Migrating to the cloud (Microsoft Azure and Office 365)

(This article was first posted on 22 Apr 2016 on a different blog site, but migrated here 06 May 2017).

I thought I'd share a few thoughts from our experience of moving from Windows servers on which both our corporate and client websites and email were stored to the cloud, specifically Office 365 and Microsoft Azure.

Pane2.png​
The process itself was relatively painless (particularly for migrating email to Office 365).  The only problems we experienced were in migrating some older websites, and some webbased software which, for reasons best known to its manufacturer (whose blushes I will spare by not naming here), needed to be installed as a desktop program (albeit one with a web interface).  Both of these needed to be installed on a virtual machine (a windows server within the cloud) rather than as stand alone web apps (or app services as they are now known) in Azure.  We also had a few teething problems moving some databases from SQL Server 2012 or 2014 to SQLAzure, but found solutions to these after a bit of experimentation.

The move has led to many advantages, including so far:

  • backup is a lot easier: Azure takes care of this for app services and databases, Office 365 takes care of this for email and for staff documents stored in OneDrive for Business (or personal OneDrive, but the free version of the latter is limited to 10GB)
  • administration and security is also easier (Azure makes it very easy to add SSL encryption, and/or single sign on [via Azure Active Directory] to internal company websites).
  • management dashboards pulling together from different Azure app services and databases are relatively easy to construct.

Overall, the move has been very worthwhile and I am very excited about the possibilities that our new cloud-based infrastructure and the Azure platform provides for us and our clients.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A (UK) Pensions Data Format Standard - let's make it happen!

Image
I have long thought it would be useful for there to be a standard format for exchange of data files for DB (Defined Benefit, i.e. final salary or career average revalued) pension plans, at least in the UK initially. This would make it easier for pension plans to share information (with actuarial consultants, but also other advisers e.g. buyout companies, investment analysts), not just in mergers and acquisitions, but also in risk transfers (longevity, or pensions buyouts) and would improve the comparability of analysis across companies by investors etc.  It should also reduce costs for trustees and plan sponsors, and may increase the quality of the data held. I think this both with my InQA hat on (I declare an interest in that our pensionsconcerto.com product would be well placed to use such a standard), but also from the point of view of being an improvement for the pensions industry generally.  Investment banks have standard formats for exchange of information about deriva
Read more

WebPocketMoney.com: an easy way to track your children's pocket money balances online, with a natural "Tell me" user interface.

Image
WebPocketMoney 1.0 released! We are delighted to announce the release earlier this week of WebPocketMoney.com , our cloud based app that enables parents and their children to track and manage pocket money online. A new, sophisticated online tool for parents and children to track and manage pocket money balances This web app has been designed to help parents and children manage pocket money in a user-friendly way that encourages saving. It uses notional accounts  rather than physical accounts (which are often difficult to create for children) and this has the advantage that you can offer your children much higher interest rates (e.g. 5% or 10% per month) than are commonly available in the real world, in order to encourage them to save. The app should work on all internet enabled devices, including phones, tablets and computers. ( NB it requires an internet connection, i.e. it is not currently designed to work offline ) . This means that parents can check their children's
Read more