If you are thinking about transferring your existing data to cloud computing, you are not alone. According to the report of RightScale State of the Cloud, 95% of survey respondents have acquired some level of the cloud environment. The popularity of cloud computing continues to increase, and many companies are moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud successfully. The objectives, goals, requirements, and operation of your company differs from other companies and therefore thoughtful and disciplined cloud migration strategies are required to ensure successful cloud migration. In this article, we will discuss which steps are needed to ensure successful cloud migration.
What is Cloud Migration?
Cloud migration is the process of transferring the existing IT infrastructure, data, and applications from one data center to the cloud. Cloud migration does not only mean moving data from on-premises to the cloud but also from one cloud to another cloud. This migration requires a disciplined plan, preparation, and advanced operations, but it results in digitalizing of the business with greater flexibility and cost reduction.
What are the steps needed to ensure successful cloud migration?
Here we will discuss the important steps to make an effective cloud migration strategy. These steps include:
Determine your goal of cloud migration prior to choosing a cloud provider
The first step is to determine your goal. This will help you select the right cloud provider according to your needs. Cloud migration is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort and therefore a complete understanding of the layout is required.
You should ask yourself the following questions to determine your goal for cloud migration:
- Why is there a need to move to the cloud? Is it right for your business?
- Do you want to lower IT costs?
- Do you want to increase agility to beat your competitors in the steadily growing market?
- Is it difficult to maintain the security of your IT infrastructure?
Answers to these questions will help you determine your goal and to choose the right cloud provider.
Assessment of the Current Environment
Analysis of your current situation will help you make better decisions that are needed for your organization. What applications do you want to move to the cloud? What is the current IT environment? which type of database is used? What is the percentage of downtime? What are your affordable costs ? These factors are included in assessment of the current situation.
Selection of the Right Cloud Migration Partner
When do you need a partner? You need a partner when you realize you don’t have enough resources and capabilities to perform the assessment task and execute the cloud migration strategy. Selecting a trustworthy partner can be a blessing for you to ensure successful cloud migration. The right partner helps you to analyze the migration strategy properly and select the right technology to get maximum benefit with minimal efforts.
The factors that you should consider while selecting the right partner include the following:
- Past cloud project experience
- Certificates
- Their previous clients
Selection of the Cloud Environment
There are three types of cloud environments: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. After making a business case, this is time to know which type of cloud environment is appropriate for you. Assessment of your circumstances in 2 steps will help you to select a cloud environment.
Public Clouds
Companies like Amazon, Azure, Google Cloud, and Microsoft offer public clouds, where the IT infrastructure is shared with multiple companies. Flexible features provided by the public cloud allow you to customize them according to your requirements. You have to pay only for the resources that you use.
Private Clouds
The main difference between public and private clouds is that only one company can access the private cloud. Organizations with sensitive data, such as banks and healthcare companies, use the private cloud so they can have complete control over their data storage and access.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a union of both private and public clouds. It is selected to get supremacy of convenience, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of the public cloud and data security of the private cloud.
Execution of Migration
This is the step that involves execution of your well-designed strategy for moving your data to the cloud. Execution of cloud migration includes:
- Backup of servers and data
- Deployment of cloud environment
- Migrate servers, applications, and other workloads
- Validation
Monitoring
Monitoring is the last step that will ensure successful cloud migration. You should implement the best Cloud migration tools to monitor the performance and issues arising in the new cloud environment.
Conclusion
To ensure successful cloud migration, you should follow all the steps mentioned above. Many companies offer cloud migration services in Australia. At FuturisTech, we offer consultation services that help you make a better cloud migration strategy, so moving your data is an effortless and cost effective process.
If you would like to get more information about our services , please do not hesitate to contact our friendly team at FuturisTech.