What Does Cloud Migration Imply?

What Does Cloud Migration Imply?

The term “cloud migration” refers to the process through which a company moves some or all of its data, services, and/or IT infrastructure and/or software to the cloud. The transferred assets are now available within the secure confines of the cloud.

By moving all of an organization’s computing, storage, software, and platform services to the cloud, a process known as “cloud migration,” or “business process outsourcing,” can be carried out.

Cloud migration is the process of moving an organization’s digital workflows and processes to a cloud service. The term “cloud migration” refers to the act of transferring data, programs, procedures, and other digital aspects of an organization from an on-premises or preexisting cloud database to a remote cloud data center.

Five Major Gains from Cloud Migration

Cloud Migration has several benefits for businesses of all sizes and in many fields, including increased productivity, lower expenses, and the ability to work remotely with no disruption. Here are five benefits of the cloud that could sway your decision.

1) Highly scalable and adaptable

Moving to the cloud enhances an organization’s scalability by providing rapid on-demand provisioning and de-provisioning of IT resources. Also, cloud migration’s improved flexibility means that memory, processing, and storage may be quickly expanded or contracted to suit company needs and maintain cost savings. One of the main benefits of cloud migration is improved data storage, which makes it easier for businesses to meet fluctuating customer demands without having to allocate extra resources in advance.

In practice, this means you’ll never have to worry about a sudden flood of users. Traditional on-premise infrastructure would be unable to handle such a swell, rejecting requests and slowing down business. However, a cloud-ready company can handle demand spikes effectively since it has access to essentially endless computer resources.

Cloud migration services can be automatically scaled up or down depending on criteria such as the time of day, year-over-year data, and processor usage, as seen in the previously described instance. Better scalability and adaptability are guaranteed.

2) Increased productivity and financial savings

Improving a company’s infrastructure on a large scale is a pricey endeavor. It can take months, or even a year, to prepare and put into action. Acquiring the necessary gear, together with the energy and specialized personnel for daily upkeep, is an expensive upfront investment. Also, this hardware will eventually become obsolete, making a fresh investment necessary to avoid falling behind the competition.

In addition, the ‘average’ or ‘low’ demand levels don’t matter when it comes to traditional IT infrastructure; instead, it must have the capacity to accommodate peak demand. A self-hosted e-commerce platform in the United States, for example, needs IT resources that can handle the influx of Black Friday customers, even if these resources will be idle for the other 364 days of the year. A cloud-enabled e-commerce platform, on the other hand, can increase or decrease its IT resources throughout the year, month, week, day, or even hour, depending on the level of demand.

When it comes to processing power, a cloud-first company can always tap into the most cutting-edge infrastructure. A business like this doesn’t have to wait months or even years to enjoy the newest technology on the market since it doesn’t have to pay the implementation and maintenance costs involved with staying current. Instead, it just has to pay for the resources it actually utilizes.

When a business moves its operations to the cloud, its IT spending changes from a capital expenditure to an operating expense. This shifts its IT infrastructure from an investment subject to depreciation to a constant operating expense, which improves liquidity and is typically more cost-effective in the long run. In conclusion, cloud infrastructure is more cost-effective, always up-to-date, and time- and effort-saving.

3) Better nimbleness

To be cloud agile, a company must be able to develop, test, and distribute software applications rapidly and reliably. Moving a company to the cloud offers more “agility” than just this, though. If you’re a cloud-first company, you can also adapt quickly to changing market demands.

A company’s size is irrelevant in a cloud migration setting. When it comes to information technology, even the tiniest enterprises can compete on a level playing field with the market’s largest corporations. Having the most up-to-date tools at one’s fingertips allows firms to react rapidly to changes in the market.

A cloud-based business doesn’t care where its customers are physically located. Because of this, workers are no longer restricted to only the workplace or home; they may put in time from anywhere with an internet connection. In 2021, when many businesses are considering a transition to a remote work environment, this function will be quite useful.

4) Enhancing maintenance and reliability

The best cloud migration service providers have a sophisticated global infrastructure network. Many benefits, such as minimal network latency and strong business continuity, make this vendor a good choice for increased dependability. Since the vendor is often responsible for data backups, cloud-enabled businesses can enjoy quicker, cheaper, and easier redundancy. So, a company that relies on the cloud to run its operations experiences almost no downtime.

Similarly, it is customarily a costly burden for businesses to keep up their gear and software. If you migrate your operations to the cloud, you won’t need as many people to keep your IT systems running smoothly. Instead, the cloud service provider handles all infrastructure concerns, freeing up their customers to concentrate on their core competencies.

5) Enhanced security and regulations

Cloud service providers are multinational conglomerates that rely on equally massive client organizations for their survival. This means that the onus is on the suppliers to prioritize security and regulatory adherence. By keeping up with the newest security and regulatory developments, vendors can guarantee safe and efficient data storage and processing.

The most strict standards in the industry are adhered to by the vendor in the form of policies, technology, and control systems. All of these variables are adaptable to meet the requirements of each given business.

