Migrating a business to the cloud platform is not an easy task. Enterprises adopting cloud computing may realize that all resources should be migrated immediately. There is no denying that, in some cases, public cloud platforms can bring huge benefits to businesses.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to accelerate the adoption of large-scale technology-driven solutions. Research by relevant research institutions shows that due to the new crown pneumonia, 69% of enterprises have accelerated the deployment of their digital business.
As businesses support the digital “new normal” of on-premises and customer-facing operations, IT organizations have dramatically increased their spending on cloud computing.
As the world becomes increasingly digitized, enterprises are under immense pressure to move their businesses to the cloud. In order to keep up with the competition, it is essential for enterprises to have a clear understanding of the advantages of cloud computing technology. Moreover, enterprises need to map out a clear development roadmap that outlines the steps needed to successfully migrate their existing business operations to the cloud platform smoothly. Only by doing so can enterprises hope to gain a sustainable competitive edge in the digital age.
Organizations must carefully weigh the cost of migration against the potential benefits of cloud computing. The cloud can provide organizations with increased agility, scalability, and security; however, these benefits must be weighed against the upfront cost of migration and the ongoing cost of running applications in the cloud. Time is another important factor to consider when migrating to the cloud. The cloud can provide organizations with the ability to deploy new applications and services quickly and easily; however, the actual process of migrating existing applications and data to the cloud can take time.
Here are some key points that enterprise decision-makers need to know:
Barriers to cloud migration
These can include anything from technical challenges and lack of resources to organizational resistance and cultural issues. Of course, every organization is different and will have its own unique set of challenges to overcome. However, by being aware of the potential barriers, organizations can be better prepared to overcome them. When it comes to migrating to the cloud, organizations can sometimes face resistance from employees. This resistance can come in the form of concerns about job security, changes in company culture, or a lack of understanding of how the cloud works.
Security is another concern for businesses, so businesses need to weigh the potential risks and rewards of entrusting data to cloud computing providers.
Many CIOs and IT executives see infrastructure complexity as a major hurdle, with the vast majority running long-term developed IT infrastructure and services, both from internal vendors and from external sources creating a complex, heterogeneous environment with many discrete parts of the activity, which can pose significant challenges for enterprises in their migration to the cloud. many organizations have invested heavily in on-premises infrastructure, making it more difficult to justify the switch to a cloud-based solution.
Application modernization or re-architecting improvements may also hinder the enterprise’s move to cloud computing. Depending on the state of your current applications, it may be necessary to make some changes in order to ensure that they will run properly in a cloud environment. To ensure that the benefits of cloud computing continue to operate after migration, it is critical to evaluate and rebuild applications.
Even if businesses have the on-premise skills to overcome these issues, it can be difficult for their IT teams to find time to address them because they are often too busy with operational tasks. This can lead to a de facto skills shortage, requiring outsourcing of projects, and affecting the cost-effectiveness of cloud adoption.
Achieving a successful cloud migration journey
If enterprises plan their cloud migration process correctly and effectively before making major decisions, they can reduce or even eliminate many obstacles. In the course of cloud migration, enterprises must have a clear strategy to plan the project timeline, which will limit the number of variables and dependencies that need to be transitioned to the cloud platform when migrating internal applications and infrastructure. Enterprises should assess the range of cloud computing options realistically to determine whether the cloud computing provider can offer a good set of services that meet the enterprise’s needs.
Enterprises should first conduct a pilot to see if it is possible to move applications to the cloud, which can be achieved by assessing and analyzing the current environment, identifying workloads and application dependencies.
When hosting a service provider (MSP), enterprises should utilize tools to analyze their current IT environment to assess the current maturity of cloud computing operations, including people, processes, and technology. It is important for businesses to assess the migration readiness of applications and the most appropriate migration strategy for each workload.
Designing a landing zone for a cloud computing environment is the first step toward a truly new environment. At this stage, companies need to consider various factors such as security, compliance and technical requirements, as well as specific considerations for adopting each cloud provider’s services. For example, for the AWS cloud platform, the AWS account structure needs to be considered. Once ready, businesses should deploy the landing zone to the cloud computing environment of their choice in preparation for testing the first application.
During the initial phase of the pilot operation, the application needs to be migrated to the cloud platform using a defined strategy. After a successful migration, businesses need to use this successful pilot project as the basis for their next decision, while preparing for their full migration plan and migrating the remaining workloads to the organization’s cloud computing environment. Enterprises should draft a cloud computing business roadmap in advance, make sure every step is covered, then execute the migration plan, and retain the strategy and reasoning after the migration.
The benefits of a successful cloud migration
If implemented correctly, the set of benefits of migrating data to the cloud far outweighs the difficulties faced by enterprises.
43% of IT companies said they are more concerned about security when migrating to the cloud. Cloud computing providers and managed service providers invest heavily in data protection, and the public cloud can bring greater security and protection.
Fundamentally, most providers should provide built-in security measures with user authentication for multiple layers of protection against unauthorized access, malicious insider threats, and external attacks. Cloud computing providers should also be certified to security standards and employ software- and physical-based security solutions.
Cloud computing technology is one of the main strategies to defend against attacks on IT resources, which can effectively prevent unauthorized users from physically accessing servers. If a business moves some or all of its data to the cloud, it can store that data on servers around the world (or even in two locations), reducing the likelihood of a physical attack.
Public cloud providers keep these data centers safe by setting up security guards, security fences, biometric security measures, security cameras, and more.
Using a cloud platform that runs remotely can not only provide security for enterprises but also improve data recovery capabilities. If the data is backed up on-site, it may face many uncontrollable problems, such as natural disasters such as hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc., which may destroy the data backed up in the on-premise equipment, significantly reduce its efficiency, or even lose data value.
Good network security implementation is the key to ensuring the value of data, and using a cloud computing provider to back up data externally makes it easier to recover data in the event of an unexpected disaster.
COVID-19 is a prime example of an unexpected event that provides unparalleled availability and flexibility, encouraging more businesses to move data to the cloud. Cloud computing providers’ secure and easy access to corporate data anytime, anywhere means businesses no longer rely solely on physical infrastructure or offices to access data. In addition, enterprises can save a lot of costs when outsourcing hardware business to cloud computing providers or hosting service providers.
Cloud computing providers can increase or decrease computing resources for enterprises based on business needs while providing scalability, providers can take advantage of multiple redundant servers and other technologies to increase the uptime of enterprises. The longer a business uses a managed service provider’s servers, the better it can understand the business’s needs to provide proactive cloud computing services.
The specific benefits of the tools each cloud provider offers are important. AWS users can benefit from AWS Code Commit, a cloud-based source code control service that is essentially a replacement for version control systems.
Using AWS Code Commit significantly reduces the time it takes to update software while ensuring software quality. Unfortunately, cloud computing cannot find sustainable development space for the technology within the enterprise, and enterprises must thoroughly review the different tools provided by each cloud computing provider to select the cloud computing provider that can provide the best software package to meet the business needs.
Cloud computing can change the way enterprises operate in terms of enhanced flexibility, business flexibility, security, etc. Due to the uncertainty of future economic development, enterprises need to adopt effective cloud migration strategies to help themselves achieve successful “enterprise digital transformation”.
