Most businesses run a handful of workloads in public cloud. Several providers that dominate the public cloud space include AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Cloud adoption has evolved to include multicloud deployments consisting of public and private clouds. Businesses leveraging multicloud rely on multiple cloud providers simultaneously, depending on their needs.
We now have businesses “born in the cloud,” taking full advantage of never owning any infrastructure and consuming what they need when they need it. More traditional organisations have wrestled with the burden of legacy IT workloads and focused on quick wins when moving to the cloud.
Getting the easy-to-move platforms and applications in the cloud first can result in 80% of volume in the cloud, leaving the remaining 20% taking 80% of the time due to legacy challenges. Or it may not even move in the long run, leaving some of the expected benefits of cloud (like shutting legacy data centres) unrealised.
What is fit for public cloud?
According to Amazon:
- Data storage, archive and backup
- Application hosting (CRM, email hosting, project management software, etc.)
- Latency-intolerant or mission-critical web tiers
- On-demand hosting for microsite and application
- Auto-scaling environment for large applications
All these run on the most common form of modern code tied to an underlying x86 architecture, so it’s ideal for startups to be “born in the cloud.” Workloads well suited for public cloud typically include test and dev environments for industries with low regulation and compliance requirements.
The cloud migration challenge
The challenge of workloads not fitting in public cloud often affects organisations operating for over 20 years with one or more core applications based on older proprietary hardware systems. They may have already moved workloads to public cloud but are left with legacy workloads or technical debt in their data centres.
To complicate matters further, they can face roadblocks with regulations and compliance. It’s also possible that they’ve lost the skills to support the day-to-day operations of legacy workloads and platforms. This technical deficit makes migrating workloads to public cloud seem impossible from a cost and complexity viewpoint.
Most companies revert to the traditional cycle of upgrading their underlying technology every 3–5 years to deflect these challenges.
How does specialty cloud address this challenge?
Organisations accepting a multicloud approach are relying on specialty cloud providers for a cloud option that addresses legacy technology debt and can provide some, if not all, the expected benefits of public cloud. Specialty cloud providers can solve not only the issues with the technology platform but also the skill gap needed to migrate workloads to the cloud. Migration is the most critical and least considered part of a specialty cloud move but presents the greatest organisational risk.
Service Express has taken our extensive skill set and built our own Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution to support organisations running workloads on IBM® Power platforms with IBM i, AIX and Linux operating systems (OS).
We’ve helped countless customers — from all industries, often highly regulated with testing compliance requirements — over the last 30 years move IBM Power workloads to a flexible, reliable, scalable and resilient cloud platform. Our latest iteration based on IBM Power10 technology allows our IBM platform customers to run workloads in a cloud built on enterprise-class hardware, a genuine alternative to simply following the refresh cycle. Connect with us to learn more about your cloud options.
