Defeating the Application Workloads Challenge for Smoother Onboarding

Customer data onboarding is mission critical for organizations, but full of challenges. However, the path to onboarding is aboard of rough challenges. Enterprises executing data onboarding operations with less focus on an integration strategy can face setbacks. It is not easy as fork lifting applications on the cloud. On the contrary, it is a continuous process which requires an intelligent mesh for combining the enterprise data, moving it to cloud and orchestrating it in a useful manner for the future.

What is Data Onboarding?

Data onboarding is the final stage of cloud environment and it stands for deployment of applications, data, and services on the cloud infrastructure. Customer data onboarding projects are equivalent to transitioning projects where the business models are moved from one network to another.

Application Workloads Challenge and Customer Data Onboarding

Application workloads is one of the major barrier to successful onboarding. A workload is a logical container that bundles the necessary components for the proper performance of an application. Some of the components are processing power, network connectivity, Active Directory, security services, etc.  

Teams face debilitating errors during cloud migration when these components are not moved to the cloud along with the application. The design model of these components is very different from the monolithic cloud applications operating at a wider scale. These components run natively on a cluster application server nodes powered by physical database. Organizations should prepare a strategy beforehand to combine enterprise systems with cloud-based environments.

Hybrid Cloud Computing and Customer Data Onboarding

In computing, hybrid IT is used to define an IT ecosystem that is comprised of cloud and on-premise systems. Here are some key elements to hybrid IT architecture:

1. The enterprise data center which is semi virtualized.

2. The remote cloud environment

3. End-user devices accessing applications hosted in the hybrid network.

In such a scenario, the enterprise workloads are separated by multi-tenant cloud platform and WAN traffic. WAN connectivity and encryption and decryption are not compatible with certain workloads. Bi-model and two-way connectivity is needed to onboard workloads in a hybrid IT environment.

Best Practices to Beat the Application Workloads Challenge

Successful onboarding requires a strategy beforehand. Enterprises can overcome most of the problems by referring to industry best practices.

Define the Workload: Evaluate the nature and scale of the workload. Define a proper pathway to define how the workloads will interact with software and services.

Provision Cloud Resources: Get a self-service interface for the creation of accounts and services on cloud.

Establish Connectivity: Build a strong bridge for establishing connectivity between standalone enterprise systems and cloud-based applications. With layered connectivity, machines can be integrated remaining components that are left behind.

Ensure Two-way Access: Enable two-way access to monitor and manage applications on-premise and on cloud infrastructure.

Test and Deploy: Use the test and deploy approach in phases. Crosscheck that all components have been transferred correctly, database configurations are intact, etc.

Discontinue the Old Service: If everything is working fine then it is better to discontinue the old service.

To an extent, it is true that cloud migration helps organizations in accessing a number of business benefits. However, due to incompatible application workloads, organizations face debilitating errors during customer data onboarding. They face the same old challenges that they faced with bare-metal servers. For good reasons, there are many best practices to overcome this challenge. With proper planning, organizations can achieve continued success from their data onboarding initiatives.