What are the stages from tradition to Tencent cloud

stay COVID-19 Before the pandemic , Enterprises are at various stages of their cloud computing strategy , Does this mean that it will eventually migrate its e-mail server to cloud computing 、 Switch to Microsoft 365, Even actively quit their own data centers and completely adopt cloud native .

When a pandemic strikes , All the work has been disrupted . Enterprises do not have time for extensive user acceptance testing 、 Long strategic meetings 、RFP And proof of concept , Because all the employees are forced to be isolated at home .

In interviews with analysts and companies migrating to cloud computing ,InfoWorld Three modernization stages that the enterprise may follow are determined .

Why did the pandemic force the modernization process to accelerate

2020 year , According to the collaborative research group , For the first time, global enterprises spent more on cloud computing infrastructure than on data center hardware and software , The reason is because COVID-19 The pandemic has accelerated a decade long industry trend , That is, running enterprise workloads in Cloud Computing , Not on the local server or by depending on the hosting provider .

Red Hat CEO Paul · Comir （Paul Cormier） It was pointed out in a recent report that , This pandemic , It may have accelerated things in its customer base for five years , The customer accelerates the work they are talking about , Take their architecture as a whole , Bring more things to the cloud , Add suppliers , More applications move into containers .

For many people in these organizations , This epidemic is just what we usually call “ Legacy ” The limitations of technology are concentrated —— These systems are based on old 、 Sometimes outdated calculation methods , Replace the available with a better method , But replacing these methods is often expensive . The pandemic has changed the way calculations are calculated , Promote faster generation upgrading .

Every industry can see the leap of traditional modernization work , Including images Maersk Such a shipping giant promises to ERP The system is transferred to the cloud , Retailers redouble their investment in flexible distributed e-commerce systems , Universities and colleges are turning to online learning , And the national health service put all its e-mail systems online .

For UK retail groups Sainsbury's Come on , This epidemic has proved the benefits of moving its e-commerce systems to the cloud , The e-commerce system can be better adjusted in the cloud , To meet the unstable demand .Sainsbury's Phil Jordan, group CIO, recently “ Cloud and digital infrastructure future CIO Summit ” In the said ：“ Without cloud computing , I think it's really hard for us to adjust and adapt our business as quickly as we do now .”

Modernization stage 1： Enable remote work ：

stay 2020 Spring of the year , Many CIOs have taken a critical first step , Enable employees to work anywhere , Instead of using traditional local e-mail 、 Collaboration 、 Human resources or document storage systems . With the new crown pandemic sweeping the world , Forcing many people to set up their own home offices for the first time .

result , image Zoom Such video conferencing software is in 2020 The number of new users in the first two months of the year exceeded 2019 In the year , To 2021 year 4 month , Setting can achieve 3 Billion conference participants . The use of competitor collaboration platforms has also proliferated , Microsoft reports that ,2021 First quarter , The number of daily active users of the Microsoft team is 1.15 Billion , Google said , To 2020 end of the year , Every day 1 Million participants log on to Google Meet meetings.

“ This pandemic has had a lot of impact on our cloud computing strategy . obviously , Collaboration tool 、 The deployment of video conferencing and real-time chat has been greatly accelerated , Only in SaaS Tools are ready 、 Only when the capacity is available ” Chief technology officer, global cloud services, HSBC Ian Haynes Tell by email InfoWorld .

Again , Maersk, the shipping giant, must also quickly let 40,000 Employees who work from home , In just six weeks from the usual 10% Capacity arrival 100%. Besides , In business , Maersk saw a third of its smaller customers pass http://Maersk.com Portals quickly turn to digital channels to purchase logistics services .

Head of Maersk enterprise architecture Will Wigmore stay CIO Future of Cloud And digital infrastructure summit ：“ This will undoubtedly help accelerate the adoption of digital products , And help us in how we collaborate internally .”

Modernization stage 2： Seize cloud native opportunities ：

Once employees are ready to work efficiently at home , many IT Leaders will want to maintain their momentum by pushing more and more traditional workloads into a consistent cloud computing model . And one size fits all SaaS The solution is different , Many of these business applications bring a series of more difficult decisions for architects and developers , To make decisions about how to upgrade and transfer and how to rebuild the cloud .

Forrester Research Analyst Bill · Matorelli (Bill Martorelli) Express ：“ Generally speaking , The pendulum is facing a kind of ‘ Improve before moving ’ Swing in a way , That is, the customer changes to some extent during the migration process .” “ actually , Customers tend to adopt a combination approach , Including lifting and shifting 、 modernization 、SaaS Replacement and decommissioning , It depends on the workload .”

for example , Media organizations Mediacom Global CTO of Nadine Thomson Express , Her engineers have begun “ Reexamine the applications that we have upgraded and moved to the cloud ”, So they can start thinking about how to containerize and optimize , Thus making it suitable for use in the next few years .

