The rampant pandemic has clearly underscored the fact that the cloud is no longer a luxury for many organizations and enterprises but rather, a necessity. Many companies understand that migrating to the cloud is a timely solution to resolve multiple business and organizational challenges and fetch the desired business outcomes. Therefore, organizations and enterprises are swiftly adopting cloud technology. Moving to the cloud provides unlimited access to data or apps and multiple teams can collaborate and work simultaneously combined with ample security for data assets and better data disaster recovery.
Cloud Migration Challenges
Cloud migration has gained popularity for its proven benefits and visible traction in the marketplace; companies do not want to be left behind. What they often don’t realize though is that they need to have a well-structured plan to carry out cloud migration with a clear set of goals and timeline. Migrating to the cloud without a proper plan or strategy can go haywire in the long run. A set of best practices should be followed to avoid the major challenges that may arise during the transition.
Devise a Plan – As for any complicated project or task, devising a well-defined and researched plan is the key to successful cloud migration. Experts and technology leads are assumed to have a broad idea of their existing infrastructure, KPIs, and a general idea of how they going to carry out the migration. If not, they need to work with internal resources and stakeholders. For example, what are the data or apps or systems that they want to migrate to the cloud, technologies they will adopt or abandon, and even a sense of the budget. It is crucial to categorize what will be migrated to the cloud and what will be left behind.
Identify the Right Cloud Partner – Most companies have neither the precise talent nor experience to be completely self-sufficient for a cloud transition. It is therefore very important to identify the right cloud service provider or partner to assist them with the required strategy and implementation. Organizations and business leaders should join with a cloud service partner who understands the business needs and expectations and offers scalable and highly secured software, frameworks, strategies, tools, and resources. An important, early decision needs to be made based on your business needs and goals on whether you need a private, public, or hybrid cloud service.
Choose the Best Approach – One need not always start from scratch while migrating to the cloud. There are multiple options, in fact, there are six clearly defined cloud migration techniques called the Six Rs that simplify the entire cloud migration process for businesses. They are Rehosting, Refactoring, Revising, Rebuilding, Replatforming, and Replacing. Organizations can choose an approach that would work best for them based on the scope of their business and budget. For some, it may be best to implement the lift and shift approach which is the least expensive and immediate approach to migrate data assets and apps to the cloud. And for other organizations, the other options would be appropriate.
Assemble a Skilled Team – Many organizations in the industry admit that inadequacy of expertise and skilled resources are the major challenges they face during the migration to the cloud environment. Cloud migration is a long term commitment which is why it is strongly recommended to train and maintain a skilled team in organizations and an experienced lead to direct the team throughout the migration process to develop migration strategies and help the team to scale up accordingly. The in-house cloud team will be expected to acquire major knowledge of Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Security, Cloud Networking, Data Engineering, and DevOps. If there are weak points in an organization’s talent or skill base that are needed to carry out cloud migration, you are advised to ask your cloud provider for a team of professionals.
Execute and Maintain – Once all the data assets are migrated to the cloud the next crucial phase in the process is to ensure that all your new cloud applications and systems perform the way you expect. Testing and verifying the performance and security of the data and apps will help in identifying the potential issues and risks and rectifying them pre-emptively. Without proper maintenance, just like any other application or software, cloud migration can also fall into disarray. A comprehensive maintenance plan for post-migration will result in a smooth and seamless performance and make your business future-ready and help in achieving the best customer satisfaction.
When all these vital factors are taken seriously, organizations can oversee the possible challenges well in advance and ensure a successful cloud adoption.
PreludeSys – Expertise and Experience
Are you struggling with the cloud migration process or looking for a cloud partner to help you achieve the best business benefits of the cloud? PreludeSys, as an expert in the industry, has provided the best solutions to our customers using state-of-the-art cloud technologies, tools, and strategies.
Our team of experts are just a click away to help you avoid the major pitfalls achieve a successful migration.