Planning the Cloud Migration

Since the cloud migration process is labor- and time-intensive, it must get approval from key decision-makers across the company. On the other hand, once you’ve started, it can be hard to stop or make significant modifications to the road map. As a result, careful preparation is required.

In order to make sure your move to the cloud goes well, consider taking these measures. An expert consultant’s advice is valuable at any point in the planning process.

1)  Get buy-in from key stakeholders and validate the business case

To what end should one move? Business continuity, DevOps, and a permanent remote work environment are just a few of the possible responses to this straightforward query. However, there is rarely a simple two- or three-word response to this inquiry. Without a defined end state in mind, management teams often struggle during cloud migration.

Determine first if your firm is ready to make the move to the cloud. Think about the price tag, the immediate and long-term effects on productivity, and the level of understanding among workers. This phase of the plan requires extensive, in-depth dialogue between all relevant parties across the organization.

2) Making a detailed migration plan

After determining that moving to the cloud is a good idea for your company and getting buy-in from key decision-makers, you should develop a thorough migration strategy. Cloud migration specialists claim that managers often start the implementation process without a complete strategy, only turning to them when they become stuck. Reversing the actions that have already been taken and starting over might be time-consuming and expensive at this point.

So, now that you know why you want to move to the cloud, you can focus on choosing an approach. The next step is to examine the current state of your company and identify the variables that will be crucial throughout the transfer process. Data from previous applications, data from essential applications, and the ability to share data between applications are all relevant considerations. The extent to which your company depends on data must also be taken into account. Consider the databases with varying degrees of sensitive information, the regulations that must be followed, and the frequency with which data must be resynchronized.

After giving careful thought to all these issues, you may create a solid cloud migration strategy. Classification of data to be moved, migration schedules for each data type, migration tools, destination volume requirements, data scrubbing requirements, and the necessity for encryption, while data is in transit or at rest, are all important considerations.

3) Realize that some approaches are more suited to your strategy than others

It is time to investigate cloud vendors, consultants, and other service providers once the business needs for migrating to the cloud have been clarified and a precise roadmap has been developed. For the best results, it’s important to keep the budget in mind.

Calculating the expected operating system versions, instance kinds, networking and performance needs, and the total amount and quality of storage to be used will help arrive at a fair estimate of expected expenses. Multiple industry-leading providers offer cloud cost calculators that can be used in this situation. In order to make reliable predictions, it is imperative that the data used as input is as precise as possible.

Following the completion of a precise cost estimate, the total cost of ownership of the current business model will be compared to the new estimate (TCO). Most of the top cloud service providers have sales teams who are eager to learn about your cloud deployment strategy and provide cost-cutting advice where they can. Flexible pricing is a common feature among cloud providers, and your preferred vendor may provide even greater savings in exchange for a commitment on your behalf.

4) Phased implementation

It is time to take action now that you and your chosen vendor (and possibly a team of expert consultants) have determined the optimum cloud migration solution for your company. The goal is to finish the migration with as little expense and use of resources as possible, with as little impact on regular business activities as is practicable.

Starting with a thorough company environment map should be simple if the preceding stages of planning and creating a road map were carried out effectively. The stakeholders cannot be cut off from access to vital databases throughout the migration process without this mapping. System migration to the cloud can officially commence once an in-depth business process map has been created. The majority of the work here will be handled by the selected vendor and consultants.

To verify that data and procedures have been successfully transferred to the cloud, it is essential to continue the synchronization process and update all systems after the first migration has been finished. Validate the functionality of all migrated applications in their new cloud home. Consult with professionals to keep the source data in sync with the rest of the migration.

5) Check that everything is working smoothly

After moving everything to the cloud, you still have to maintain it. While the vendor will ultimately be responsible for all hands-on maintenance, you will need to collaborate with them early on to guarantee that all on-cloud entities are safe, optimized, and available to all parties.

It’s also a good idea to keep on board a small team of experts for the time being so that they can keep a close eye on mission-critical systems and processes and anticipate any changes in workload requirements. Data security and compliance with industry requirements like GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA can be guaranteed with the assistance of these professionals. It is also important to remember that the business’s RTO and RPO goals must be met in order to meet the availability and performance targets that have been set.

Last but not least, every big business operation, such as cloud migration, requires a highly responsive and effective feedback loop. Make sure that no participant, no matter how little their complaint, is abandoned at any stage of the migration process.

Takeaway

The process of cloud migration requires extensive planning and preparation, much like relocating an office. In the end, businesses with appropriate use cases will benefit from more adaptability and lower costs, therefore the work is worthwhile.

Is cloud computing something you’re considering for your company? Please share your experience with us; we’re interested to learn more. Share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook!

About Enteros

​Enteros offers a patented database performance management SaaS platform. It proactively identifies root causes of complex business-impacting database scalability and performance issues across a growing number of RDBMS, NoSQL, and machine learning database platforms.