Let's talk lift-and-shift

EnterpriseWorx announces its ability to assist organisations with a lift-and-shift approach with their streamlined database management tool, Conductor4SQL. Conductor4SQL is compatible with Microsoft Azure and has built-in Power BI reports, providing valuable insight into enterprise database environments.

"With the use of Conductor4SQL, EnterpriseWorx can migrate organisations' environments to Azure with ease. Anyone with a modern data strategy will benefit from the many features of Conductor4SQL," says Managing Director Michael de Andrade.

With the dawn of the two Microsoft Azure data centres launching in Cape Town and Johannesburg, organisations are abuzz about lifting and shifting their environments to Azure Cloud. Let's talk lift-and-shift and the role EnterpriseWorx can play in managing the move.

Lift-and-shift is the approach of moving an existing enterprise environment and application from an on-premises storage solution to the cloud. This can also be in the form of a hybrid approach or full cloud.

Why move to Microsoft Azure? Besides the fact that South Africa will have its own data centres residing in Cape Town and Johannesburg, Microsoft Azure provides businesses with multiple solutions. Organisations are afforded the opportunity to migrate entire solutions with ease or just small portions thereof to Azure. With that in mind, organisations pay for what they consume, making Microsoft Azure an inexpensive option for migrating to the cloud.

Azure offers integrated services such as storage, virtual machines, SQL database, cognitive services and machine learning, just to mention a few. Massively scalable cloud storage is durable and highly available, while it is easy to provision virtual machines for Windows and Linux in seconds. Azure capabilities seem nearly endless as organisations can create powerful cloud apps and add smart API capabilities.

"With the multiple skill sets within our organisations, our data and analytics team is ahead of the game. Conductor4SQL runs on Windows and Linux.

"Technology is always evolving and EnterpriseWorx ensures its clients do as well," says De Andrade.

There are also many questions around reliability, scalability and security. Many organisations are still waiting on the local Azure data centres before migrating due to security reasons; but, simply put, Azure is secure, with security controls integrated into its firmware and hardware. Microsoft is using Project Cerberus to ensure its firmware security, while hardware is protected through confidential computing. Confidential computing is the process of separating the execution of data from the underlying operating system with Hyper-V and Intel SGX chip-enabled servers. If security is still a concern, rest assured that Microsoft employs over 3 500 cyber security experts to identify any potential threats.1

Microsoft Azure is reliable and easily scalable. With ready-to-use failovers and load balancers, Azure ensures organisations can access their environments at any time and in different time zones. Need more computing power? Simply just add it or remove it as needed. Azure is an intelligent solution; it has the capabilities to adjust your computing power as needed based on the traffic recorded in your solution. And, since organisations pay as they use, they will be saving money when they don't need all that computing power.

EnterpriseWorx itself moved its infrastructure to Azure as it is easy to reap the benefits of such an investment. As a data management and Azure data platform solution expert, EnterpriseWorx can assist companies in a lift-and-shift approach to their environment; this could be a hybrid or full cloud solution. After all, hybrid is durable. Azure allows the organisation to gain insights into their data with Power BI. As a Gold-Certified Microsoft Partner and Power BI Partner, EnterpriseWorx has extensive knowledge in business intelligence and provides clients with in-depth analytics into their organisation's data.