A Year of “Testing” the Cloud for Development and Test

Jim Trentadue describes the first year his organization used the cloud for its non-production needs: development, testing, training, and production support. Jim begins by describing the components of a cloud environment and how it differs from a traditional physical server structure. To prove the cloud concept, he used a risk-based model for determining which servers would be migrated. The result was a win for the organization from a time-to-market and cost savings perspective. Jim shares his do’s and don’ts for moving to the cloud. Do’s include ensure you identify all costs associated with the new cloud infrastructure, implement a risk-based approach to cloud migration, define a governance model, and define Service Level Agreements for your cloud vendor. Jim warns against creating an open-ended environment without a charge-back model to allocate costs and failing to continuously monitor the overall environment. Take back practical and proven recommendations and practices to make your move to the cloud a breeze.