Business critical applications should be analysed before being moved to the cloud, according to cloud provider Intechnology's product director, Stefan Haase.
Speaking at Computing's Data Centre Summit held today in London, Haase (pictured) suggested that IT decision makers need to ensure that they have the right buy-in from the business before deciding to shift business-critical applications to the cloud.
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"Even if an application is more resilient in the cloud, it is not only a technical decision. The IT team should always advise the business, and any business that doesn't listen to IT will struggle. But at the same time [IT decision makers] have to ensure that the business endorses the change, as perhaps an app can't be moved to the cloud for compliance reasons," he said.
Haase explained that many businesses don't understand the requirements of the apps that they intend to move to the cloud. He suggested that firms need to know what kind of performance is required, and whether this is a server, storage or network issue.
"To really understand the app, a business should analyse it for 30 days and find out its key performance indicators such as who uses it, when it is used, how it is used, and how it interacts with other systems," he stated.
He went on to suggest that "over specification" from vendors such as SAP could lead to additional costs.
"You have to understand the application and what it does and how the business interacts with it. You have to look at the required performance parameters and not make a technical decision based solely on vendor service provision," Haase said.
"You have to ask yourself if you're prepared for the new infrastructure and the way it needs to operate to achieve your performance parameters," he added.
The business should pick one business-critical application first, Haase said, and then after ensuring it "cloud-ready" by analysing it, push it into the cloud and see how the business reacts.
But, Haase added, "this is not a business-only decision or an IT decision, it's a business decision informed by technical information".
