David McJannet, director of product marketing at SpringSource, highlights the importance of performance management when considering using a cloud computing solution to run business-critical processes The rise of cloud computing as an alternative to in-house computing resources has been one of the most debated topics within the IT sector in recent years. Using external cloud providers to deploy applications has been hailed as a revolutionary way for businesses to cut costs whilst boosting reliability and efficiency.

Maintaining control
Businesses need to ensure that before moving their applications to the cloud they will still be able to monitor and manage process performance. Cloud computing may offer almost limitless server capacity as and when needed, but without the right tools to manage how applications are running, these resources can quickly become redundant if problems occur. The bottom line is that the technology needs to work for the business as the performance of applications that fulfil core processes can have a direct impact on profits.

While IT managers can have control over the operating environment used in on-site servers, ensuring access to the tools needed to monitor applications as they are running, this may not be the case with an external ‘public’ cloud provider and can hinder the successful implementation of business applications in the cloud. This has led to a rising interest in on-site ‘private’ cloud solutions. By virtue of being internally hosted and run, private clouds can offer the same scalable, on-demand computing resources as public cloud services, but allow IT managers more control over the production environment used to run their applications, together with integration into the tools that they already use to manage their performance.

Ensuring performance
When assessing the pros and cons of the private versus public models, it helps to think about the application development process, and the importance that it plays in ensuring processes run smoothly. Programmers rely on tools built into the development framework they are using in order to gain an insight into how applications perform and to identify any potential bottlenecks that may appear in their operation.

Once these issues have been ironed out and the applications are ready to be placed into a live environment, it is important to maintain this visibility. One way of ensuring visibility is by opting for an application platform that is compatible with the framework used in the development stage and that contains integrated tools that are instrumented to provide an automatic view of how applications are performing in production conditions. These systems can then be further augmented with dedicated performance management applications in order to provide a comprehensive insight into how applications are running.  This operational view and control is central to the notion of running applications in a cloud environment. Not having the same control over applications deployed in a public cloud could threaten their reliable operation. For example, problems with applications that process transactions could have a direct impact on core operations and profits if customers have to wait too long.

The cloud journey
Businesses wishing to migrate their applications to a public cloud provider must transfer gradually, viewing the process as a “journey” rather than a revolution. A good starting point is to virtualise the application infrastructure and in so doing provide a more flexible environment in which to run applications. This really is the starting point in the journey towards the cloud.  At the same time this allows an organization to transition towards a lightweight manner of building and running applications that is well suited to a virtual and cloud environment. It also allows IT managers to ensure the requisite performance visibility can be maintained in this more fluid world. Virtualisation is an excellent starting point: by combining the technology with a lightweight application platform that can best leverage the underlying resources, the pathway to the efficiency and scalability of cloud computing can be achieved.

Once virtualised, the transition to a private cloud is a logical progression and allows an organization to better leverage processing resources. For example, NPC International, which operates around 1,150 Pizza Hut outlets, has used virtualisation to create a private application infrastructure cloud in order to run the applications responsible for its back office processes more effectively and reliably.

Moving on
Only once a business has established a robust private cloud environment in which its applications operate and can be managed and monitored efficiently, should it determine whether the additional computing resources that an external cloud computing provider can supply are required. It is important to adopt a practical approach to adoption that takes into account the realities of performance monitoring. At all times, the technology should contribute to the improvement of the business. If the move to a new IT platform jeopardises business operations in any way, the technology has failed. But with a measured, gradual approach to adoption, the cost-saving and efficiency benefits cloud computing offers can be truly realised.