You would be surprised to know that a major percentage of the companies migrate to public or private cloud on a daily basis. Due to the success of cloud hosting, thousands of applications and services adopted cloud and shifted to it permanently. Although this transition has taken time there is no looking back since then.
It would not be much to say that the success of a business venture now partially depends on the type of cloud hosting it has been hosted on. I am assuming that you might be aware that the IT infrastructure of any kind of organization needs to grow continuously with time and thus expands its needs. But expanding in the traditional way had become so troublesome and costly at the same time. This made cloud migration even more necessary and thus need of the hour.
You might be thinking that is it just the expansion that you get with cloud migration, then let me clear this doubt. There are so many innumerable benefits that make it even more worthwhile. You have no idea how much you are going to save that you were investing before to keep up with others in terms of infrastructure. The infrastructure that cloud hosting provides helps not just scaling up but to scale down as well. Keeping the needs and demands of the company one can ask their provider to change accordingly. Apart from scalability, security is the other thing that you are going to praise forever.
To avail such benefits, an organization has to go through the procedure of cloud migration. Cloud migration is a process of moving data and other associated applications of your business from your organization’s on-premise systems to the cloud’s designed infrastructure. That cloud infrastructure can either have shared resources or dedicated that depends on the kind of cloud hosting plan you might have signed up for. To enjoy services like security, scalability, mobility, disaster recovery, and solid control we have to keep some of the dos and don’ts of cloud migration.
There are several steps that are involved in the preparation and planning of the approach of cloud migration. Cloud migration calls for a systematic and documented strategy so as to gain the optimum competitive edge. For this let’s go through the dos of cloud migration first-
DOs
Select your data wisely- This is similar to a situation when you shift places. Let’s say you are shifting a few blocks away, you might not take away each and everything with you. There might be definitely some things that toys need to discard or are of no use to you now. The same is the case with data migration overcloud. There is always so much of the outdated data or unimportant old belongings of your organization that can be left out. It is not necessary to leave out such data, you can also keep some of them still on-premise systems. Such as office parties or festival celebrations which are surely not that crucial. Moving only the data that of utter importance will save a lot of time, money and will render your ample amount of free space. For this, you need to sit down, invest some good time, and select your data wisely.
SLA creation is important- There are multiple compliance acts and regulatory bylaws that you and your cloud hosting provider should aware of. Make it clear with your cloud hosting provider before moving forward with the cloud migration process. Documenting them is the best idea and make sure that all your industry regulations are met by your cloud hosting partner to avoid any further confusion. A good cloud partner would take care to meet all your SLAs and meet the expected uptime. Make sure that your partner is guaranteeing you an uptime of 99.9%. The SLA will help you in questioning your provider during times when you are getting less than what you anticipated and is going against the agreement.
Chose the best partner in the market- You might get carried away by the cheap rates of some of the cloud hosting providers in the market. At the times of the bidding, so many of them will attract you by putting up with quite a low bid. But if you think through this then cheap rates will not help you in the longer run. Hence, take an appropriate amount of time before jumping into any conclusions. Cheaper rates might benefit you initially but their laid back service and inexperience will bring you back to square one. For this, you can also refer to the online reviews that re readily available by the users.
Don’ts
Ignoring non-IT members’ views– Seeing all the organizations migrating to the cloud might push you to take random and quick decisions. But always keep this in mind that every organization is unique and has to be treated differently. There might be cases where your IT department is getting benefitted from cloud migration but other team members are not that satisfied or convinced by the idea of migration. Talking and taking suggestions from each will help you in observing every factor before going through such a hectic process.
Training is not essential- It’s not just your organizations’ in-house team members who are going to be effected through cloud migration but also your end-users. Training them is equally important and should never be ignored. Consider managing a separate and dedicated team that provides training to your end-users. This training should focus on the technical know-how and this would automatically lessen the burden over the helpdesk executives.
Not concerned about security– One always tends to ignore the security factor as according to them every cloud hosting partner takes the security part of the utmost importance. Even if your partner has a dedicated remote IT monitoring and management, never ignore the fact that your data is very crucial for your organization. Working closely will help you and keeps you light-headed throughout.
Taking these dos and don’ts as the new cloud migration mantra will keep you away from any errors or any other major setbacks. Cloud migration is very important and one of the biggest decisions for your organization and thus should be taken utterly seriously. It is going to impact each application and member of your organization thus act accordingly.