What to do if your cloud provider disappears

The growing use of virtualization makes it relatively easy to move servers from a defunct cloud provider to a new platform, since the virtualized servers exist as files that can be moved among physical machines. Retrieving an application written to a specific cloud vendor's API or development platform, though, can be significantly more challenging.

Step 4: Prepare for application portability
The most difficult challenge in the cloud is porting your cloud-based applications if your provider goes bust. Porting an application to a new cloud platform may require access to the application runtime, the application's business logic, the database supporting the application, and the data your users have already entered into the application. The more proprietary the platform used by the cloud provider and the more of the application management done by the cloud provider, the harder it can be to port the application.

Salesforce.com, for example, boasts that that it frees customers from having to buy, manage, and install CRM software on their own hardware. Once they sign up, they can access Salesforce.com, and any customizations they have made to it, over any computer with a Web browser, as well as use hundreds of applications written to Salesforce's Force.com API via the Apex development language.

However, this highly proprietary model means customers can run only Salesforce.com (including any customization they have done to the pages they use within the application) on the Salesforce platform.

Yes, tools such as the Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex and the Google Gears APIlet developers use the Force.com API to create Web applications that can run offline. But although users can make changes to data in offline mode, most of these applications rely on regular synchronization with Salesforce.com for their database, business logic, and workflow capabilities. So you're still dependent on Salesforce.com.

Because Salesforce.com's Apex is Java-like, you may have "a fighting chance of porting it to another platform," says Ben Bloch, an independent technology consultant. It might be possible to reuse some logic, user interface, and other elements, but the developer would still have to redo a lot of work already conducted on the Salesforce platform, he says. This includes, he says, not only reconstructing the data required by the application but designing and implementing data and other models that describe the application and its data relationships.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

saas

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace