Many companies are holding back on progressing to cloud technology due to concerns around the risks during migration.

But using Cloud 3.0, the cloud serves as an extension of the server LAN, which means that the cloud sits on the clean side of the firewall.

Dominic Anschutz, head of cloud at Exponential-e, told CBR that Exponential-e’s cloud model makes deployment easy and secure.

"It was born out of the business continuity product which allowed us to offer really low risk migrations for our clients," he said.

"We created a methodology for migrating customers from their on-premise equipment, virtual or physical, across to enterprise cloud infrastructure. We either use hypervisor-based replication [for virtual] or agent-based for physical. All our client’s infrastructure is replicated at a block level so all servers are kept in sync. Meanwhile, the client only pays for storage at that particular point in time because nothing is running."

Anschutz gave the following reasons for why using Exponential-e’s transfer service makes it easy for companies to move to the enterprise cloud:

1 – There is no’ big bang’ approach

When the client wants to bring on board one server, it can be done gradually. A phased cut-over of services can be executed. Single-server low time sits on the same sub-net, extending the customer’s VLAN to bring over single-servers at a time or multiples in virtual protection groups which de-risks the migration process.

2 – Speed

The speed of execution in terms of migration from existing infrastructure to the new infrastructure is quick. The whole set up is in minutes and the transfer is in hours rather than a legacy manner which takes days to transfer all the block data.

3 – Hardware-independent

It can literally migrate irrespective of hypervisor of physical hardware, so the service is not limited to certain standard application technologies. It’s totally independent.

4 – Support storage groups

Can support v-motion and storage in motion. Even though storage may be moving round the client’s site between hosts, Exponential-e can protect that as well and bring that across.

5 – Testing

Exponential-e can replicate a customer over to its new cloud infrastructure and test it without breaking the replication. It can replicate a customer server, bring it up in a test environment and test that it works without breaking any replication and then sync the replication between the two sites.