Cloud repatriation has become a hot topic as companies have begun to realize that the public cloud is not the best option for all workloads and applications. Although it fulfills the promise of scalability, companies have encountered a number of challenges in other areas that can jeopardize their journey to the cloud. Increasingly, companies are realizing that the public cloud is the ideal environment for capturing user transactions, while the characteristics of the private cloud are better aligned with the needs of processing and consolidating these transactions. The conclusion is that hybrid environments, where the application is distributed across several different types of cloud, is the best technical and economic solution.
Initially, when considering cloud migration strategies, companies couldn't resist the appeal of pay-as-you-go infrastructure services. However, along the journey to the cloud, what works well in the beginning may not work so well once you increase usage growth. In most situations, after experiencing costs rising out of control, companies are bringing the back-end of applications back to private clouds, hosted in mission-critical data centers.
Digital transformation is becoming more and more prevalent, bringing a new reality to companies. In recent times, demand for cloud computing services has grown as different businesses have seen the solution to various issues and high demands.
In this context, a concern arises for many companies: the lack of headcount specialized in the new technologies and the process of migrating to the cloud. The service provider is a facilitator in the journey to the cloud.
In addition, it is also important that the company goes through a careful analysis of the application and workload targeted for migration to the cloud: generally, transaction ingestion is more suited to the public cloud while transaction execution is more suited to private (or hybrid) clouds.
What happens is that, when migrating applications to the public cloud, IT teams are dealing with two problems that, although separate, are related. The big issue is that these problems add costs and complexity, they are the refactoring and repatriation which we'll explain below.
What is refactoring?
Refactoring is the process of rewriting the code to make the application more suitable and ready for the cloud. This is usually done by updating the application's overall architecture, APIs and integrations with computing, storage and network resources.
It is a more complex process than other cloud migration approaches because it requires changes to the application code and needs to be tested carefully to avoid regressions in functionality.
It can be partial, modifying parts of the applications to take advantage of some of the cloud's native resources, or complete, taking advantage of all the native resources.
By adjusting legacy applications to take on the characteristics of cloud-native applications, developers can use modern tools such as containers and microservices.
Advantages and disadvantages of refactoring:
Advantages and disadvantages of refactoring:
Refactoring, like any process, has advantages and disadvantages. Among its advantages, we can highlight long-term cost savings. It is possible to reduce costs by combining the real resource requirements of applications with cloud infrastructure.
In addition, refactoring offers greater resilienceby decoupling application components and connecting managed solutions that provide high availability.
On the other hand, refactoring has the following disadvantages supplier dependency and much greater consumption of resources making it take longer for projects to start showing their business value.
Advantages and disadvantages of refactoring:
We know that refactoring takes time, investment and risks affecting application performance. For this reason, IT teams must ensure that they are not affecting the performance of applications and workloads by rewriting code.
To avoid refactoring, IT teams can lifting and transferring applications from the Data Center to the private cloud. This can simplify the migration process, reduce costs and speed up the move to the cloud.
To optimize the process, IT teams can take advantage of a cloud platform that fully integrates on-premises infrastructure with cloud management and thus use comprehensive automation to make the migration between lifting and shifting as simple and practical as possible.
Furthermore, with proper management, you can also guarantee a migration path with automation and intelligence to simplify the processes involved in adding cloud-native resources.
What is repatriation?
Repatriation is the process of removing applications that have been migrated to the public cloud and returning them to the private cloud. It is an increasingly hot topic as companies realize that the public cloud is not the best option for all workloads.
A large number of Brazilian companies are repatriating applications from the public cloud to the private cloud. According to a survey carried out by Nutanix, more than three quarters of Brazilian respondents (78%) reported having repatriation initiatives, which is around 6 to 8 percentage points above the global and Americas averages. The figures indicate the need for greater mobility between integration and the cloud, and highlight the advantages of relying on managed service providers end-to-end, regardless of the cloud platform chosen.
Investment
The high cost of the public cloud, often more than expected, linked to exchange rate risk, was a very present theme in the survey. Brazilian companies report cost overruns with their public cloud spending, with 35.39% reporting overruns in 2019, rising significantly year on year, with 21.6% in 2018.
Security
Whether for security or cost reasons, some companies are deciding to migrate their applications from public clouds to in-house systems, a process known as repatriation. This was the case for 73% of the 2,650 IT decision-makers surveyed by Vanson Bourne at Nutanix's request.
There is an ongoing debate about the security of the public cloud versus the private cloud. The public cloud segment has constantly presented a repertoire of news about data breaches that reinforce security being the main factor for companies to migrate their workloads to hybrid clouds. Much of this dynamic is due to public cloud providers defending the shared responsibility model, while hybrid cloud service providers defend a management model that is agnostic to the type of cloud used.
