Migrating web applications to the public cloud is a strategic move that many businesses are making today. Cloud service providers give access to online resources such as servers or disk space. These resources are scalable and available from any device. The implementation of such a technologically advanced solution brings many benefits to the company, its employees, finances, and even data security. If your company has an existing web application, it’s a good idea to move it to the public cloud. How (and why) should you do so? 

What are the benefits of migrating to the cloud? 

There are at least several reasons why many companies and organizations decide to migrate to cloud. 

Reliability 

One of the advantages of using the cloud is the reliability of such a solution. Cloud services are a way to obtain constant, unlimited access to web applications and information stored in the cloud. A good example of a company using cloud services is Netflix that operates online and is available 24/7. 

Flexibility 

Full flexibility is also a very important benefit. Using applications installed directly on a company computer may lead to technical problems. It can also be overloaded due to excessive computational demands. When this happens, the applications do not work properly, which affects the entire workflow. This also means downtime and interruptions in the operation of web applications. The public cloud is the solution. 

Additionally, cloud-based environments offer a multitude of solutions – different architectures (ARM, x86), popular applications offered as ready-to-use services (databases, Elastic Search, etc.), VMs or containers, multi-tier storages – all these possibilities allow fitting the cloud infrastructure even to the most sophisticated needs.  

Costs 

Migration of web applications to the cloud also means savings for the company’s budget. Creating your own secure infrastructure involves large investments in equipment beforehand. Maintaining such infrastructure and ensuring its security is also associated with high expenses. A more economical solution is to use a ready-made, advanced solution. A very good example is Unilever, which earlier this year decided to move its entire marketing platform to the cloud1. As a result, the company significantly improved customer service, product launches, and operational efficiency. 

Scalability 

All the flexibility mentioned is dynamic – cloud infrastructure can be scaled on-demand, even automatically. If many individuals use web applications at the same time, traffic spikes are very well handled by such a cloud, depending on demand. This is extremely important, especially in a situation when you can expect growing traffic.  

Amazon is a good example of such a business. This e-commerce giant manages spikes and traffic on its site very well, as they have access to their own extensive cloud infrastructure known as AWS. As a result, ordinary users do not feel a decrease in efficiency when using their websites and web applications. This is very critical, e.g., during holidays and other occasions when interest in online shopping increases dramatically. Cloud-based autoscaling is a great convenience for any business. 

Popularity 

Lastly, the migration of web applications to the cloud is becoming more and more popular. In fact, in many companies, cloud-based solutions are simply expected by employees because of the benefits they offer, with remote work possibilities being essential (According to FlexJobs’ Career Pulse Survey from 2022, 65% of respondents want to work remotely full-time, or at least partly (32% of answers)2. 

In many companies, this is already a standard, which is why this solution is being talked about more and more often. Thanks to this, you can count on community support and increase your competitiveness, which was done, for example, by Adobe. Today, some of the biggest and most extensive cloud providers are, for example, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. 

Differences in the deployment process 

When you decide to use the cloud, you can also count on full support in management because it is a comprehensive service. For example, AWS Elastic Beanstalk or Google App Engine help with deploying and managing web applications without worrying about the entire infrastructure. It’s an easy-to-use service that enables quick application upload, scaling, and management. 

Read also: What is project risk?

Scenarios where cloud migration might not be beneficial 

In some circumstances, though, migrating to cloud may not be the best choice. These include: 

• Monolithic applications: If it is difficult to break down such applications into many independent components, then many of the cloud benefits are unusable, hence the viability of such migration is questionable. 
• Steady-load applications: Cost benefits of cloud solutions come from the fact that most applications have a changing load over time (e.g., a company CRM works during working hours, after that it can be turned off do save money). If the application has a constant load, buying and maintaining a hardware might still be a better approach. 
• Resource-hungry applications: This is somewhat related to the steady load argument above, but also because cloud adds some layers of abstraction, an application on bare-metal will perform better. 

Steps to migrate a web application to the cloud 

The first step in migrating a web application to the cloud is to check its cloud readiness. This step is crucial before migrating to the cloud. Now, let’s have a look at some of the most important elements to consider: 

Microservices and cloud-friendly components 

In the second step, you should divide the web application into smaller microservices. Thanks to this, its scaling and the ability to work on the application will be more flexible. Try to abstract components into readily-available services, such as database or Elastic Search. 

How to create the app architecture 

Creating an app architecture for the cloud requires specifying the number of nodes. One node is a single unit of computing that is necessary to perform work. You also need to specify the types of services migrated to the cloud, such as databases, messaging queues, and caching. Don’t forget about autoscaling rules and the choice of region. Thanks to this, maintenance costs will be optimized, and delays will be kept to a minimum.  

