Tips for a Flawless Cloud Migration

Tips for a Flawless Cloud Migration

Cloud technology is becoming more popular daily, with more businesses adopting it. However, the cloud adoption process needs careful thought and the right resources to avoid disrupting business operations. Here are tips to help you migrate business operations to the cloud.

1. Come up With a Strategy

Before starting the migration, you need to develop a strategy. It would be best to clearly outline what you want to accomplish, such as POTS replacement with cloud-based VoIP, data migration, and workloads migration. Part of drawing the strategy is capturing metrics of your existing infrastructure. That will help you allocate resources appropriately and estimate how long the exercise will take.

2. Evaluate Your Applications

You need to understand that not all apps should move to the cloud. Some can migrate, but they will need a redesign. And others can move as-is. Therefore, you need to evaluate the architecture and complexity of your applications. You must also determine the best cloud environment for your applications – is it public, private, or multi-cloud?

3. Find the Best Cloud Provider

The cloud provider you work with is essential to your cloud migration experience. Therefore, you need to do your due diligence before hiring one. Factors to consider include their experience level, the support they will provide during migration and the tools they have available.

4. Executing the Migration

Once you’ve found the right cloud provider, it’s time for the move. How you conduct the move depends on the complexity of your applications and your data. You can move everything at once or migrate in phases until everything is moved to the cloud.

5. Avoid the Pilot Trap

The pilot trap is a situation where the initial test meets the expectations due to limited users. However, once the system goes live, the surge in the number of users overloads it. To avoid getting stuck in this trap, ensure that the pilot test accounts for peak demand.

6. Post-Migration Monitoring

You need to proactively monitor your application after the migration to see if it’s worth the investment. Key performance indicators include resource utilization and the costs involved. Besides real-time monitoring, you also need to monitor the new environment for security issues.

7. Have the Right Team

Before you migrate, you must ensure that your business has the right team to handle cloud-based operations. Your IT and database administrators need to be conversant with cloud architecture. If not, you can invest in their training or hire more people to bridge the gaps in skill set.

Migration of Mission-Critical Data

It’s worth noting that cloud systems are incredibly complex. Therefore, migration is equally challenging, especially with mission-critical data. Some workloads are so sensitive that even the slightest error could read to huge losses.

As you plan the migration project, it’s essential to stay flexible. In some cases, these projects go beyond the set budgets and timelines. It is also essential to factor in some time for the complete transition since the service might initially be spotty.