Azure Cloud Transformation

Become Cloud Native

Azure is more than just servers. Powerful application monitoring, Continuous integration and deployment, scalable, secure and cost effective solutions.

Sir Isaac Newton once said If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Why we ♥ Azure

  • Pay for what you need - There are several options to adjust resources dynamically so you have the speed and scalability when you need it but you're not paying for monster servers in the middle of the night.  Ask us about Azure Functions and Auto Scaling.
  • Application Insights - Microsoft's application performance monitoring tool is one of the best on the market.  Cost effective, powerful and integrated throughout your application with very little effort.  Monitor for uptime, diagnose errors, monitor performance.  It's the tool developers need to ensure applications are healthy.
  • Azure Pipelines - The Azure solution for safely updating applications in production.  Continuous integration and deployment is integrated into the Azure foundation.  Deploying and rolling out code should be easy and safe to roll forward and backward at a moments notice.
  • Security Center - Keeping your resources safe is a joint effort between your cloud provider, Azure, and you, the customer. You have to make sure your workloads are secure as you move to the cloud, and at the same time, when you move to IaaS (infrastructure as a service) there is more customer responsibility than there was in PaaS (platform as a service), and SaaS (software as a service). Azure Security Center provides you the tools needed to harden your network, secure your services and make sure you're on top of your security posture.

Cloud Migration Project Types

The Old Lift and Shift

Got an existing application and want the fast track to the cloud?

Pros

  • We can migrate existing servers on legacy hosting environments to matching VMs in the cloud.  This is usually one of the fastest and most cost effective first steps.
  • Can be a low risk transition because existing server configuration and setup is left in place.

Cons

  • Using VM's in the cloud is the IAAS approach (Infrastructure as a service) which is great if you have an IT team with the available time and skill to manage infrastructure.  For many organizations the labor cost of IT management outweighs the cost difference of just going with the fully managed PAAS offering.
  • It's not quite a fresh start.  Cloning VM's also means carrying forward out of date operating systems, applications, configurations and software issues that have built up over the years.

Application Services for the Win

Microsoft terms app services as PAAS or Platform as a Service.  We believe PAAS is the best fit for most new applications, let us convince you.

Pros

  • Fastest and easiest deployment possible.  
  • System maintenance is almost automatic.  No OS version updates to worry about, service packs to apply, webservers to configure, it just works.
  • Quickly scale up or out at the push of a button.

Cons

  • Legacy applications may need a little or a lot of updates when moved from a IAAS environment.
  • In some cases the hosting cost can be more expensive with PAAS, but generally that cost is more than made up by the reduction in management labor.

A small part of the journey

See how our other services support your cloud mission. 

 
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