How to migrate from Public to the Private Cloud

Meet the customer: a design bureau that develops future-oriented civilian helicopters and UAVs. Cooperation with ITGLOBAL.COM lasts for several years already; the provider supports many key IT services of the bureau end-to-end. Software environment for the light multipurpose helicopter design is among these services.

In May 2020 the company decided to fully migrate from the public into the private ITGLOBAL.COM cloud.

Why the cloud model approach has changed.

CIO
«For us the support of services has always been the main component of IT. This allows freeing our specialists from routine operations like corporate infrastructure support and moving their focus to development instead. For example, we just opened an office in Italy – and built its entire IT infrastructure in shortest terms.
Year by year we increase the volume of cooperation with ITGLOBAL.COM. This year we again expanded the volume of outsource, our services keep gaining complexity. So we’ve generated the new request: the infrastructure that holds our services has to be dedicated to us only.

ITG opinion:
«Many companies that use integrated outsourcing – today it is called Managed IT – have a course of constantly increasing volumes of consumption. At first they transfer only several services for support; then, after gaining positive experience, they start transferring other, more complicated services.
There’s no secret: as business grows, so do the client’s demands for infrastructure – both quantitatively and qualitatively. An infrastructure keeps gaining complexity, and at a certain moment it stops fitting a typified public cloud».

How the migration went

The main limitation was: the development company could not stop operations even for one hour. “Not a single minute on idle” was the primary request.

ITG opinion:
«For us it was an already perfected scenario. These days many of our clients migrate to private clouds. We use VMware vCloud Avilability: we replicate the client’s entire infrastructure from the public cloud on an allocated VMware virtualization farm; check if everything is alright and, at the “X Hour” – switch to the new platform. For a client it goes totally painlessly».

Is migration connected to newer security requirements?

CIO
«I think there’s no need to be afraid of clouds. We use cloud services for a long time. So far the experience is fully positive, including operations in the public cloud. Under literate management this model of placement is safe. I would even say that cloud is safer than on-premise. The main thing is to find a really good partner that possesses extensive experience and a high level of expertise in cloud technologies. To be ready to fulfil all requirements of the client is also important».

Why did the public cloud become no fit?

CIO
«I’d say: we grew out of it. We launched new services, the older ones gained complexity – so we’ve decided on the location with no neighbours. As for the issues we were facing in the public cloud (there are issues in any projects, especially of such complexity) – there were not many, but still… For example, at the end of 2019 we’ve experienced organizational issues.
We have in the cloud, among others, the environment for the light multipurpose helicopter design. This environment uses specific software. After the next in a row update we needed to connect the new licensing server to the cloud. We expected this to happen over a weekend, but, unfortunately, the connection process took several more working days. Our Design Dept. was in a kind of inconvenience at that time.
Examination revealed: the issue emerged namely due to the fact our infrastructure was in the public cloud at that moment. This became one of the factors, why we asked ITGLOBAL.COM to transfer us to dedicated equipment».

ITG opinion:
«Let me comment. Connecting the new licensing server is asking for the cloud provider’s firewall setup changes. This routine operation takes 10 minutes maximum. But in that case we witnessed a delay, caused by a cycle of concordances inside a provider hosting the design bureau. As public cloud has many clients, modifications of one client have to be coordinated with all the rest. With migration to a private cloud such issues are obsolete».

Infrastructure development plans

CIO
«We develop rapidly, opening new offices in different countries, connecting new services. Our strategy is to delegate all operations non-profile to us to a profile company, i.e. the one that focuses on such activities. Nonetheless we are very demanding, in terms of both our services availability, and speed and quality of handling our requests. For SLA parameters below negotiated we have substantial reimbursements mentioned in our Contract. Luckily, we never went for them so far.
Recently we’ve migrated to the private cloud model for our core services. I believe it will satisfy our demands for the couple of coming years. Probably, for our foreign services we will additionally acquire a public cloud – requirements there are not too complex so far. Let me also note: it is important for us to receive all IT services from “a single window”. We are not used for, say, ten contracts – one for video conferencing, another for email support, some others for file exchange service, local cloud, foreign cloud, etc».

ITG opinion:
«We are very glad to be in cooperation with helicopter technologies for many years. We help the design bureau to modernize its infrastructure, to add more services for business development. We are proud of taking even a small part in domestic helicopter production development. I’m very eager personally to fly the developing helicopter. I hope soon they will be available in Europe as air taxis».