| | December 201619CIOReviewIt's in the CloudJonathan Pearl, COO & CIO, STOPit "It's in the cloud." This phrase is being repeated all over the world by all sorts of people-adults, children, corporations, small businesses, entrepre-neurs, governments and even presidential candidates are all touting the powers of the cloud to revolutionize business and our lives. It seems that on a daily basis a new "cloud-based" service emerges. One thing we know for sure is that the "cloud" is here to stay.Building a new service based on cloud technology is one thing, but how do companies bring legacy technologies and legacy processes into the modern cloud era? For most organizations, this is the reality. Although the Silicon Valley startup world gets a lot of media attention, the fact is that most companies are in an epic struggle to move into a computing world that is vastly different from what they know. There are five key questions any organization should ask themselves as they move toward deploying applications in the cloud:1. Should I use public or private cloud services­or both?2. Can I re-deploy existing applications or do I have to rebuild them?3. Can I use the same design and development methodologies I have always used?4. How do I get the increased performance, scalability and high availability the cloud promises? 5. Do I have the right team and skills to support my new development and operational needs? It is important to do your homework. SaaS (Software), PaaS (Platform), or IaaS (Infrastructure)? All three may be appropriate for some aspects of your architecture. Is a multi-tenant solution right for you? Do you really understand the implications of multi-tenancy? Whether public or private, multi-tenant or not, there are always tradeoffs. Security, high availability, monitoring, regulatory compliance, how and what you pay for­do not assume anything. Each one of these important topics needs to be researched and discussed before you commit to a particular cloud approach. Remember, there is no right answer. The particular demands of an organization or industry will ultimately drive what type of platform or service you ultimately choose to use.In general, you will likely not be able to re-deploy existing applications in the cloud. Even if technically possible, you will not likely reap many of the benefits afforded by cloud technologies and you may open yourself up to a number of unforeseen problems. One important design principle to keep in mind when building for the cloud is: assume that any CIO INSIGHTSBy
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