Optimizing Cloud Migration

Chapter 2. Phase 1: Preparing for Your Journey to the Cloud

Before you start your journey to the cloud, there are a few important mindset changes that you need to make in order to be able to take full advantage of the systems offered by cloud providers.

The Nature of Cloud Geography

Choosing a cloud provider is a difficult decision; it is a rapidly evolving industry with new offerings coming into the market on a weekly basis. There are obvious elements that should be considered when choosing a provider, such as reputation, services available, cost, and support. However, it is important that some consideration be given to the following aspects that have a major impact on Internet performance:

Geographic distribution

Cloud providers are global platforms and portray themselves as such. In reality, however, their services are delivered from fewer than 20 geographical locations, which tend to congregate around certain areas of the world. This, of course, is more than the range of locations offered by the majority of data centers, but it is important to understand where these locations are and how that relates to the service you are wanting to provide. Performance is an important element of this alongside other considerations such as data sovereignty, redundancy, etc.

Routing

The geographical location is of course only part of the story. Cloud providers don’t own a worldwide network; they rely on transit providers to connect cloud locations to markets. So, it is also essential ...