Method and system for transferring the hosting of an online service to elastic virtual computing resources from a data center and without service interruption

A computer-readable medium having a plurality of computer-executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a method for configuring virtual assets to host an online service that is concurrently hosted by a hardware asset computing environment, the instructions comprising:

• a virtual asset manager configured to dynamically allocate and de-allocate virtual assets within a virtual asset computing environment to support the execution of an online services application to provide online services to multiple users through a public network,
• wherein the virtual asset manager applies security policies to the virtual assets to reduce a likelihood of compromising online application data to potential security threats,
• wherein the virtual asset manager monitors usage characteristics of the virtual assets to determine when to allocate additional virtual assets to support the execution of the online services application;
• and
• a virtual asset group of the virtual assets,
• wherein the virtual asset group includes online services data received by a parcel courier service from a hardware asset computing environment that is configured to concurrently execute an instance of the online services application to concurrently provide the online services,
• wherein the virtual asset group includes database servers, application servers, and public network interface servers, configured to provide the online services to the multiple users.

A system for transferring a hosting of online services to a virtual asset computing environment from a hardware asset computing environment, the system comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory having stored therein instructions which, when executed by any set of the one or more processors, perform a process for transferring a hosting of online services to a virtual asset computing environment from a hardware asset computing environment, the process including:
• creating, with a first computing system, a secondary copy of application data for a first instance of an online services application that is executed by the first computing system to provide online services to multiple users,
• wherein the first computing system is a hardware asset computing environment;
• encrypting at least part of the secondary copy of the application data;
• transferring the secondary copy of the application data to a storage device;
• delivering the storage device to a second computing system from the first computing system using a parcel courier;
• receiving, with the second computing system, the secondary copy of the application data from the storage device,
• wherein the second computing system is a virtual asset computing environment,
• wherein the virtual asset computing environment dynamically and selectively allocates and de-allocates virtual assets to support one or more services hosted from the virtual asset computing environment;
• executing, with the second computing system, a virtual asset configuration script to configure some of the virtual assets to execute a second instance of the online services application to enable the second computing system to provide the online services to the multiple users;
• and
• configuring the second computing system as a primary service provider for providing the online services by primarily directing user traffic for the online services to the second computing system and by secondarily directing user traffic for the online services to the first computing system.