Article Why designing for reliability is relevant and urgent for ISVs
By Insight UK / 20 Oct 2021 / Topics: Cloud
By Insight UK / 20 Oct 2021 / Topics: Cloud
Reliable software is vital for independent software vendors (ISVs) to achieve customer satisfaction and retention and thus secure turnover and company growth. Therefore, the adoption of a cloud model for ISVs is not only relevant, but also urgent.
The speed, scalability and flexibility of the cloud have transformed the entire software development process. Users – your customers – are more demanding: they are looking for an excellent user experience and, at the same time, they demand new and more functionality, which must also be available quickly. This puts considerable pressure on as ISVs to organize the development and release of software as successfully and efficiently as possible.
The cloud offers many opportunities to optimize the design and development process, increase reliability of the software and improve the position of your company. This makes cloud adoption urgent.
But there is one point to note: the cloud requires a different mindset.
In traditional software development, you ensured maximum reliability by purchasing redundant hardware, for example. In the cloud, we acknowledge upfront that failures will happen, caused by factors such as the use of highly distributed systems or the dependency on external services. This requires a different mindset: in the cloud you don't design to avoid failures entirely, but you design to minimize the effects of occasional failures.
For example, already from the design phase you can consider the use of managed services in the cloud. In this way, you prevent failure and incorporate reliability, because you do not have to deal with VMs, updates, patches, etc. yourself.
And what about the elasticity of the cloud? If you develop with scalability in mind, this has an enormously positive impact on the availability and thus the reliability of your application. However, do keep an eye on unwanted costs by also providing (automatic) downscaling where possible.
Reliability is also achieved by managing rapid development cycles with DevOps and Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools. CI/CD ensures that everything you develop is automatically and immediately tested. A big boost for quality and speed. Code failures resulting from the test can directly be reprocessed in the design and retested. No further issues? Then the software is reliable and ready to go live!
But what if you have not developed your application directly in the cloud? And brought it to the cloud in a lift-and-shift scenario, as many ISVs still have? Even then, there are accessible options in the cloud to increase the performance and reliability of your application. Think of a simulation environment with automatic tools to test your application. Or take advantage of all the many application monitoring tools on the live software to increase the reliability of your application.
One thing is certain. Software reliability is one of the key differentiators for ISVs to succeed in business today. The most obvious way forward is in the cloud. So, why wait?
The cloud offers ISVs plenty of opportunities to make their application resilient, available and thus achieve the best possible reliability. We at Insight have been working with partners like you across Europe for many years, providing valuable time, knowledge and support in many (hybrid) cloud scenarios.
Contact one of our cloud specialists to find out how we can support you in optimizing your cloud costs in line with your business goals, whether you are designing your first workloads in the cloud or work entirely cloud-based.
This article is part of a series of articles based on Microsoft’s WAF (Well-Architected Framework), where you find much more helpful guidance. WAF improves the quality of workloads operating in the cloud by focusing on a set of common architecture principles, including cost optimization, operational excellence, performance efficiency, reliability and security.
As a multi-vendor software licensing, workload and platform specialist, we can guide you through all stages of your strategic cloud journey with a series of workshops, assessments, services and best practices. From the first exploration of cloud or hybrid opportunities and benefits to support and optimization after migration. No matter where you are in your journey, we help you to find new ways forward and accelerate your business.
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