It would be fair to say that the general understanding of the cloud has come on leaps and bounds over the past years. Below in this article, we will cover the 4 key ingredients of a successful cloud migration strategy.
Once upon a time it was a white, fluffy substance in the sky. Now, even the Average Joe is aware of the importance that the cloud prompts for businesses around the globe.
Unfortunately, no cloud system is the same. UKCloud explain more about a multi-cloud strategy in this article and as you can see, it can spiral into a minefield.
Not only that, but there’s no such thing as a “standard migration”. This is something that we will investigate through today’s post, as we look at the key things you need to consider if you are mulling over a possible cloud migration.
Your team
First and foremost, now is the time to take a long, hard look at your team. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t with the purpose of replacing them – a cloud migration should actually allow you to use your team much more efficiently. Rather than focusing on maintenance, they should now be looking to constantly enhance your system.
Of course, not all teams are equal. You need to assess just if they have the ability to work with your new cloud environment and if they don’t, if there are any alternatives available to you.
Your licenses
In a traditional environment, you will have been used to a standard licensing system.
However, as soon as you migrate to the cloud, this isn’t necessarily the case. Some software may require you to purchase additional licenses, and this often flies under the radar as you plan your migration strategy.
On a similar subject, some vendors won’t give you any support when you move to the cloud. It’s all about making sure that the current agreement you have with your vendor is completely transferrable to a cloud system.
The scalability
As we all know, one of the great advantages of the cloud is its scalability. Unlike traditional platforms, whereby the capacity is virtually set in stone, there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to the cloud and scale.
However, you do need some sort of a plan. If you sense that growth might be on the horizon, you then need to weigh up the pros and cons of horizontal and vertical scaling.
This scaling can of course be automated (so you don’t manually have to flick a switch for each and every usage surge) but it needs clarifying from the outset.
The number of applications you are migrating
Finally, one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of companies make with these migrations is trying to do everything at once.
This is a pure recipe for disaster; unless everything was built at exactly the same time and in the same format, it’s going to be very difficult to achieve.
As such, make a staggered approach. It might take months, even years, but by gradually migrating separate systems you are stripping a large element of risk from your project.