In the past few years, there has been a rise in businesses moving towards the cloud. As of now, many companies are spending a huge amount of money on developing software applications and storing them on the on-premises infrastructure.
As moving to the cloud is cheaper, sometimes, an organization’s board may decide whether to keep an on-premise infrastructure to store application data or move it to the cloud.
This can help an organization to utilize the time of the IT teams and its support staff to make some more good applications or other systems as per the requirement.
In the case of a large company, they can consider the move towards the cloud if they think they can save money by moving to the cloud rather than doing a large capital expenditure on on-premises infrastructure.
Some of the cloud migration benefits include low maintenance, lesser cost to operate, easy access, and many more, but it is not suitable for every type of business.
As of now, cloud migration is beneficial for large businesses and some small businesses as well.
Moreover, owners of many small businesses consider cloud migration to be a functional aspect of large companies. But this is not true, and many small ones have also progressed by migrating to the cloud.
Cloud Migration Checklist to keep in mind:
Before determining your cloud migration plan, do an internal audit to see where your on-premises IT infrastructure lacks and where it needs improvement.
This audit will let you know where you stand as compared to your competitors and what things and strategies you require to enhance your performance and make a name in the market.
Many IT companies do this audit to know the working of their software applications and conclude the following things page load time, software response time, memory usage, etc.
This helps the organization to keep track of its performance as compared to its competitors, and accordingly, the organization can plan the migration to the cloud to improve its application’s performance and derive some results or value from it.
Here, an organization needs to understand that not all applications are meant to be uploaded or migrated to the cloud.
The organization should migrate such applications which involve the high cost of storing the data on on-premise infrastructure and which requires more security.
Sometimes, an application is required to be redesigned while migrating to the cloud, and an organization also needs to determine the complexity involved in it.
Also, ensure how much return your application will give to you and in how much time. This is important as you have invested in it, and you’ll need to evaluate the ROI cost.
When you look at the cloud migration service provider, one thing is sure: you’ll get confused while deciding the best cloud migration service provider for your organization.
There are so many of them available in the market, and it will be confusing to choose the one that suits your business. This depends on many factors too. So choose wisely.
Some of the popular options available are Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware vCloud Air, IBM SoftLayer, Oracle Cloud, etc.
These providers, when compared to each other, have specific pros and cons. So don’t select the provider whose name is more in the market. Choose wisely and opt for the one that suits your business.
After choosing the right cloud service provider, you need to create a cloud migration plan that will tell you how to migrate your applications to the cloud and what things you’ll require to maintain your data integrity on the cloud premises.
After creating a cloud migration plan and shortlisting the application that needs to be migrated, it is time to prepare for the migration process.
You should always begin with migrating applications which are the least critical to you.
While migrating to the cloud, you should always keep in mind that while migrating the application, its users can face some downtime.
So be ready for it and make sure that you migrate your applications in such a way that it doesn’t affect your business.
Make sure your staff, which includes your developers, managers, and other staff attained enough training about the new processes and can use the new technology with ease.
Well, this is the last checklist point where you have to execute all the planning you have done till now to migrate your system applications or data to the cloud premises.
If you have adequately planned with the consultation of everyone present in your organization, then migrating should not be a big task for you.
The applications that were shortlisted must be migrated as per your organization’s cloud migration plan.
Also, you need to be aware of the problems that can come with while migrating to the cloud.
You can also move your application’s data in such an order that you move the small files first and then the larger ones.
This will be easier for you to upload and it depends upon the speed of your internet connection.
To migrate your data, you must use the appropriate tools for it. These tools can help you to migrate smoothly and with ease.
After migrating the data, you must check all the things, whether they are working fine or not. Do you need to check whether the data you migrated has been done successfully?
Are all users able to access the data, or are they able to use the application? How much has the speed of the application increased after migration?
If all things are working fine. Congratulations!! You have done it. But still, you need to be aware of the minor bugs in the applications and other small issues.
For this, you need an expert team to handle such problems or a team that has quality experience in such a process.
Conclusion
It is dangerous to perform any migration, be it on-premise to the cloud or from on-premise to on-premise. IT migration is always full of risk.
To reduce it, you need to plan everything properly with the consultation of experts. Moreover, you need appropriate tools for executing your cloud migration plan.
You might think that you have made a good cloud migration plan and will execute it with ease. Well, this is not going to work until you have a backup plan.
You need to execute your plan correctly to avoid mishaps in the future, which will cost you more money.
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