Factors consider when migrating to the cloud

• Though migrating to the cloud platform seem easy and flexible, organizations still need to be extremely cautious about positioning their applications on the cloud.
• Proper strategy and process implementation are key to cloud migration as maximizing the return will solely depend on your business’s engagement with the cloud-based infrastructure. 

There has been a lot of enterprise hand-wringing about migrating to the cloud. Cloud migration, simply put, is the moving of data, applications, and other business processes to a cloud environment. It can bring many benefits to your business, but there are also many things to consider. Migrating to the cloud has been an integral facet of modernization in any business strategy and these days, there are more than a handful of factors to consider.

The number of operational locations, remote or local users, and each user’s unique accessibility must also be considered to better understand the kind of cloud service you need. In fact, IT leaders have a plethora of options to help them execute their cloud strategy and optimize their IT landscape. Not to miss, there are many benefits to moving applications and workloads to the cloud. Once a decision has been made to get started with cloud initiatives such as cloud migration or on executing a cloud-first strategy, there are a few areas that need attention.

Cost

A significant factor when choosing a cloud solution, the cost of resources that can be consumed by storage, compute and network needs to be aggregated to get a top-level analysis of all cost exposure. A business can improve the return on its cloud investment by using solutions that offer continuous cost optimization and cost monitoring.

The financial considerations in migrating to the cloud versus staying on-premises include the cost of running infrastructure –hardware, software, support staff, the server room, and the costs of climate control—as well as the costs of fault tolerance and disaster recovery. The idea here is, companies are required to evaluate their infrastructure and internal resources before investing in cloud migration. 

Security

Given how data is the most crucial and confidential element of any company, organizations must thoroughly scrutinize the security policies and regulations of the cloud provider before deploying the applications on their platform. Security of data must be understood from the perspective of the ability of the vendor to restore the data as well as maintaining the integrity of the stored digital assets. Often, data recovery is overlooked since users often focus on backup. 

The right provider

The key before investing in cloud migration is choosing the right cloud provider. Companies should analyze and scrutinize the cloud provider based on technology, compatibility, international standards, and related policies. An apt provider can efficiently work with applications and offer 24/7 support to any company.

However, selecting a cloud storage provider purely on the basis of its years of experience or market reputation may not just be the only consideration. Of course, with experience comes  fair results in certain situations, but a company must find a cloud storage vendor who is backed by rich experience in a similar industry vertical. Specialization is an important attribute of an ideal cloud vendor. It is prudent to select a cloud vendor which has gained demonstrable experience in the same sector.

Right migration strategy

When moving data to the cloud one needs to have the right cloud migration strategy. It is one of the most important out of all things to consider when migrating. Few factors to consider for the right migration strategy are; re-host, the most simple migration strategy whereby one just needs to shift its applications and database to the cloud. Then there’s re-platform and in this strategy, part of all the applications are re-structured with the help of cloud managed services. 

---

---

---

---