environment in case something doesn’t go as planned? A strong DR plan is an absolute necessity for a successful migration to Microsoft Azure (or any cloud,…