Interfaces 

An application has to have a set of well-defined interfaces for monitoring, metrics and logging. These are crucial for maintenance, further development, or even autoscaling. Bear in mind that every cloud provider may have slightly different approach / API for these features. 

Choosing a public cloud provider 

When choosing a public cloud provider, you should pay attention to its financial stability, risk management skills, planning skills and extensive technical experience. 

Its business offer, the cost of individual services, and the guarantee of reliability and effective administration of resources are also of great importance. The contract signed with the supplier should contain information about the basic level of service it guarantees. 

A provider must have the appropriate technical facilities, standard interfaces for data transfer, an event management system, and a well-developed security infrastructure. 

The choice is also influenced by the company’s budget and the adjustment of the offer to the specific needs and expectations of the business. The largest public cloud service providers are AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. 

Deployment tools 

Using deployment tools when deploying web applications in the cloud can make the deployment more efficient and automated. This is a way to streamline the entire process and save time. It’s best to use them in very complex environments. The most commonly used tools are Helm for Kubernetes or Terraform. 

Migration of web applications to the cloud is associated with many benefits, although its implementation is not the easiest task. However, a well-conducted migration will ensure reliability and scalability, which dynamically developing businesses care about the most. 

If you want to migrate your web app to the public cloud, we are at your service. Take a look at our case studies, and if you think that we can be a good fit for your company – drop us a line! We can kick things off with a free project consultation. 

What is Serverless? It is a kind of software architecture model that allows you to run and manage any application without having to manage servers. All code events are controlled through services that the project team has access to in the cloud. What is worth knowing about Serverless and its use?

Definition – serverless meaning

In Serverless web application development, developers do not deal with the maintenance of servers in order to create and run applications. Managing the servers in this situation is the responsibility of the cloud service provider. It is he who is tasked with scaling the entire server infrastructure, its maintenance, and other basic tasks on which the reliability of his services depends.

This is a huge convenience for developers who only have to package their code in containers, and they are launched automatically when the user wishes.

Serverless computing vs. cloud computing

Therefore, we are dealing here with FaaS, i.e., Function-as-a-Service standard. The user pays for the resources that he actually uses. It is thus the opposite of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service standard, where the user pays for the purchased resources, regardless of whether he uses all of them.

FaaS flexibility

The flexibility of Serverless allows you to automatically cut back on unused resources. Such a service also allows you to build a completely Serverless or hybrid application with mixed resources.^[1]

Step-by-step operation of the Serverless model

In the first place, the developer deals with the development of the application. It has a number of functions. Each function must clearly specify what changes it makes and how it is called by the user.

Then the application is deployed. Once it is available to the user, it is enough to perform a specific action to trigger a specific event.

At this point, said event is routed to the cloud service provider. In order for an action in the application to be performed, the required resources are allocated to it. After assigning them, it is possible to complete the task and return the user the answer he expects. Resources are only allocated when there are user requests for execution.

Read also: Surviving Scope Creep: Strategies to Keep Your Project on Track?

Serverless architecture principles and best practices

To design Serverless applications well, you must completely change your approach to building them. What are the main Serverless architecture principles?

The way of developing the code

The basic principle is to develop code that will act like functions. Each function must have a specific trigger that will lead to a specific action. It is worth noting that many cloud service providers provide ready-made solutions to developers who want to use the FaaS model as soon as possible. Event-driven architecture (EDA) is very well suited for developing functions activated by a specific trigger.

Serverless frameworks

Serverless frameworks are a great help in managing thousands of functions in the application. They take the form of tools that make it easy to deploy and manage large resources of Serverless functions. An example of such a framework is AWS, Zappa, Apex Up, Terraform etc. Some of them work exclusively with their own resources, while others are compatible with the most popular clouds. Frameworks are used to compile code and deploy it to the cloud. Thanks to frameworks, the entire configuration process is faster and more efficient.

Serverless containers

Code is packaged into Serverless containers, which can then be managed more easily. They are very useful when creating complex Serverless functions and when multiple languages are used in application development. However, you must use them wisely because their form makes debugging difficult.

Serverless orchestration

Serverless orchestration is the use of containers with implemented code and treating such a container as a reusable block. It is also a whole process aimed at organizing the performance of specific functions in a harmonious, error-free, fast, and automated way.

Serverless pros and cons

What are the benefits of Serverless, and when is it problematic to use such a solution?

Advantages of Serverless

Serverless is a way to increase productivity and reduce operating costs. Developers don’t have to manage the servers because the cloud service provider does it for them. Besides, Serverless makes it easy to implement DevOps.

Disadvantages of Serverless

Individual components of the cloud infrastructure may have a specific, restrictive, targeted way of operation. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt one’s own systems to their solutions. Besides, the impact on the server is limited, and you are dependent on cloud service providers for more advanced modifications.

