Page 99 - Cloud Essentials
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What types of applications and services should be considered for a pilot?
Moving applications, servers, or services to the cloud must result in
business value. Standard risk management techniques can be used to
determine whether the benefits of cloud adoption outweigh potential
unwanted outcomes.
Complex applications that are difficult to migrate are not good candidates
for cloud adoption. An example of this might be a customized line-of-
business application storing data in a nonstandard format.
Mission-critical applications that require the highest level of reliability
might be best controlled within an organization’s IT infrastructure and not in
the cloud. Exceptions to this include e-commerce and IT service providers.
Organizations using complex or mission-critical applications might
have them running on a virtual machine already. If an exam question
suggests migrating a virtual machine running a critical application to
the cloud, this could present business value but not as an initial cloud
pilot.
For example, applications with substantial peak loads are possible
candidates because cloud elasticity can save time and money. Application
development and testing can also work great in the cloud because virtual
machines, database servers, and application components can be used as
needed and deprovisioned when not needed. Desktop productivity
applications (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and email) can
simply provide user interfaces for users. Data collaboration is facilitated
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