THE SIMPLE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS IN CLOUD MIGRATION
The success or failure of any venture today is often tied in some way to technology. The cloud is one of the most exciting technologies at the moment as it allows businesses to scale with ease, cut down cost and boost efficiency. However, cloud migration involves multiple steps that may seem too complicated for most people. To simplify what you need for success in cloud migration, here are the elements and formula to keep in mind.
Prepare
The number one criterion for a successful cloud migration is adequate preparation. The amount of preparation you put into planning for the move can be an indicator of whether or not the project will succeed.
When it comes to preparation, you have to first determine your goals for cloud migration. Why do you want to transfer your apps and data to the cloud? Your reasons for cloud migration must align with your enterprise’s long-term plans.
Having defined your goals, you also need to develop a plan that facilitates cloud migration with minimal downtime and minimal risk. In the course of doing that, you will have to determine which data or app should be migrated and the sequence, how sensitive data should be handled and how best to ensure that the right users have access post-migration.
Cloud environment
The next element of a successful cloud migration is your choice of the cloud model to adopt. First, you must choose which is best for your situation: private, public or hybrid.
A private cloud model refers to a single-tenant architecture where the cloud resources are dedicated to a single client or component. It is best for businesses that desire a higher level of security.
In contrast, a public cloud model refers to a multi-tenant structure where the cloud components (hardware, storage and network) are shared between multiple customers. It is cost-effective, making it ideal for businesses experiencing rapid growth but limited IT budget.
A hybrid cloud is a combination of the features of public and private clouds in that it offers the efficiency of a public cloud environment and the security associated with a private cloud model.
In addition, you will also have to choose the service offering that’s right for your business. The options are:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
People
Although seldom considered to be important, experts agree that people play a critical role in a successful migration. For instance, leveraging a partner to migrate existing applications and data can help ensure that processes, procedures, security protocols and applications are compliant with industry regulations.
Also, it’s important to help your employees adjust to working from the cloud and this will require training on the skills that are lacking.
Testing and monitoring
After planning for your cloud migration, make sure you test for performance and security at every stage of the migration process. Test each application and workload, and compare the results with your goals so you can know when you achieve success. After you have successfully completed the migration, make sure you implement monitoring to identify and fix any issues that may pop up.
Conclusion
Having outlined the various elements for a successful cloud migration, we can say the formula is PL+CE+PE+TM = Cloud migration success, where PL is planning, CE is cloud environment, PE is people and TM is testing and monitoring.