The epidemic has created a particularly striking modernization for banks , The bank must make all major services available online . Haynes of HSBC made a statement earlier this year AWS The financial services cloud seminar said ：“ If we need more incentives or the need for the cloud , The epidemic provides it .” “ We see a huge increase in online banking services , Hundreds of government aid and welfare programs will be implemented , And some very active markets . This accelerates our deployment to the cloud . and , For existing workloads , We can respond to some very dynamic requirements .”

for example , The bank makes use of “ Move and improve ” Method , Take the opportunity to readjust its stock risk calculation and mortgage brokerage application . This means promoting and transferring applications , meanwhile “ Set up and maintain the infrastructure as code , Use software defined network and virtual services to achieve load balancing and firewall , And where possible , use PaaS（ Platform as a service ） Services replace middleware and database software .” Haynes say .“ Once successfully run on the cloud platform , We refactor the application into microservices and API, And introduce such as containers 、 No server computing or other PaaS Services and other technologies .”

In terms of traditional modernization , Morgan Stanley's global bank Morgan Stanley has been focusing on its most compute and data intensive workloads ： Risk model . especially , Stock risk models need to deal with at least 30 Billion data points , Sometimes even more , And at the end of the day, it is calculated across multiple regions .

Executive director of Morgan Stanley Vikas Chawla Held earlier this year AWS Said at the financial services cloud Seminar ：“ Doing this locally means a lot of idle capacity .”

“ Architecturally speaking , When we design this workload , We want it to be cloud native ,” He said , But it still needs to adopt modern principles , For example, infrastructure is code 、 adopt Docker Container deployment and reading from the object store , All these are more economical AWS EC2 Spot Run... On the instance , To control costs . This is Chawla And his team provided a blueprint , Other risk-based calculations that can be applied to banks , For example, peers 、 Credit and derivatives risk . Now? , They want to apply what they have learned to workloads that may not be suitable for today's Cloud Computing .

“ These large workloads are part of a broader strategy ,” He said .“ In addition to elasticity , We have also migrated workloads that benefit from leveraging cloud products . Examples include complex data platforms , And when we are doing major application updates or have new products … Successful use cases like this are important to drive our strategic efforts and ensure the commitment of the business unit .”

Although banks such as HSBC and Morgan Stanley will naturally be more cautious 、 A centralized approach to roll out the cloud platform to its developer team , But other organizations are looking to run cloud native by completely rebuilding their core business applications , So as to take more radical measures , Like a fitness company Peloton stay 2020 What I did in .

Like offices and stores , The gym and fitness room are also 2020 Years and 2021 Closed for a long time at the beginning of the year , This makes many of their customers stop patronizing , Or buy expensive home fitness equipment , To ensure health during a pandemic . One of the big beneficiaries of this shift is Peloton, It quickly packages all workloads into Kubernetes In a choreographed container , In order to better expand to meet the rapidly growing demand for its popular virtual bicycles and fitness courses .

“ We have expanded in almost every dimension , Sometimes in the application download 、 subscribe 、 Streaming media 、 Calculation level —— All aspects of speed and delivery —— Have been extended by three digits , And we did 100% Remote ,” Peloton Vice president of platform Jim Haughwout stay 2021 year 5 Of the month Kubecon The European conference said .

“ Cloud primordial has always been COVID Scaffolding of the times ,” Cloud native Computing Foundation (CNCF) The general manager Priyanka Sharma say .“ The trade-off is usually in speed 、 Cost and continuity and functionality 、 performance 、 The balance between cost-effectiveness and disruption ,”Gartner analysts Ed Anderson say .“ Low risk tolerance 、 Investment in expensive cloud migrations is limited , Or organizations that see migration as the first step in a larger business in the future are more likely to choose simple migration ： Promotion and transfer or promotion and optimization . Those who have the money and are tolerant of risk and destruction may take a more progressive route .”

Modernization stage 3： Move deep legacy applications to the cloud ：

For enterprises with a long history , The last challenge is to migrate the deepest legacy workloads to the cloud . We are talking about Yes 20 To 30 Years of supply chain or payment system , They reside on the mainframe and , use Cobol Wait for the language to write .

“ When you consider your competitive advantage , If you're on a mainframe , You'll fall behind . If you're going through a digital transformation , You will eventually have to deal with the problem in the mainframe room in the corner “ Elephant ”, It carries you 70% Business applications .” Software service provider Advanced Tim, managing director of application modernization · Jones （Tim Jones） say .

“ We have some large workloads , Some very traditional mainframe based workloads , We very much hope to cross Rubicon, Put them in the cloud .”Sainsbury Of Jordan say .“ Retailers do not like to modernize some workloads such as the supply chain , Because it is the absolute core of our business . But we are doing it now , And build it into a cloud based service , All AI and machine learning opportunities come from this .”

Migrating these workloads to the cloud is not easy , But it can be done . Take the UK Department of work and pensions (DWP) For example , The Department is responsible for various benefits 、 Pension and child support plans , Up to... Per year 2000 Million claimants to provide services . As early as 2015 Year begins , until 2021 year 1 It's not until June , The agency chose a conservative “ Like better ”Cobol Application transformation and migration to object-oriented micro focus Cobol, By the British cabinet office and Ark A joint venture in the data center Crown Hosting Data Centers Hosted on a private cloud server .

This includes 2020 During Easter ,COVID-19 When the pandemic began to sweep the country ,DWP The largest service organization “ Job seeker's allowance ” The immigrants .DWP Virtual machine environment replacement （VME-R） Project leader Mark • bell （markbell） Yes InfoWorld Express ：“ This is an intense period of application migration for welfare services , because COVID Influence , The number of claims for this service began to rise dramatically .”