Making a transition to the cloud seems simple enough when you just want to subscribe to a few apps and offload some data storage functionality. But it’s an entirely different matter once you enter the territory of a large-scale cloud migration. With more businesses taking a cloud-first approach to their IT operations, many find themselves in a situation where their existing systems, often important solutions that drive value in key ways, simply can’t keep up with the pace and flexibility that the cloud creates. The result is major overhead as employees strive to keep premises-based systems running in a way that doesn’t derail from the cloud, something that only detracts from how well IT teams can oversee the cloud configuration.

Management and cost challenges can escalate in this kind of situation, with organizations spending heavily on updating, integrating and securing premises-based hardware and applications while the costs of their cloud subscriptions escalates due to a lack of visibility into resource use. The result is rising costs and high levels of complexity. The good news is that the cloud industry keeps on maturing and, as it does, solutions are emerging to make cloud migration easier by applying cloud-like attributes to premises-based configurations. The Google Kubernetes Engine On-Prem solution is one such option, and it has the potential to provide a major boost for businesses going through a cloud migration.

Why On-Premise Systems Impact Cloud Migrations

No part of a business’ IT ecosystem can operate in true isolation. Almost every system is going to, in some way, rely on another part of the configuration to function effectively. If you have a cloud app pulling data from a premises-based enterprise resource planning system, then you need to:

• Choose an app that integrates with your ERP solution or write custom code for the project.
• Establish network capabilities that secure data moving throughout your local connections and encrypt it while it travels through the internet.
• Monitor how much data is moved to the cloud to ensure you are optimizing your spending based on resource use.
• Ensure your ERP system is updated regularly to handle data formats, security checks and similar matters in a way that aligns with the cloud app it communicates with.

And this is just for one app. If you have a premises-based ERP setup in place, then chances are you have a bunch of apps to integrate and huge quantities of data to keep track of at any given time. The scale of the project can be staggering, and that’s just if you’re using a legacy ERP solution. What about niche software that you couldn’t move into the cloud? What about apps that you’ve decided are too performance- or security-sensitive to bring into the cloud? The overhead becomes staggering.

While you may not be able to deal with the overhead easily, you also can’t simply segregate your systems. If you don’t get your cloud and premises-based systems to talk to each other effectively, then you’re limiting what each technology can do to drive value for your business. That’s not an option.

To solve these problems, many businesses have begun exploring ways to adapt their premise-based solutions to the cloud. By configuring their on-premises systems to function as if they were in the cloud, without actually migrating to an off-site or private cloud environment, businesses take advantage of the benefits these systems are offering without the challenges of either building them from scratch in the cloud or replacing them with modern solutions that may not match the functionality they need. The problem is that implementing cloud-like attributes for premises-based systems is an expensive and complex process. The GKE On-Prem solution aims to change that, making it easier to cloudify your premise-based systems without having to fully rebuild or redesign them.

Using GKE On-Prem to Ramp Up Non-Cloud Systems

GKE is a solution designed to provide robust container-based architectures that simplify management of configurations. By dividing solutions into containers, organizations can combine those systems into services and microservices while creating a standardized architectural format that simplifies everything from integration and security to maintenance and cost management. With the announcement of its new Anthos solution, Google is ushering in an era of more flexible hybrid cloud models through toolsets specifically designed to bridge the gaps between cloud and premises-based systems. GKE On-Prem does this by taking the containerized computing setups inherent to Kubernetes Engine and tweaking them to make them applicable in premises-based systems.

The GKE On-Prem solution can:

• Create a common environment for the entire configuration, with Kubernetes serving as the underlying architecture beneath both cloud and premises-based systems.
• Maintain robust security by making updates at the Kubernetes system level that apply across the entire ecosystem instead of having to update cloud and on-premises solutions separately.
• Centralize management behind a single pane of glass, allowing all assets to be monitored and all policies to be enforced within GKE, regardless of device location.

These capabilities come together to truly adjust the premises-based architecture for the cloud, allowing organizations to provide secure connections, implement robust identity management, move workloads seamlessly between systems and establish consistent system builds through containers, all without having to move their premises-based solutions to the cloud.

While GKE On-Prem dramatically simplifies cloud migration, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. You’ll need to essentially lift your entire configuration and drop it into a Kubernetes architecture. That’s much easier to do than rebuilding it or moving everything to the cloud, but it still presents its own challenge.

Dito can help you navigate this process. We offer a blend of consulting, training and support services to empower businesses to maximize the value of their cloud systems. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, we can help you optimize your configuration for a move to Google Cloud Platform and simplify the process of implementing tools like GKE On-Prem. Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for your business as you work to ramp up your premises-based systems.