Moving To The Cloud Should Be Easier Than Switching Homes

August 29, 2022 Rich Spring

If the modern economy has taught us anything, it is that ownership is sometimes overrated. There are many things that we are accustomed to buying that we might better rent at a slight premium.

The cloud IT infrastructure is one of those things. This new deployment and purchasing model is a boon for the workloads we rely on. Done right, a move to the cloud should be relatively painless, if possibly a little time consuming.

But for a lot of IBM i customers, the idea of moving to infrastructure outside of local control is scary, not because of their fear of letting go of their Power Systems platforms – okay, there is probably a little of that if we want to be perfectly honest – but because of the risk and tediousness that is involved in moving from on-premises systems managed by the organization to off-premises systems rented from a reputable source, like the IBM Power Virtual Server cloud, for instance.

Improve The Move

To use a metaphor that we are all familiar with, it is not living in bigger home in a nicer, more secure neighborhood close to lots of good stores and restaurants, which just happens to be a rental, that is scary. Particularly when one considers the costs of home ownership – the constant upkeep, the periodic updates and improvements, and needing to add on as the family grows. Rather, what gives pause is the prospect of moving – ensuring all your valuable furniture and belongings make it in one piece to the new location.

Again, it’s not the new rental house that is a worry, but the move to get there.

The good news when it comes to IBM i and PowerVS is that there are ways to make the move relatively painless, and that have the added benefit of making not only the workloads in the cloud more resilient, but those remaining on premises more resilient too.

If you are going to make such a move, then you need to get the foundation right before the move even happens. (Yes, I know I am mixing my metaphors a little bit.) And getting that foundation right is what our journey with IBM i customers is all about and what our partnership with IBM is all about. The important thing about this journey is that once the foundation is right, you can own your home (stay on premises), rent as needed (move to the cloud), whatever. And the move itself is no longer a big deal, as it can be with IBM tools like BRMS currently being used by most IBM i shops today.

FalconStor StorSafe VTL is the only IBM-certified solution for both on-premises and the cloud.

IBM Certified Single Solution for On-premises to the Cloud

The FalconStor secret sauce is all about automating this migration process, making it elegant, making it predictable, making it smooth. It is a bridge to the cloud, or a moving truck to the cloud, or better still, like a teleporter to the cloud. We are all about protecting data, and in doing so, we can be the means to migrate that data as well.

The Move Is Really A Journey

This move to the cloud is really about modernizing the business for IBM i shops, about putting the systems in the hands of experts who can manage the platform on your behalf, so you can get back to writing, tuning, improving, and extending those IBM i applications and workloads for the benefit of your organization. And none of this modernization that is necessary for IBM i shops to get into the 21^st century is possible if there is not a way to get to the cloud smoothly. Luckily, we’ve worked with IBM to plan for this trip, and to take into account the fact that people start in different places and each environment is unique.

What we do is protect the applications, databases, and files in an on premises IBM i environment and allow for a seamless, smooth, and elegant way to get to the cloud once it is protected. And of course, once you are either partly in the cloud or all the way there, or if you manage many different clouds, or if you decide to move back to all-on-premises, you need to continue to protect that cloudy IBM i environment in exactly the same way, which is why IBM has partnered with FalconStor on the Power Virtual Server cloud.

A lot of people have the misconception that moving to the cloud means having some sort of discontinuity in application availability. But this does not have to happen. Not if you do it right and use the right tools.

If you put the right infrastructure in place, you can simultaneously protect your on premises workloads while beginning the journey to the cloud with replication and migration. And for those workloads in the cloud, you can be sure they are being adequately and fully protected too. You can switch the workloads to the cloud, or remain running a hybrid environment, as suits your particular needs.

The important thing is that by getting your data protected on premises now and by picking FalconStor StorSafe VTL as a means of doing this, you are also ensuring that you have the means to seamless move to the IBM Power Virtual Server cloud whenever you are ready, and to protect data there, too.

You’re covered. Full stop.

Rich Spring is chief revenue officer at FalconStor Software.

This content is sponsored by FalconStor Software.

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