We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk
(An Open Letter to  MultiValue Server Huggers)

Dear Server Hugger,

It’s not you – it’s us. Perhaps we have failed to get our point across. We know it can be hard not to be able to go to your server room and touch your server and tuck it in at night. All kidding aside, the truth is you can still access your server and have the same admin privileges. And, the good news is, it’s in an environment that you won’t need to worry about anymore. You can rely on Google’s worldwide network and count on low latency and high responsiveness. Google has the world’s largest global private cloud network with 144+ points of presence, 24 regions, and hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optic cable.

We have heard several reasons why you may not want to move to the cloud. We hear them every day. My PICK application is too old, my printers aren’t compatible, the costs are too much, it isn’t secure or we need to adhere to certain compliances.

You are not alone.  Recently Twitter decided to move some of their systems to the cloud. There was trepidation within Twitter about moving off-premise. Engineers had to overcome internal prejudices and opinions that were derived without adequate research. In the end, they decided to start the process of moving their services slowly to Google Cloud. After much analysis, Twitter rejected a colo or “lift and shift” approach. This approach was tempting because it leads to the fastest migration. But it would have required a major re-architecture after migration to capture the benefits of the cloud. Twitter moved 300 petabytes of data – that is the equivalent of 90,000 10TB disk drives. Imagine the cost of purchasing and storing those vs hosting the data on Google Cloud servers. And it’s not just storage, you have to be able to process the data as well. Our minds were blown.

Believe it or not, we do still have some clients who still have their servers on-premise. Here are some of the ways we address their concerns with the cloud.

Remote Access and Security
As more people are working from home, accessing an on-prem server remotely can be tricky. The cloud can help mitigate that securely and cost-effectively by using technologies such as SSH, SSL, VPNs, and more. Google encrypts data at rest and in transit which is another layer of security. There is more to cloud security than simply whitelisting IP addresses. See how easy it was for one of our newest clients to move to the cloud due to the COVID-19 crisis.

COLO – Oh No
Considering a move from on-prem to a cage in a data center or have already done it? Not everyone is suited for the lift and shift approach. At the end of the day, you are still responsible for the hardware. If a disk or the entire server fails how quickly is a replacement available? How much does it cost to keep your server in a cage? What compliances does that offer you? How about data security? A cloud server can be provisioned in minutes. Depending on how long the restore process takes you can be up and running in a matter of hours not days. Google has all major compliances and encrypts data at rest and in transit automatically.

Costs
Moving to the cloud does not have to be cost-prohibitive. In fact, our customer All Vend Management Corp has this to say about it “If it ain’t broke doesn’t mean it can’t get better. If I had known moving to cloud computing was this smooth and cost-effective, I’d have made the move earlier.”

Instead of paying hefty upfront costs of on-premise servers and depreciating them over the course of a few years, (CAPEX) you can pay affordable, predictable monthly fees and write them off as operating expenses (OPEX). This is one of the many benefits of the cloud.

Slow and Steady Can Still Win the Race
One of our customers wasn’t ready to move their entire infrastructure to the cloud. So they took the first step with a secondary hot backup server. They still have their production server on-premise, but now also have a backup in a different location in one of Google’s 24 global data centers. If the worst ever does happen, they are ready to switch over. They are as current as of their last transaction and can be up and running in less than an hour.

Bottom Line
Even large companies like Twitter are making the move to the cloud. They trust Google with their most important asset – their data. You don’t even have to make the move all at once – you can start with a secondary server in the cloud.