As work-from-home and hybrid work environments have become more common, many businesses have begun transferring their existing applications to cloud-based strategies. This is called cloud migration. It makes your working environment more flexible and improves many areas within your business, such as cost effectiveness, performance, and accessibility.
- How can my business benefit from migrating to the cloud?
- What challenges might my business face while adopting the cloud?
- How can I efficiently transfer my data to the cloud from an existing application?
Why Should I Move to the Cloud?
As mentioned above, on premises cloud migration can greatly benefit the way your business operates, shifting some of that heavy technological lifting from your IT department to a large server specifically designed to handle a variety of infrastructure requirements.
Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud
Cloud Scalability or Elasticity
One of the major benefits of migrating to cloud based computing is having the ability to scale your infrastructure based on your current needs. With cloud infrastructure, you don’t need to install more on premises equipment; the cloud can take on more or less depending on what you need.
Cost and Maintenance
Upon migrating to the cloud, the amount of time and money you’ll spend on troubleshooting will likely decrease. Cloud based providers take over dealing with the maintenance and upgrades of your servers, so you can spend more time focusing on innovation and running your business smoothly.
Data Security and Redundancy
With a variety of robust cybersecurity measures in place, cloud solutions protect your data better than most on premises servers. Their sturdy firewalls, data encryption, and frequent updates help keep your data safe. Cloud solutions also copy your data to a number of data centers, providing backups that may not be available for smaller, on premises data centers.
Increased Performance and Accessibility
Cloud migration can reduce server latency and improve your end-user experience. With your data on the cloud, your business will see a greater degree of accessibility to both your employees and your customers. Cloud based solutions can also increase performance by scaling up and down to manage different levels of throughput.
Challenges of Migrating to the Cloud
While there are a slew of benefits to migrating to the cloud, this process doesn’t come without challenges. In the process of cloud migration, you’ll likely be transferring vast quantities of data from your on premises data center to the cloud. This poses the threat of possible data loss or corruption—but in most cases, that’s a relatively small possibility. Once your data has migrated to the cloud, it will be backed up on multiple data centers. It’s important to note that cloud migration may also interrupt your systems while data is transferring, so be sure to plan accordingly.
Additionally, after migrating to the cloud, you may experience vendor lock-in. This occurs when your business has needs that deviate from what a cloud provider offers. Once you migrate to a provider, it can be cumbersome to perform a cloud-to-cloud migration. Luckily, the solution to vendor lock-in is careful assessment of your business needs and developing a working cloud migration strategy.
Cloud Data Migration Strategies
There are a number of ways to go about transferring your data to the cloud. The following list will explore some of the steps you might consider taking during your cloud migration project plan.
- Determine which existing applications you want to migrate to the cloud. Some applications, like legacy applications, may require very low latency and may not function to the best of their abilities on the cloud. For these instances, consider keeping them within your on premises data center.
- Within the selected applications, decide how much data needs to migrate and the timeframe needed to do so. Cloud migration can impact your day to day operations, so careful planning in this regard is necessary in order to keep your business running smoothly.
- Determine which applications simply need to be rehosted, or “lifted and shifted,” to the cloud, and which ones need to be redesigned or tailored for cloud optimization.
- Assess your business and determine which cloud plan works for you. As mentioned above, a single provider may not meet all your requirements. In these cases, you might consider a hybrid cloud environment, where various cloud platforms attend to different areas of your business.
Your Cloud Solutions Can Be Whatever You Want Them To Be*
Cloud solutions are the logical next step for most businesses operating in the modern age, and while it may seem daunting to move your services from on premises to cloud based applications, it doesn’t have to be. If you’re seeking cloud migration in San Francisco, contact 42, Inc. to get started on your journey. It’s likely you won’t even need a supercomputer to find your cloud solutions. With our expertise in Azure and Amazon Web Services, we can help you manage the challenges of migrating to the cloud and expand your business’ horizons.
