The document discusses cloud computing and the challenges of moving to the cloud. It notes that while cloud is seen as a major revolution, there are still concerns from organizations about security, compliance, and control of critical data in the cloud. However, many large cloud providers are addressing these issues by providing stringent security controls and certifications. The document outlines two main categories of challenges - those within the organization regarding what to move and technical considerations, and those from customers regarding data ownership and responsibility. It recommends a careful assessment and planning process to determine what should move to public, private or on-premise systems based on factors like regulatory requirements and application characteristics. A multi-stage approach including scoping, planning and cost estimation is suggested for a successful

1. Author: Navin Malhotra
Cloud Computing – The “in” word
• Cloud is one construct everyone want to perceive within their
organizations, which is treated as the biggest revolution in the IT world,
even larger that the “internet”.
• Gartner, Forrester and like wise agencies have predicted big on cloud.
• Initially there were issues / concerns from CIOs, clients, regulators but
those are slowly phasing out with larger and more experienced vendors
who provide end to end cloud solutions with robust and state of the art
infrastructure assuring better and compliant services to the industry.
• There are cloud service providers who are providing stringent SLAs, are
certified in ISO, FISMA, HIPPA, SSAE 16, PCI-DSS and are proving the
value of moving to cloud.

2. Author: Navin Malhotra
Challenges moving to Cloud
• There are challenges while moving to cloud and the CIOs and
infrastructure groups in an organization are finding ways to find the
answer to those challenges.
• We can segregate those challenges in two broad categories:
– First one are the challenges from within the organization like, what to move to cloud,
technical considerations etc;
– Other one is from our customers, like what will happen to my critical data if you move to
cloud, who will own the responsibility. Those customers could also be our customers
end customers as well.
• There are many myths circling about the cloud as well, which are on
similar lines when the internet started taking shape a few decades back.

3. Author: Navin Malhotra
How to plan moving to Cloud (public /
private) or on-premise
• We should remember that everything cannot be moved to cloud, so there
will remain something on-premise depending upon the technology
challenge of moving to cloud, regulatory requirement or ROI assessments.
• Through a detailed assessment involving detailed review of current
applications, analyzing the application landscape across multiple
dimensions, evaluating cloud readiness of each application in scope, a
very calibrated approach can be set out for enterprises to adopt a cloud
model.
• Many organizations are coming up with scores called as “Cloud Index”
which helps in assessing what services / applications / infrastructure is
ready to be moved now or at later time.

4. Author: Navin Malhotra
How to plan moving to Cloud (public /
private) or on-premise
• If we have an application which is changed frequently, highly regulated
applications like for FDA clients, applications which were developed on
legacy systems which are not supported in cloud are the ones which
should better be kept on-premise.
• We can define the stages as below while moving to cloud:
– Scoping – It will primarily include defining the scope for moving infrastructure,
applications, devices etc which needs to cloud (public, private) or in-premise, depending
upon the assessments as listed out earlier.
– Planning & Discovery – Planning and discovery is the process of identifying business and
technological drivers that motivate a migration to cloud, as well as collecting data about
current systems and their performance. We must list down the detailed requirements /
configurations for the infrastructure, applications, devices etc to assure that the
migration is successful.
– Estimation – It deals with the estimation of both cost and time. This will be required to
be used along the scoping, planning and discovery phases, so as to reach the ROI
measurements in realistic way.