Saguaro National Park, New Mexico, May 2017

Well, it has wings, an engine and a set of wheels. But is it ready? How many different types of planes are there? Which engines do they use? Are the right pilots available for the plane? The question is – Will it fly?

To arrive at a conclusion, analysis has to be done on all the applications in the organization by collecting the relevant parameters. Start from the company CMDB (Configuration Management DataBase) to collect basic information

1. Application Profile:  It is important to understand the application profile holistically. What does the application do, what is the business value, is it Platinum, Gold or Silver application. What are the business dependencies of the application. Who are the users, owners and the relevant stakeholders. Are there multiple environments? All such parameters will help us in planning for the actual move.
2. Technical Profile: Technologies used. Which technologies have been used in the development of the application? Which operating system? What products have been used, if any? Were there customization done? Is it already containerized? Are there dependencies on the other systems in the organization? What are the dependencies? What are the interfaces (data to / from). How does the licenses work for the products? What kind of support is already available? Do we have resources knowledgeable to provide all the details of the application.
3. Infrastructure Profile: There are some fundamental differences in the way the traditional data centers are structured versus Cloud. For example, SAN and NAS form the core in the traditional data center, but in the cloud storage is accomplished by Block and File Storage. Are the applications hosted on physical machines or are they in VMs. Are the VM images available. What are the network interfaces. It is important to gather information regarding the servers that are used, and the networks, storage and the ‘hooks’ into various systems.
4. Data Profile: How are the licenses structured for the application? What about data storage? Does the data need to be encoded in transit and and at rest? Does the application store PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Are there any specifications needed for that?

Based on the information, derive a ‘cloudability’ factor. This should give us on scale of 1-10, the ease with which an application can be moved to cloud – 10 being the easiest to move. This will also help in case a phased approach is being planned.

Merge into: /The flight plan