Why Is Cloud Adoption Important?
Cloud adoption addresses several critical aspects when it comes to running and expanding modern businesses, such as:
- IT infrastructure flexibility: Businesses need to be highly adaptable and flexible to respond promptly to changes in the market or consumer demand. The cloud allows for this flexibility through scalable resources and infrastructures.
- The need for cost optimization: Reducing expenses and improving the bottom line are two sides of the same coin. Cloud adoption can offer opportunities to minimize costs, especially ones associated with hardware and maintenance.
- Rapid innovation and digital transformation: Cloud technology enables organizations to readily access cutting-edge tools and solutions at a minimal upfront investment.
What Are the Benefits of Cloud Adoption?
Cloud adoption offers companies numerous benefits, allowing them to achieve their objectives, including:
- Scalability, agility, and flexibility
- Opportunities for collaboration and productivity
- Regulation compliance
- Access to services and tools
How Does Cloud Adoption Work?
The cloud adoption framework involves several steps to ensure a smooth and seamless adoption.
- Assessing the current IT infrastructure: Starting by evaluating their existing infrastructure, organizations can determine particular areas where cloud services could offer the most benefits.
- Identifying suitable cloud solutions: Since cloud adoption comes in various shapes, it’s essential to carefully research the available cloud services to select an option that meets unique company requirements and objectives.
- Migration strategy development: Data migration is a risky and complex procedure that companies must plan for. Strategies range from lifting and shifting applications to the cloud.
- Implementing and managing the cloud infrastructure: The final step is to implement and integrate the selected cloud services and environments, monitoring their performance and managing how they interact with the company’s legacy systems.
What Does a Cloud Adoption Architecture Look Like?
Cloud adoption is separated into three main categories, depending on the level of autonomy and control the company has over the cloud environment.
Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS)
IaaS offers virtualized computing resources over the Internet. It oftentimes includes virtual machines, storage, networking, and processing power.
This model allows organizations to design, build, and manage their own service environments without needing to purchase or maintain the needed hardware infrastructure.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS are cloud-based environments that carry everything needed to develop, deploy, and manage a piece of software or application.
It’s a step above IaaS but still gives access to developers without leaving the underlying infrastructure vulnerable.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is as close as possible to a finished product, allowing users to access and run software applications over the Internet. It eliminates the need to install, maintain, and update the app on individual devices.
What Are Key Cloud Adoption Strategies?
Numerous cloud adoption strategies exist, which are included in the six Rs of cloud migrating and environment change management.
- Retaining: Deciding to retain certain applications or workloads on-premises due to technical, legal, or contractual reasons.
- Rehosting: Moving an existing application or workload to the cloud with minimal changes.
- Re-platforming: Making minor modifications to an application or workload to optimize its operations in a cloud-based environment
- Refactoring: Re-architecting an application or workload to take full advantage of cloud-native capabilities and features
- Repurchasing: Replacing existing parts of applications or workloads with cloud-friendly alternatives.
- Retiring: No longer using some applications or workloads as part of the cloud adoption process
Additionally, there are managerial changes that must be taken into account when switching frameworks like to a Microsoft Azure cloud adoption framework. These can be divided into two main categories:
- Employee training: Ensuring employees have the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate the new cloud environment is crucial for successful cloud adoption.
- Cultural changes: Adopting a cloud-first mindset and fostering a culture that embraces change can help organizations smoothly transition to cloud-based infrastructure.
What Is the Purpose of Cloud Adoption?
Most companies choose cloud-based frameworks for scalability, flexibility, and performance. The cloud offers virtually unlimited resources, as long as companies align their IT with business objectives and enhance operational efficiency to accelerate innovation and growth.
Cloud adoption allows organizations to build optimized, flexible, and agile IT infrastructure to support change management, provide faster and more consistently available applications, and create more time for innovation.
When Should Enterprises Use Cloud Adoption?
Reasons, motives, and circumstances that push enterprises towards utilizing cloud adoption technology include:
- Industry trigger events: Acquisitions and mergers can create opportunities for organizations to re-invent their IT infrastructure towards more flexible and scalable options.
- Evaluating current and future business needs: Organizations should regularly assess their objectives, both short- and long-term, to determine the best type of cloud adoption for them.
- Assessing readiness: On both the technical and organizational scales, businesses must carefully evaluate their readiness to upgrade their existing IT infrastructure in exchange for a cloud-based one.
What Risks Are Involved with Your Cloud Adoption Framework?
Cloud adoption, despite its many benefits and use cases, doesn’t come without risks that organizations must prepare for, such as:
- Cost overruns: Many companies overprovision instances in the cloud, paying for resources they almost never need because they don’t trust their ability to turn cloud instances back on fast enough when demand spikes. According to the Azul State of Java Survey and Report 2023, an independently run study of more than 2,000 Java users, 95% of companies that use Java have taken steps to reduce cloud costs within the last year.
- Data security concerns: The process of migrating sensitive data from on-premises storage to the cloud can raise several security concerns. Before the move, organizations must be confident in the cloud provider’s ability to secure and protect their data.
- Compliance challenges: Depending on the industry, meeting regulatory requirements can become more challenging when factoring in third-party cloud service providers and data migration.
- Vendor lock-in: Relying on a single vendor of cloud services may result in vendor lock-in, where organizations can’t switch providers to combine services and solutions from multiple sources.
- Downtime and availability issues: For both customers and employees, shifting to the cloud may present outages and downtime issues, impacting business operations and access reliability.
How Does Azul Help with Cloud Adoption?
Use of 20th-century technology like cars, electricity, and air conditioning have taught people that they have to choose between performance and cost. Do you want a high-performance vehicle or an efficient one? Do you want a big, powerful air conditioner or an efficient one? In the cloud, this model does not apply.
Azul Platform Prime powers faster java applications that require fewer cloud resources, enabling customers to turn off instances and save money. Platform Prime uses unique technologies to provide faster, more cost-effective code:
- Falcon JIT Compiler – runs in the JVM and delivers improved real-time JVM optimization
- C4 Pauseless Garbage Collector – runs 2-5 times more transactions without pauses, jitters, or timeouts
- ReadyNow – manages warmup profiles across large fleets of JVMs in containerized environments to accelerate Java warmup times
- Cloud Native Compiler – moves the Falcon JIT compiler out of the JVM and into the cloud, where it can enhance the performance of an unlimited number of JVMs for greater efficiency
Proceeding towards a cloud-based infrastructure through cloud adoption can be a high-risk high-reward business decision. Luckily, the risks can be greatly mitigated by working with the right experts who understand your business and how cloud adoption best fits it. This is where Azul, one of the industry’s fastest-growing companies, comes in.
At Azul, we have over 20 years of hands-on Java leadership and experience, serving as the world’s only cloud-native JVM. By partnering with Azul, organizations can minimize risks and leverage the full potential of cloud adoption, ensuring a seamless transition to a more efficient, scalable, and secure IT infrastructure.
