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How to Move to the Public Cloud?

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

IDC predicts that worldwide Cloud services market will be

worth about $43 billion by 2012. And Cloud service adoption will grow at 27%

CAGR, which is almost five times that of the traditional on-premise IT

expenditure model. Moving your data or services, applications, etc on to the

public Cloud is a conscious yet difficult decision to take. The preceding

article on what to move to the Cloud will help clear the air to a large extent.

After deciding what you want to move to the Cloud comes the next big challenge

-how to go about it? Though the procedures and practices involved in moving to

the public Cloud infrastructure are different for each vendor or Cloud service

providers (CSPs), there are some common basic steps to follow. Here, we guide

you to cut through the initial hiccups you might face in procuring public Cloud

offerings.

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Moving to the SaaS

Availing Software as a Service may be the most difficult

job to decide, because it has the maximum number of options to choose from.

There are some very popular SaaS providers out there, including Salesforce.com

with its CRM offering, Google and Microsoft with their entire Apps portfolio.

Deciding to use the services of such established players may only be a matter of

choosing the right partner to do it for you, defining the SLAs, and of course

negotiating on the rates. Here again, you would want to calculate the savings

that would result from moving to a SaaS provider. A few things to consider here

are:

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  • How much are you paying for the software licenses locally

    and how much would you end up paying by moving to the SaaS model?

  • How much additional Internet bandwidth will you need for

    the new service? Your bandwidth requirements would most certainly go up by

    moving to the SaaS model. How much would they go up by depends upon the number

    of users and the service itself. On top of that, you'll need to factor in the

    cost of providing QoS and backup links, so that the users get uninterrupted

    and quality service.

  • Many SaaS service providers provide their services

    through a partner, and not directly. So, while the SaaS service itself might

    be from a reputed brand, but if the partner isn't competent enough, you'll be

    in for trouble. Hence, after choosing a SaaS service provider, you'll need to

    choose the right implementation partner as well.

  • How easy is the service to use? Does the SaaS provider

    offer a free online demo to give you a look and feel of their offering before

    you decide to use their services?

The user needs to provide basic information about the

company and usage to avail the free trail period from Ramco.

Ramco's on Demand ERP



We tried Ramco's on demand ERP solution from their website,

ramcoondemand.com. The company offers a 7-day trial to give you a look and feel

of the solution and its performance. To register, it requires you to fill out a

basic online form to give Ramco an idea of your organization. You need to

specify your industry, number of locations, and your contact info. Registration

doesn't directly take you to the 7-day trial, instead, the company gets back to

you to discuss your requirements, post which a demo is set up.

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The dashboard from Salesforce provides user various options

like demos and getting started guides along with templates to host an app on

to the Cloud.

The on demand ERP currently caters to engineering,

automotive, travel and transport, industrial & manufacturing, power generation,

wholesale distribution, and dairy industries. It offers an extensive range of

modules, ranging from financial management, accounts receivable/payable,

manufacturing, inventory management, cost planning and control, CRM, sales,

purchase, business analytics, reports, human capital management, fixed assets

management, logistics, and service management. There is also the option of

getting to know the solution, its offerings, etc through the info available on

the website. The website offers to contact the desired for which you have to

provide the contact number. Once you provide the contact number, the people from

the Ramco company will contact you and you can take the deal forward by

negotiating your terms and conditions.It would have been nice if the company had

provided a live online system to the users to play around with. Currently, they

have some online flash demos to give you a look and feel of the various modules.

Ramco offers a 7-day trial to give you a look and feel of

the solution. To register, it requires you to fill out a basic online form

to give them an idea of your organization.
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Salesforce.com



This company doesn't need an introduction, as it's one of the most popular

SaaS based CRM service providers. We tried 30-day free trail of their services.

Registration was pretty simple and straightforward. Moreover, unlike Ramco, here

the company offers a live demo to give users an actual look and feel of the

solution. After registering, it makes your email id as your user name and

prompts you to change your password. After this, it allows you to set up your

email to work with Salesforce. The demo supports Gmail account or MS Outlook.

You can even import your contacts from Gmail, Outlook, etc. Besides, it has

online video tutorials built in so that you can view them anytime to understand

it better. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com are some of the

offerings by Salesforce, being offered as a service for different price points.

Moving to PaaS



Some of the most talked about entities in the Cloud space comprise big CSPs

providing various platforms on to the Cloud for the user or developer community

to develop their applications on the Cloud. Microsoft Azure , Google AppEngine

and EC2 are some CSPs providing PaaS capabilities to developers and enterprises.

Google AppEngine enables you to build and host web apps on

the same systems that power Google applications. AppEngine offers fast

development and deployment, simple administration and you don't need to worry

about hardware, patches or backups and scalability. To use the PaaS services

from the Google AppEngine provider, you need to sign up for an AppEngine

account, download the SDK and proceed further by reading the getting started

guide which provides the user basic info about developing and hosting apps on

the Google infrastructure. Microsoft Azure works in a similar manner. The user

needs to sign up using his Windows Live Id, download the SDK tools and register

to gain access to services to the Microsoft platform. We have a separate article

on how to develop on MS Azure platform in the developer section of this issue.

To read more about how to use AppEngine, you can go to this link:

http://ld2.in/hu.

Moving to IaaS



As we know that any new IT initiative from an existing enterprise or a

startup involves a analysis of the cost and manageability of the IT

infrastructure which is required to host the hardware. Though IT hardware

infrastructure is getting greener and meaner but is not getting any cheaper. The

huge costs associated with procuring and managing the infrastructure may often

lead to many startup ideas vanishing in the air. This is where IaaS

(Infrastructure as a Service) model comes in. Using IaaS has various benefits

like almost zilch fund required for setting up the IT infrastructure which

generally amounts to more than 80% of the initial cost. Subscribed and scalable

IaaS from a renowned vendor can help an organization function effectively. CSPs

providing IaaS offer consultancy and help set up the server requirements for an

organization. Dedicated virtualized storage and servers as a service just mirror

the idea of an outsourced data center with the organization having to worry

least in their performance and maintenance. Maximum usability and on demand

scalability are some of the features being provided by these CSPs which make the

deals rather lucrative.

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