5 ISV Challenges With Cloud Migration Process

Moving to the cloud can enable you to deploy faster, reduce costs, and scale what you are promoting. The important thing to a successful migration lies in your preparation. You want to pay attention to the challenges independent software vendors (ISVs) face when migrating their app or software to the cloud.

On this guide, we’ll cover the highest advantages of cloud hosting together with the five major ISV challenges chances are you’ll face and find out how to overcome those challenges.

The term cloud migration refers to moving your operations to a cloud environment as an alternative of traditional on-premises servers. You possibly can migrate from traditional servers to the cloud or from one cloud to a different. 

Listed below are the highest advantages you receive while you transition from a conventional hosting setup to a cloud environment: 

Using cloud services to run your ISV business eliminates the prices related to an on-premises setup. 

Large established software firms can afford the upfront costs and ongoing maintenance of their servers, but that overhead can easily cripple small to medium area of interest providers.

Whenever you switch to the cloud, all the maintenance responsibility transfers to your Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) hosting provider, and you simply pay for the usage of the servers. 

At Liquid Web, we provide lock-in monthly pricing that keeps your cloud hosting costs manageable and predictable.

Moving to the cloud permits you to deploy faster, in hours as an alternative of weeks or months. With access to more revolutionary cloud infrastructure, you may boost your operational efficiency and speed up your go-to-market strategy.

You too can address issues and patch bugs in real-time and improve your user experience. Or, with a managed provider like Liquid Web, you’ll receive patching assistance as a part of your customer support.

In line with Gartner, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry is value around $172 billion. Since SaaS products have lower up-front user costs, they’re growing in popularity amongst businesses of all sizes.  

Offering SaaS products over the cloud is a superb way for firms to herald latest leads and create recurring revenue streams. 

Using a cloud host also gives you access to a wider range of network setups and scales your infrastructure with the clicking of a button. You possibly can adapt your environment to latest business challenges without rebuilding your IT infrastructure.

Cloud hosting is built to adapt to an agile business and marketing strategy. You simply pay for certain services while you need them. So if you could have to make a strategic pivot, you don’t have to worry about what to do together with your legacy setup.

Cloud hosting providers offer several sorts of data backups starting from on-server to disaster recovery. This helps prevent total loss if hackers compromise your system. 

With backups in place, you may deploy a replica of your server straight away and avoid long downtimes that affect your visitors. Liquid Web offers Acronis Cyber Backups that include full-server backups, malware protection, and backup encryption without taking over worthwhile space in your server.

While cloud hosting offers many business advantages, taking that first step off-premises at all times seems the toughest. And moving to a cloud environment can indeed turn into time-consuming and complex when you don’t have a roadmap of where you’re going. 

Listed below are the highest five challenges it is best to know when moving your ISV to the cloud.

In case you don’t take the time to know the scope of your migration initially, you may find yourself coping with issues that drag your migration out for months. Based in your current infrastructure, it should turn into clear whether a conventional data migration or lift and shift migration is true on your ISV business. 

You possibly can then create a migration plan that outlines every part you have already got, what you’re taking and where, and find out how to cope with the unneeded assets. Using a roadmap on your migration can enable you to higher estimate how long the method will take.

Anytime you progress a lot of data, you increase your risk of experiencing network outages. In case your network goes down, what you are promoting suffers. At least, an outage will interrupt the client experience, and in extreme cases, it will possibly result in the lack of sensitive data.

You possibly can lower your risk of downtime by creating a brief environment you may run through the migration to avoid service interruptions. Nonetheless, there’s no solution to mitigate risks one hundred pc, so ensure you communicate potential usage limits or downtime to your stakeholders. 

You too can minimize the impact in your team and customer base by migrating data during off-peak hours — when you could have fewer people using the servers.

One issue chances are you’ll experience when migrating to the cloud is an absence of interoperability between your existing apps and programs and your latest cloud environment.

Interoperability refers to the power of multiple systems to share information. In easy terms, it’s the compatibility between different apps and programs. 

You’ll likely should rewrite your code when you’re using cloud providers like AWS or Google. Nonetheless, with Liquid Web’s VMware Private Cloud infrastructure, you don’t need to transform your code.

To avoid compatibility issues, it is best to audit the systems you would like to migrate before choosing your hosting provider. Make sure that your latest hosting service offers all of the infrastructure elements you’ll want to maintain the functionality of your apps.

Cloud providers offer several security benefits reminiscent of out-of-the-box encryption and segmented workstations that improve your data integrity. But that doesn’t mean you don’t experience any security risks. 

Whenever you transition to a brand new ecosystem, you could be at higher risk for security breaches just because you don’t know as much about cloud-specific risks. 

Selecting a private cloud server over a public cloud solution also can lower your risk of attack because only your organization has access to the infrastructure. Isolation gives you more control over security and compliance.

Migrating to the cloud isn’t just an IT change. It will probably affect your entire operations. In other words, what worked with on-premises hosting won’t necessarily be one of the best solution to operate in a cloud environment. 

Before your migration, ask yourself, “Does my development team have the talents and resources to work effectively in a cloud environment?” 

If not, chances are you’ll need to offer additional training or consider allocating more resources for staffing. For help with adapting your team, search for a provider that provides a comprehensive knowledge base and other learning materials your team can use.

Moving your workloads and applications to the cloud can provide you with the resources and the flexibleness you’ll want to proceed growing your ISV business. That’s to not say that cloud migrations are at all times seamless. Without preparation, migrating your data can cost you far more time than you first anticipated.  

The excellent news is that you would be able to avoid many migration pitfalls by planning ahead, being aware of the particular challenges ISVs face when migrating to the cloud, and partnering with a knowledgeable cloud provider reminiscent of Liquid Web.