IT and business leaders all over the world are replacing traditional on-premises technology with more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective computing power in the cloud. While it used to be the norm for businesses to own and operate their own cloud centres, the amount of business software operating on standard servers is set to decrease by 32% of all business applications by 2022, almost half of what it was in 2019.
A 2020 survey found that before March 2022, 43% of corporate have no intention to migrate to the cloud fully. But due to the latest global health uncertainties, 48% are now organising their own cloud migration plan and around 36% plan on digitising more of their operations using cloud technology. This shift creates a host of benefits for businesses, including reduced IT costs, more flexibility, improved efficiency, heightened security, increased performance, and potential for innovation and developing capabilities, and the pandemic has only accelerated this transition.
Why businesses flock to the cloud
One major benefit that turned business leaders’ gaze to the cloud was scalability, meaning the ability to maximise or reduce resources to satisfy evolving demands.
Businesses that migrate to the cloud can also find “benefit in innovations” such as machine learning and AI use cases, according to research analysts. For instance, American Airlines told the media that merging its backend system on the cloud improved the customer experience since it gave customers more control over rescheduled flights. But not everyone is ready to make the leap to the cloud.
According to a survey, a whopping 85% of companies will implement a cloud-first principle by 2025, meaning that they will be concentrating on how to free up IT resources and deliver outstanding business value using the cloud. However, those wanting to make this transition smoothly need to follow some cloud migration best practices.
1. Consider All Requirements
Pay attention to the vast amount of daily machine data your business generates as a result of your routine operations. Believe it or not, this data hides precious clues that will help you plan your business migration.
Machine data provides a detailed inventory of servers, applications, and technology-dependent applications. It shows the relation between applications, microservices, and users to correlate and visualise important metrics with custom dashboards for full-stack visibility.
Once the relocation is complete, these machine data analytics will deliver meaningful metrics and limits to evaluation. It also helps confirm that a certain initiative is meeting its objective, and nothing has been forgotten.
2. Monitor the performance of your applications
Using tools for monitoring the low-level resources like CPU, storage and network that power your applications, be that on-premises or in the cloud, can give you better insights into the overall state of your base system, but not on their performance responsiveness and so on.
If you first research and review this information during on-premises configuration and then later once the migration to the cloud has taken place, you will get an even deeper understanding of the new state. By using both application monitoring tools and a system-level resource evaluation strategy, you can easily identify a poor-performance app in your new environment.
3. Build and share a cloud governance model
Security and compliance are normally a top-of-mind concern for businesses migrating to the cloud. Applying a cloud governance framework is crucial for ensuring both. Cloud governance improves IT governance to address the common risks of running a business in the cloud – although third-party cloud services are secure, more often than not, the assets deployed on these platforms can be at risk if you implement poor configurations and access controls.
Sound cloud governance emphasises the roles, policies, objectives, responsibilities, technologies, budgets, and other elements that specify how your business uses cloud services. To begin, you can ask yourself questions like “How many cloud accounts should I have?” “Who will access those accounts?” And “How will I grant access to those accounts?” This will help you create a set of rules around what services and software can be used, how to use the cloud more safely and more.
4. Train Your Team Around Cloud Migration
Poor cloud expertise is a great impediment to migration. The cloud’s concept is very different, if not alien, from the on-site systems a business’s users are used to. Of course, we’re all used to tools like PDFChef that provide immediate access to cloud storage and help even the less experienced team members understand how the cloud works. But just as every person is different, every app has its individual properties.
That’s why training your team before making the shift to the cloud is critical. It’s important to ensure a smooth migration to the cloud, and the sooner the transition process takes place, the more time you will have to adopt the new tools and strategies.
Early staff training can also promote internal evangelism that can help break down social barriers and reduce anxiety around the cloud across the organisation.
5. Get an Understanding of Licensing and Migrations Costs
Migrating business applications and data to the cloud is great since it will lead to significantly lower expenses for your business. But don’t let that excitement run over you by acquiring unnecessarily high cloud migration and licensing costs.
Make sure you detail every in and out cost and ensure you understand how the upfront investment, licensing taxes and ongoing management match with the return on investment of your migration.
When making the shift to the cloud, businesses need a partner with broad experience in cloud migration to support a diverse array of regulatory requirements, technologies, operating models, and target environments.
Business owners often settle for what they can get today rather than what they actually want or need. An in-depth risk evaluation backed by professional cloud expertise can help business owners reach their long-term strategic targets. After all, no one can ignore the string of benefits that follow after cloud migration.
Also read: What are The Pros and Cons of Data Migration