The graphic below shows the most important benefits and drawbacks of Serverless:

Serverless is a great solution for developing and operating web apps and real-time data streaming. To a large extent, the choice of this solution will depend on whether the company needs high scalability, fast implementation, an event-driven model, and focusing on issues other than server management. The decision will therefore depend on the specifics of the project you are working on.

More and more applications are deployed in the microservice architecture, in which each service has single responsibility in the system. In addition, the system is characterized by a heterogeneous environment: it may be composed of back-end applications, file servers, static data servers, databases, NoSQL bases, messaging systems, or queue brokers.

Deployment of hundreds of separate applications, or even only a few of them, is not an easy task. To cope with this “chaos”, proper tools need to be used. The orchestration is such a tool.

When is orchestration a good idea?

The idea of orchestration emerged on the market several years ago along with cloud solutions.

It is a comprehensive tool, ideal for automation, naturally paired with microservice architecture.

The main task of an orchestrator resides in managing multiple containers. In order to make use of the orchestrator, services must be packed into containers. To simplify, it may be assumed that one service resides in a single container. Containers themselves are based on images created by service providers or system developers. Once an image is created, it is immutable. This triggers the coherence of environments in which it is used.

The orchestration ensures the avoidance of many problems, such as tedious and time-consuming manual service launching, securing the right amount of resources on servers, and configuring the network. In complex multi-service systems, managing dozens of services manually is practically impossible.

Read also: Why is immutability so important in React?

Are we doomed to cloud?

When deploying a microservice-based system, one of the available options is to use services of cloud hosting providers such as Amazon, Google, or Heroku.
Nevertheless, public clouds are not free of limitations. The lack of control over physical machines is one of them, especially that the infrastructure of the largest and most popular cloud providers is located abroad. Some businesses – the banking sector included – cannot usually accept this shortcoming.

An alternative option to a public cloud is to introduce this solution to a company’s own physical infrastructure. It must be mentioned though that the installation of a private cloud is not an easy task and requires the effort of an experienced team of DevOps.

Orchestration strengths

Orchestration brings many benefits and allows for the mitigation of many potential problems. These benefits include:

1. Continuous integration and continuous delivery

Each time a new version of any service is released, a new image of it is created. It is crucial that every image is pushed to the repository from which an orchestrator can pull the required version. Once images of services are in the repository, a deployment can be executed independently of build pipelines. Moreover, exactly the same version of service can be introduced to numerous environments such as testing, acceptance or production.

2. In pursuit of automation

The orchestrator requires that the whole system along with all its components be defined in a manifest file. The manifest itself defines services that constitute the system and the way they are connected. The system comprises not only business logic but also databases, static content servers, messaging systems or queue brokers. The role of the orchestrator is to allocate resources and launch services defined in the manifest. Images of defined services will be fetched, if needed, from a local or remote repository. Many popular products are distributed in the form of images and there is no problem in acquiring them. It is also good practice to maintain a copy of publicly distributed images in the local repository.

3. Service monitoring

In order to ensure good availability and efficiency, the orchestrator will launch subsequent instances following pre-set rules. If any monitored service stops responding to requests, the orchestrator will automatically launch the next instance to guarantee work continuity. The orchestrator ensures not only that services are launched but also that they work efficiently. In the case of increased load, it may automatically scale up the number of instances launched and cope with heavy traffic.

4. Blue/green deployment

A new version is launched before the previous one is stopped. The orchestrator itself provides rules for load balancers, allowing a smooth transition of versions.

5. Service discovery

For the purpose of establishing effective communication between services, the orchestrator provides and manages a DNS server. Logical names of services assigned in the manifest are a minimum requirement for the orchestrator to enable network communication. The orchestrator also provides load-balancing rules for all service instances to be used.

Read also: How to Develop an App: Understanding the Development Process

Speed and automation

Managing instances, deploying services or adding new services in the system controlled by the orchestrator, in fact, mean giving short commands. The orchestrator can be managed via a dedicated web interface. However, most commonly it is done by a command-line interface which can easily be incorporated into scripts. The orchestrator only needs to receive a command to launch a service and an adequate manifest.

While the configuration of all services in the system is described in manifest files, deployment is achieved in a short period of time, virtually without manual intervention. This approach offers many automation opportunities, e.g. enables the quick launch of another instance of the system. It may also useful in the restoration of the system after a hardware failure.

Systems whose deployment is based on the orchestration will win acclaim and their invaluable benefits will make them more and more popular. In Efigence, the orchestrator that has been successfully used for over a year is Google’s Kubernetes. It is a base platform for running services in a web analytics system – EFI4 Analytics.