Performance
Given the characteristics of dynamic computing resources, public clouds generally do not guarantee consistent processing and I/O performance, and the model of telecommunications capacity made available per gigabyte transferred presupposes traffic restrictions (traffic shaping).
The conclusion is that the best performance practice is to have the application ingestion (front-end) in a public cloud and the transaction processing and consolidation (back-end) in a private cloud. The combination of these options is known as a hybrid cloud.
Cost Rationalization and Investment Protection
The vast majority of companies still need to maintain an operational legacy. These legacy systems are very difficult to migrate to the public cloud, either from a software licensing point of view or from the point of view of investments made in specialist hardware. In addition to the investments required to migrate the legacy, as public cloud providers advocate a shared management model, operating costs (opex) can also become an impediment.
General Data Protection Law (LGPD)
There are services that have native cross-region replication capabilities. For this reason, it is perfectly possible for a company to accidentally violate LGPD rules because an administrator has activated cross-region replication for an unprepared bucket. Repatriating sensitive data to hybrid clouds and local mission-critical data centers gives companies more control, preventing an inadvertent violation of the many regulations to which a company may be bound.
IT centralization
The ability to generate services on demand brings agility and innovation. This is the appeal of public cloud services. But this process can generate everything from obvious problems with cost controls to less obvious problems such as access management and the potential for violating corporate or government regulations. Workloads with unified management guarantee IT governance and control.
We are following two opposing trends. Spending on the public cloud is expected to more than double by 2023, yet 98% of companies still keep their servers on-premises. Still, these two trends can live in harmony as sentiment moves away from an "either/or" mentality to a "this and that" one.
Recent research indicates that "the use of private and public clouds will increase sharply over the next 12 to 24 months". It seems that companies are realizing that there is no "silver bullet", each type of cloud has its advantages and disadvantages. IT resources made available in a hybrid cloud, in a combination of public and private cloud environments (the hybrid cloud), with end-to-end management, meet these needs.
When is the best time to repatriate?
In many cases, such as those mentioned above, repatriation becomes a necessity, but it is necessary to an analysis to see if you're at the right stage. To this end, it's worth saying that the public cloud shows its best potential in the initial phase of projects. Scalability, for example, is a great differentiator if demand grows rapidly and is unpredictable.
To recognize the need for repatriation, it is necessary to investigate how resources are being usedand other storage options, such as the hybrid cloud.
How to avoid repatriation
Repatriation, like refactoring, is also something you want to avoid, right? It's a process that also requires investment and time.
Initially, the company bears the costs of migrating an application to the cloud, sometimes involving refactoring or a lift-and-shift model (with minimal or no changes). Then it realizes that it is spending a lot of money on the cloud or dealing with other problems related to it, and so it spends again on the migration back to the data center. Clearly, this is a situation that you want to avoid and that can be avoided.
Of course, the cost of repatriation will vary greatly depending on the workload, applications, etc. Even so, the costs can be quite significant.
So, to avoid so many dilemmas, we want to help simplify things.
Simplifying the migration path
To avoid the costs and complexities of refactoring and repatriation, you need to analyze your business needs before carrying out any migration.
In this sense, before opting for a solution, try to understand your company's situation by asking questions:
- Why are you considering the cloud right now?
- What are the business objectives?
- What are the interdependencies between each application and workload?
- How much will the migration cost?
- After completion, what will the ongoing operating costs be?
By doing this analysis, it will be possible to decide whether the application is best served by remaining on-site or by incorporating cloud services, which can be hybrid.
If this analysis determines that refactoring is indeed necessary, it is still important to choose the right migration path to avoid the need for repatriation in the future.
Are you ready to take the next step?
For the most part, refactoring and repatriation, because they are complex, happen due to a lack of good prior analysis and experience on the part of the company. So remember the advice: when deciding on a particular solution, make a complete analysis of your business situation to make the best long-term decision.
If the most productive option is to migrate to the cloud, don't hesitate - after all, this solution is part of the digital transformation and the future of any organization.
To this end, SBA Edge offers several options with management and security, including hybrid cloudThe environment combines on-premise infrastructure (private clouds) with public clouds, allowing companies to take advantage of both options with single management, which guarantees benefits such as:
- Multiple environments;
- Secure data;
- Dedicated infrastructure;
- Cost optimization;
- Single end-to-end management;
- Scalable flexibility;
SBA Edge focuses on your infrastructure so you can focus on your business. SBA Edge solutions are reliable, flexible and affordable, providing all layers of infrastructure, application management and support. All this with advanced monitoring and at an affordable price.
Still in doubt? Still not sure which option is best for your business and what your reality requires? We can help you!
You can talk to one of our consultants right now who will answer all your questions and find the best solution to optimize your business;
