Essay Sample on Cloud Computing Virtualization

Introduction

A company seeking to adopt cloud-based computing for customer service must be prepared adequately because such a venture is ultimately profitable. Cloud-based airline computer systems are essential if an airline company is to maintain and operate passenger bookings and reservation processes efficiently and conveniently. As a low-budget airline company, such a system would be helpful in reducing operational costs and workforce (Buyya, Broberg, & Goscinski, 2016). Furthermore, the use of cloud-based booking and reservation services would improve customer experience by providing self-service facilities. From the data collected, the company can readily set up self-boarding gates, and luggage drops that have auto-label printing. Such data can also be easily accessed by the various departments for better security and service delivery. This level of automation requires proper preparation, and for an already running company, such an upgrade needs not to disrupt service delivery (Bazi, H., Hassanzadeh & Moeini, 2017). Below are six steps an airline company needs to follow to set up cloud computing capacity in its operations without disruption.

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Foremost, the company must conduct a software audit. Besides having an efficient booking and reservation system, the company must internalize how to use the system, the risks associated with the system, and the immediate solutions when problems arise. The company has to list down its on-premise infrastructure and understand how upgrading the sub-system impacts on the rest of the operations (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016). For each of the service element which leads to successful bookings and reservations, the company needs to evaluate their status and determining which segments of the subsystem are cloud-friendly (Khajeh-Hosseini, Greenwood, & Sommerville, 2016). During the auditing, all redundant processes have to be trimmed off. Further, the audit must not be complete without the determination of the relationships between the various applications. This step is helpful in determining the internal dependencies and adjusting the design to ensure minimal disruption.

Secondly, the company needs to get its team on board. The transition from legacy to cloud system is meant to provide an environment that is convenient to both the person providing the service and the customer. As such, the internal team must have an understanding of what the system seeks to improve and how the improvement will be achieved (Udoh, Khan, Grosse, & Arnette, 2016). Also, getting the team on board helps to identify the useful applications and the problems and challenges associated with their use. The step further helps to understand the gridlocks that could impede the migration process and how the new environment is likely to disrupt operations (Jamsa, 2015). Before proceeding to the next step, the company must determine if integration points exist and plan for workarounds.

The third step of the migration involves the consideration of the internal microservices options. Once the relevant applications are mapped and the topology and data dependencies networked, the next thing to consider is the assessment of the cloud service options that are available. For testing plans, the company will need to decide on the operating systems and the database or servers that are appropriate. A consideration will equally be required of the storage requirements for the CPU and the network to be used. Next, security will be an integral part of the system (Yousif, 2016). As such, the company will need to determine the level of sensitivity of data its system will handle and decide on the best network option to manage the transfer of the data. The other thing to consider will be the cost of the application.

The fourth step is to make the applications ready for cloud migration. To effectively migrate legacy applications, it is necessary to modularize monolithic app architecture, so it becomes easy to use on the cloud service. While for some applications the process will be as easy as lift and shift, others will need to be rearchitected to be functional on the new platform. It is essential for the application architecture to have a uniform hierarchy with that of the cloud service (Andrikopoulos, Binz, Leymann, & Strauch, 2015). Before the migration, the company will already be using commercial services such as email or software as service options such as Office. Such applications will be easy to migrate. However, in-built applications will require customization to maintain or improve their performance capacity.

The fifth step involves the development of a phased migration plan. It is noteworthy that despite the planning process involved, migration remains, in part, experimental. As such, it is advisable that the release process is not done in one go, but rather in bits. This way, the company spends less time and can track success at each phase. The incremental approach is practical as it reduces disruptions and ensures that the system remains up and running in the entire upgrade process (Doherty, Carcary, & Conway, 2015). The best approach to the migration is through single components which build up to teams. Throughout the process, the method used must focus on addressing the small problems first before handling the complex ones. The final step will involve the actual migration. At this stage, it is advisable that the minimum viable product is released first. This approach will help the company to employ a build-measure-learn approach. During the migration, synergy must be maintained with the other subsystems so that optimal operations are achieved.

References

Andrikopoulos, V., Binz, T., Leymann, F., & Strauch, S. (2012). How to adapt applications for the Cloud environment. Computing, 95(6), 493-535. doi: 10.1007/s00607-012-0248-2

Bazi, H., Hassanzadeh, A., & Moeini, A. (2017). A comprehensive framework for cloud computing migration using Meta-synthesis approach. Journal Of Systems And Software, 128, 87-105. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2017.02.049

Buyya, R., Broberg, J., & Goscinski, A. M. (Eds.). (2016). Cloud computing: Principles and paradigms (Vol. 87). John Wiley & Sons.

Doherty, E., Carcary, M., & Conway, G. (2015). Migrating to the cloud. Journal Of Small Business And Enterprise Development, 22(3), 512-527. doi: 10.1108/jsbed-05-2013-0069

Gholami, M., Daneshgar, F., Low, G., & Beydoun, G. (2016). Cloud migration process-A survey, evaluation framework, and open challenges. Journal Of Systems And Software, 120, 31-69. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2016.06.068

Jamsa, K. (2015). Cloud computing. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc.

Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Greenwood, D., & Sommerville, I. (2016). Cloud migration: A case study of migrating an enterprise it system to iaas. In Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on (pp. 450-457). IEEE. doi: 10.1186/s13677-017-0080-5.

Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.

Udoh, E., Khan, M., Grosse, M., & Arnette, D. (2016). Migrating to the Cloud. International Journal Of Grid And High-Performance Computing, 8(1), 70-75. doi: 10.4018/ijghpc.2016010106

Yousif, M. (2016). Migrating Applications to the Cloud. IEEE Cloud Computing, 3(2), 4-5. doi: 10.1109/mcc.2016.42