As modern companies look towards the cloud as the future of their business infrastructure, cloud migration is one of the biggest prospects and challenges for any modern organisation.
There’s a lot to consider for any business looking to migrate to the cloud. However, there are several steps that you can take to ensure that your business’ cloud migration strategy is successful.
We believe that the cloud is the future of all business infrastructure. That’s why in this article, we’re going to take you through the nine best steps to ensure success when undertaking cloud migration.
1 – Define Business Purpose
Your business purpose is the reason that your company was originally founded. It sets you apart from other companies and ensures that your company remains on task to achieve what it was created to do.
Ensuring that your business purpose is well-defined when migrating to the cloud ensures that none of the essence of your company is lost when making the move over. It allows you to ensure that your business is still focused on the core tenets it was founded on, even with a new infrastructure.
2 – Set Migration Objectives
Understanding why your company wants to move over to the cloud and having a clear vision of what you expect to achieve post-migration is vital to ensuring that the process is successful and beneficial to your company in the long term.
By identifying your specific goals and objectives, your company can know exactly what it wants to achieve. That way, you can ensure that you’re making the right decisions to carry out your vision.
Setting measurable objectives will also help you measure the success of your migration strategy — tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) in the measurable areas that you expect to improve performance in when migrating to the cloud will help you ensure that the process is beneficial for your company and successful.
3 – Select Cloud Provider and Migration Partner
There are many cloud providers that are available for your company, and choosing the right one may seem tough. The best way of knowing what you need is by getting in touch with a migration provider — like ourselves.
We’ll be able to guide you through the whole process and ensure that your business achieves exactly what you desire from migrating to the cloud, whilst also providing support throughout the process and afterwards.
There’s no need to worry about going through the process alone, as we’re here to help guide you through and ensure that everything is on the right track.
4 – Choose Cloud Environment and Deployment Model
There are four types of cloud environments that are generally available for businesses to choose from:
Public Cloud: Public cloud servers are shared between organisations, meaning that they’re cheap and affordable for any business. However, a public cloud server is generally less customisable and also provides fewer security features.
Private Cloud: Private cloud servers are dedicated to your organisation, and are highly secure and customisable to your needs. These kinds of servers can be costly to maintain and have security limitations for your organisation as a whole.
Hybrid Cloud: This is combining public and private cloud infrastructure, meaning that you have the security benefits of a private cloud but the flexibility of a public cloud.
Multi-Cloud: The least common of the four, a multi-cloud infrastructure is when an organisation uses multiple cloud providers at a time.
There are also three deployment models to choose from:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS is when a provider gives you the infrastructure (servers, storage, etc.) of a cloud deployment, and lets your organisation handle the rest.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS is when a provider gives you applications and other native inclusions as part of their service.
Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS providers will handle everything for your organisation, and look after your organisation holistically.
With so many options, finding the right choice for your business is easy! Just get in touch with us, and we’ll be able to walk you through the best steps for your organisation.
5 – Decide on Migration Method
The next step is knowing how you’ll migrate over to the cloud. This is crucial, as it will define the process that your business will undertake.
Doing so will require evaluation and planning, but there are a number of options that you can take here. Your cloud partner will be able to help you work out which migration method is best for your organisation and help you evaluate and plan thoroughly to ensure that the process is successful.
6 – Create a Data Migration Plan
Your data migration plan is essential to being able to migrate effectively. This is essentially deciding how your data will be migrated, and there’s a host of different options to choose from, some of which include:
Bidirectional Sync: This is merging your cloud server with your on-premise server, and letting them work together.
Upwards Sync: With this plan, you’ll create a clone of your on-premise server in the cloud, then switch servers once done.
7 – Migrate
Once all of these things are decided, you can undertake your migration plan and finally migrate your infrastructure to the cloud.
Ensuring to follow these steps is crucial, as your migration may be unsuccessful if you don’t strictly adhere to the plan and objectives that you’ve laid out.
8 – Test Cloud Deployment Against Migration Objectives
After having migrated your business to the cloud, test your cloud deployment against your migration objectives and KPIs. Ensure that the benefits that you expected from the migration are what the migration is actually achieving, and adjust accordingly if not.
9 – Optimise for Security and Cost
Even after this, continuing to test and adjust as your business moves forward is important for the longevity of your institution’s success. As you move forward, you can optimise parts of your business to ensure that your costs are low and your security posture is strong.
How We Can Help
Moving over to the cloud is the best way to make your business more flexible and scalable, and truly take advantage of the power of a cloud-based infrastructure.
Working with our specialist partners, our expert team will be able to guide you through the whole process of cloud migration, and act as your partner — to ensure that your migration is successful.
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