How To Move To The Cloud

When customers want to take advantage of cloud computing models for their applications, it can be a straightforward process, but sometimes it can be more complicated.

For example, existing (legacy) applications can be run in several locations:

1. The existing (legacy) Data Centre (as-is)
2. In a virtual machine in the customer’s Private Cloud (on-premise or hosted)
3. In a virtual machine in a Service Provider’s IaaS Cloud

Often the first step is to virtualize the existing servers (P2V) so that they be migrated to either the Private Cloud or IaaS provider. If the application is complex, performance-sensitive, or mission-critical, Softchoice can provide expert-level services to complete the P2V migration with confidence.

If the customer doesn’t have a Private Cloud, Softchoice can help them evolve their existing Data Center into one. And if the customer is migrating a large amount of data, (e.g., dozens of TB or more), to a Service Provider IaaS Cloud, Softchoice can provide design and deployment services to assist in that migration as well.

Similarly, when customers are adopting a SaaS application, there are wildly different scenarios:

•  If the SaaS application is providing entirely new functionality, then sometimes all that is required is some user training.
•  If it is replacing an existing application for a business-critical process, however, then there may be significant data mapping and migration required, as well as re-integration with other applications and business processes.

In either case, Identity Management and Authentication is often an issue with SaaS deployments. Many organizations suddenly find themselves leveraging a dozen or more SaaS applications, each with their own login account and password for each user. There is no easy way to provision all these apps for new employees, and conversely, no sure way to shut down all the different accounts when employees leave the organization.

Softchoice’s SaaS Management solutions leverage the power of Microsoft Active Directory (AD) so that users have a single sign-on to all of their applications, and the IT department can securely manage the access to SaaS applications by simply managing AD permissions. But because AD can be difficult to configure and maintain, Softchoice offers a Managed AD service, relieving the IT department of this thankless but important task. If required, Softchoice can perform a Healthcheck on the existing AD infrastructure before taking over its management.