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By Michael Neubarth
A major attraction of cloud computing is the idea that companies can simply move their applications to a cloud provider's premises, save money, and offload the headache of maintaining the applications.
This beatific vision of cloud computing is described by Loraine Lawson on itbusinessedge.com on October 16, 2009:
"Ah, but legacy systems are such a headache, who can blame a leader for dreaming? And such a lovely dream it is, legacy systems offloaded at last onto someone else's infrastructure - out there, somewhere in the clouds, where you don't have to deal with them or think about them, but where you can still access those functions or data, whenever you need them."
Lawson, however, is on a crusade to provide a cold dose of reality to users who harbor unreal expectations about cloud computing. Citing Kevin Fogarty as a kindred spirit, Lawson writes that:
"Fogarty points out that cloud's hype cycle is ready to plunge into the Trough of Disillusionment, and he's just the sort of guy to give it a gutsy push over the edge. And I'm just the kinda gal to cheer him on."
Says Lawson:
"What's the awful truth? Well, it turns out, all those things that are concerning about software-as-a-service - integration, security, compliance, etc - become even more troubling when you're talking infrastructure."
Similarly, in "Cloud Standards: Trickier than Nailing Jell-O to a Wall" on cio.com on April 29, 2009, Fogarty asks:
"Did you think all those legacy apps would just float up into someone else's cloud infrastructure? Management, licensing and migration concerns highlight the list of troubles that vendors are now trying to address."
The problem, Fogarty explains, is that, "Today's clouds are not alike. No one 'cloud platform' exists-each is different, meaning the specific migration, support, cost and capacity issues vary from vendor to vendor."
Internal Integration a Problem
In "Five Problems Keeping Legacy Apps Out of the Cloud" on IDG News Service, on October 15, 2009, Fogarty describes how cloud migration is a manual operation that can only partially be automated by current tools. Citing executives of tool provider Queplix, Fogarty explains how the complexities of custom coding complicate cloud migration:
"Your company may live and die by its line-of-business applications, but that doesn't mean you know everything going on behind the endlessly-customized codes, interfaces and forms that started out as business automation and turned into a rigid legacy application, according to CEO Mark Cashman and CTO Steve Yaskin of Queplix."
As Fogarty explains further:
"Even at their best, Queplix and its competitors-master data management (MDM) providers such as Siperian and Initiate Systems-convert only a portion of the application and data, leaving the end-user or service provider to deal with the rest, according to John Abbott infrastructure analyst at The 451 Group, who published an evaluation of Queplix recently. Yaskin estimates Queplix' best shot automates 85 percent of the migration. When will the situation improve?"
Elaborating on the problem of moving legacy applications to a cloud, Fogarty quotes analyst Bernard Golden, CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, as saying:
"Legacy applications come with a lot of integration with your other systems, and usually they had to be done fast, so you have a lot of direct database calls from one application to another and that kind of thing that may not work when one endpoint is outside the perimeter."
Similarly, Lorraine Lawson cites colleague Arthur Cole's explanation that, "You may find existing integration points break when you try to move one end point into the cloud - and odds are 10 to 1 your legacy systems are deeply integrated with many, many other on-premise systems."
In "Enterprise Applications and the Cloud: Can They Work Together?" on his itbusinessedge.com blog on January 29, 2009, Cole writes that, while some users are rushing to the cloud, "there are those who say existing applications will have a very tough time in the cloud, considering they were never meant to run free in such a dynamic, open environment."
Says Cole on February 20, 2009:
"If you thought the cloud was going to relieve you of the drudgery of enterprise data management, think again. Many of the same old problems are due to resurface, just on a much larger scale-data and application migration, for example."
Moreover, says Cole: "It turns out the problem has not gone unnoticed among those looking to develop cloud platforms. Data migration is emerging as one of the key themes this year."
Cole cites Lew Tucker, chief technical officer of a new division within Sun Microsystems that is dedicated to solving the cloud migration problem, as saying that he "readily admits that porting over legacy applications to the cloud will be a complicated task, since past application development rarely focused on open source, SaaS-style infrastructures." While workarounds and patches will help to some extent, says Cole, "the longer-term focus will have to be on virtualizing entire data centers on the cloud so applications can be simply switched over." However, he says, "No word yet as to exactly how Sun hopes to pull this off."
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