Why migrate legacy AIX (and DBs) to cloud?
Within today’s dynamic environment businesses continue to need more ways to effectively address infrastructure and application requirements. Within these requirements islands of AIX-based environments continue to pose strategic headaches as they host in most cases critical applications and databases that are still of real value to business.
The market, of course, is evolving every single day, and new methods are becoming available to clients. Global cloud leaders continue to shift the industry towards ‘as a service’ models, while outsourcing companies provide more and more custom solutions for every company in need of optimization.
What about AIX?
AIX has remained mainly an issue of internal control for most of the companies. The wide range of legacy applications and DBs on these systems has made them hard to transform as it has mainly remained a technology area under the control of IBM. Technology expertise continues to decline as rarely young people are inspired to look for a career in AIX administration. Moreover, the modernization of these environments on one hand demands a true expertise from the technical team and on the other is often related to complex updates of DBs and applications, which are no longer adequately supported.
It does not sound like an area that cloud can do much, does it?
On the contrary, there are some characteristics of the AIX environments that make them excellent for cloud candidates. First and most important, it is a good area where costs can be optimized. The heavy investments in infrastructure in maintenance become really a burden especially for companies which fail to keep in pace with the latest updates of the operating system and have to pay additionally for extended maintenance. Investments in technical resources cannot be ignored either – the AIX expert is usually well paid and hard to find.
Of course cost is not all that matters. What if you have a way to provision easily resources to an environment, which was quite static and hard to change in the past? What if you were able to use the latest technology without any capital investment?
Most companies support a wide range of monitoring solutions to keep up-to-date with what’s happening in their systems. Most cloud providers include this in the service and if experience and right tools are available it can even improve your vision on these AIX LPARs.
Monitoring is only the start – by having the tool to plan your growth and needs you will be easily empowered to optimize your usage. Who says that AIX environments can only extend. By almost 90% of our customers we saw optimization of resources within the first year – whether it is by shifting where it is more needed or by just diminishing the cloud usage.
AIX has always been a factor in security. Inherently stable, easily secured and massively utilizable AIX can be a real benefit for business. Providers that can take use of these advantages can give you what looks like impossible – improving security by moving to cloud. In the light of approaching GDPR, it is only normal that clients ask themselves if it is not easier to partner with someone who can share some of the risk. Secure data deletion, log management and patching are almost certainly standards in AIX on cloud.
Companies often struggle with creating complex projects for securing their environment from a disaster. A cloud solution could be an excellent way to finally make this DR environment work and test on a regular basis. Not only that business continuity will be less expensive but most providers for AIX cloud will take part in your tests and make sure they provide recommendations and improve the service after that.
Finally, cloud can be the excellent approach to fix your internal and external SLAs. By working with a provider, who can provide flexible SLAs for every service that you require, you can make sure that your business is in safe hands and easily controlled. Most niche AIX cloud providers will be able to give you that SLA that your security officers or consultants always wanted you to have and maintain. We will even connect to your public cloud providers to provide a totally hybrid solution.
As a conclusion, we would add that AIX move to cloud does not have to be a complex journey. Cloud provides the opportunity to begin with something less critical, evaluate then deploy your most complex AIX related applications and DBs. While it might seem daunting at the beginning, our clients rapidly embrace the cloud model and the benefits its brings.
Still not convinced?
Challenge us to meet your needs by improving your service levels yet working within your financial constraints by contacting us directly 0203 542 0870 asking for Jerry Crossfield or email us office@l3c.cloud.
