Does your company maintain a custom application that your employees use to market
products or manage customer relationships? Are you a developer marketing an enterprise
software solution that runs on a local server or in a traditional data center environment? If
you want your employees to get more done - or you want your application's user base to
grow - moving your application to the cloud is the natural next step. These are the 10
reasons why you should migrate your application to the cloud.
1) Microservices Enable Agile Application Development.
Moving an application to the cloud is an opportunity to convert the application to one using
a microservice-based architecture. With microservices, every function of your application -
such as the ability to allow a user to create an account - is its own cloud-based service.
Microservices make it possible to quickly add features to an application - or modify existing
features - with no risk to the health of the application.
2) Cloud Computing Will Make Your Application More Secure.
Does your application currently run from a local server or traditional data center? In a
traditional hosting environment without full-time security monitoring, hacking and intrusion are constant concerns. When you move an application to the cloud, you don't just gain the benefits of increased computing resources - you also benefit from the added security that container technology provides. A cloud service runs as an instance on a virtual server with a virtual operating system that's impervious to malware.
3) Cloud Computing Will Make Your Application More Available.
For an application running as a cloud service, the health of the underlying hardware - even
the entire data center - is of no concern. The application may run as a virtual instance that consumes some of the resources of several physical servers simultaneously. If a server fails, the application is unaffected. Many cloud providers even have multiple data centers around the world. If a data center suffers a DDoS attack or natural disaster, the cloud services running from that data center can roll over to another data center. It is almost impossible to bring a cloud-based service down completely.
4) The Cloud Gives Your Application Access to Unlimited Computing Power.
A digital application with many users can easily overwhelm the resources of any individual
server. Migrating your application to a major cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services
makes the computing power of the underlying hardware irrelevant because AWS
automatically utilizes the resources of additional servers when needed. Utilizing the PaaS
implementation of AWS, you don't even need to worry about managing the cloud
infrastructure. Amazon Web Services handles infrastructure management, and your
application consumes the resources it requires - regardless of how great the demand
becomes.
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5) Moving Your Application to the Cloud Will Increase Your User Base.
One of the most important benefits of the cloud is the fact that cloud-based services are
incredibly easy to use. Virtually every public cloud, for example, offers CRM applications
such as Salesforce as services that customers can begin using immediately. New technology such as Container technology makes it possible for a cloud-based application to run within any cloud infrastructure - regardless of the hardware or operating system that a particular cloud provider uses. If every popular cloud provider can offer your application as a service that customers can use on demand, your application's user base will grow.
6) Moving Your Application to the Cloud Alleviates the Challenges of Application Management.
If you run an application from a local server or traditional data center, you have challenges
that extend far beyond those of simply developing and marketing the application. For you,
application management is a constant headache that involves checking up on hardware
health, monitoring server security and ensuring that the application has plenty of network
bandwidth available. Running the application from a PaaS cloud environment means that server and network health are no longer your concerns. You can focus on development while the cloud provider maintains the integrity of the cloud environment.
7) Moving Your Application to the Cloud Alleviates the Burden on Your Internal IT Staff.
Running an enterprise application from an internal server isn't just a challenge for your developers; it also creates a burden for your IT staff. Why are certain users having trouble logging in? Why does the application run poorly on certain hardware configurations? With new technology available for cloud-based services, an application can run on any cloud platform - and the right cloud services provider can handle basic user support.
8) Moving Your Application to the Cloud Will Give Your Company Greater Focus.
All of the application management challenges we've described above - from resetting users' passwords to determining the ideal server hardware configuration - are necessary when you run your own application in house. None of those activities, though, directly drive
revenue. They drain money from your company's IT budget but provide little in return.
Moving your application to the cloud allows your personnel to focus on tasks that provide
more tangible benefits to the company.
9) Moving Your Application to the Cloud Will Cut Your Costs.
If your company runs its application in-house, you have power-hungry servers adding to your utility bills. If you run the application in a traditional data center, you're paying the full monthly rate for your server regardless of whether people actually use the application or not. Running an application from the cloud means never having to pay for server hardware upgrades, utility bills or replacements for failed servers. It also means that you only need to pay for server resources that you actually use.
10) A Cloud-Based Application Becomes Faster With Time.
Every new generation of computer hardware improves the performance and reliability of
server processors, memory and storage devices. Although moving your application to the
cloud gives you access to nearly limitless power, demand can eventually outstrip the
limitations of the underlying hardware. Even popular websites such as Google and Amazon -in spite of all their server power - respond slowly at times. Every year, though, servers can
do more - and cloud services become faster and more powerful. Moving your application to
the cloud means that you'll always have access to the best hardware available. Cloud
providers have to update their hardware regularly. If they don't, they'll lose customers.
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