The use of cloud technology is on the rise as people are realizing that cloud computing can make their businesses efficient and profitable. 73 percent of organizations already have at least one application or a part of the IT infrastructure in the cloud.
Right time for cloud migration
Some businesses are still unclear when and how to migrate to the cloud. Any of the following circumstances can indicate that your business is migration-ready.
Seamless cloud migration
External drivers
Increasing competition: When competition is fierce, cloud migration can help by shifting your main IT resources from non-critical activities to core business operations to improve growth. This translates to cost savings and staying ahead of your competition.
Cloud-based web hosting and design tools help you to build and maintain a solid web presence and monitor and analyze traffic. They can help manage your social media accounts and add e-commerce capabilities to your website.
Cloud-based data backup and storage help protect your business from security threats and natural disasters. A managed IT provider also offers special backup and recovery services. In case of a failure, self-healing mechanisms instantly deploy and start disaster recovery.
Upgrading existing operations: When you need to upgrade software or hardware, you can plan to migrate to the cloud. This will help modernize business operations without investing much since cloud services usually include advanced IT capabilities, maintenance and support.
Internal drivers
Keeping up with your partners: If your B2B partners migrate to the cloud, you should too. Otherwise, there may be disparities in your business capabilities.
Cloud services are often integrated with various other functionalities, such as project management and transactional systems, online web forms, chat apps and social media. Users can work together, regardless of location and time using such services.
Reducing operating expenses: In the long run, cloud migration is a cost-effective operation. Most cloud services are available as pay-for-use subscriptions.
Cloud-based software is free of licensing fees to renew or upgrade, can be accessed from any Internet-connected device, and is automatically updated. Cloud services usually allow you to try out their services before a complete migration.
Besides, the money you save in maintenance, support and infrastructure offsets most migration costs.
Seamless cloud migration
Approaches
You can move your operations to the cloud based on many different approaches. The following are the three most common among them:
Lift and shift: Move applications to the cloud, without any modifications. Choose this if you prefer renting infrastructure or if you use IaaS (infrastructure as a service) from your managed IT services provider.
Lift and refit: Move assets to the cloud after tweaking them to suit cloud infrastructure.
Cloud native: Develop new applications or recode existing ones according to cloud-native features and services. Although time-consuming, experienced cloud service providers (CSPs) can achieve this quickly and economically.
Best practices
Choose a qualified CSP: Choose a CSP who has a proven track record of security, uptime and maintaining compliance with relevant laws and regulations. They should be able to scale up or down easily.
Find the right solution: Choose the system best suited to your requirements not only for today but also for the future. Bring your core business functions under one platform to increase efficiency.
Start with the least mission-critical applications: Ideally, you should transition either the least efficient or least used applications. However, since cloud solutions are more advanced now, you can even opt for a more complex migration without a long timeline.
Create a timeline: Consider the best time during your business cycle for transitioning applications to cause minimal disruption.
Ensure your team can use the cloud: Find training videos that instruct users how to use cloud-based systems. The CSP can also train them.The cloud is no longer a novelty. You don’t have to be nervous about moving to it either. It is as simple as analyzing your situation, evaluating available cloud offerings, and enlisting IT support.