Migrating your organization's applications to the cloud is a huge undertaking. Oftentimes, an organization will make a decision to move to the cloud without considering a few key facts. Before any of the vendor selections and execution can happen, these three areas should be researched and taken into careful consideration:
Research Phase
1. Determine why you want or need to move your apps to the cloud
The first big question you need to ask yourself is: “Why does my business need to migrate it’s apps to the cloud?” The migration of business apps is a huge undertaking, with a major investment in time, money, and resources. Ask yourself what advantages are there for your business.
2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
While moving your apps to the cloud can greatly improve your operations, it can be a highly disruptive undertaking if not done right. That is why an in-depth SWOT analysis should be conducted before moving on. A SWOT analysis is used to identify internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats.
3. Assess your Current Environment
Conduct an assessment of your current IT infrastructure, all of your applications, cost, and all of the other fine details:
· Should you really move all of your applications to the cloud?
· The amount of infrastructure used by your apps.
· Storage needed, data generated, analytics, networking, and expected SLA.
· Money spent on physical servers and their management.
· And last but not least, any hidden costs involved.
Vendor and Partner Selection Phase
Now that your research phase has been completed and your final decision to move to the cloud is confirmed, it is time to look into the Cloud Vendors and Technology Service Partners best suited to your organization.
Choosing the Right Cloud Vendor
It is essential that you do your research into potential cloud vendors. Take a look at reviews, ask your peers who they are using, consider who your competitors are utilizing. Another aspect to take into consideration is to assess the current technologies that your organization has in place. Do you have an enterprise agreement with a trusted tech provider? If available, could this relationship be used to drive down costs and bundle your services?
After you have narrowed down your candidates, conduct a benchmarking exercise. Compare things like:
· Cost
· Technical Support
· Infrastructure Capacity
· Referrals of other organizations in your same situation.
Selecting a Skilled Technology and Service Partner
So you have chosen the best cloud vendor suited to your organization, now it’s time to look at partnering with a skill technology and service provider. Like with your cloud vendor selection process, it is crucial to do your research and benchmark potential partners.
While making sure your selection has the appropriate skill and talent level needed to assist in your migration process, security and compliance should also be a major concern. You need to make sure your selection addresses all of your organization’s specific needs, making it a suitable solution.
Plan Your Migration Phase
Now that your vendor and partner have been settled and a clear outline of deliverables and milestones is in place, it is time to plan your migration. It is important that your migration plan takes these things into consideration, as they might show potential issues that need to be handled before starting the migration process:
· Try and minimize disruption time
· The order of your application migration
· Deadlines
· Key metrics to define success
· Changes to your end-user processes
· Training required
Execution Phase
It’s time to execute the migration of your applications. You have already put a ton of work into this process and you are hoping it all pays off and goes off without a hitch. But things happen, that is why #1 in the execution phase is so important.
1. Backup Your Data
If we could scream this at the top of our lungs for the world to hear, we would. The first step in a migration execution should always be backing up your data. This ensures you do not lose anything during the process. Make sure your apps and data are safe and easily retrievable.
2. Deployment
The next step in your execution phase is setting up your cloud environment. This will include:
· Provisioning
· Connections
· Testing all components
3. Migrating your Applications
It’s time for the migration. You have worked hard for this and it’s finally happening. It is important to migrate existing data so that business continuity is maintained. This process will take time and might need some adjustments to make it fit seamlessly with your new cloud setup.
4. Test, Test, and Test Again
Once all of your data and applications have been migrated, now comes the testing. Take this time to make sure everything made it through the migration process and the environment is safe and secure. You also need to ensure everything is working as expected and your end-users are not going to come across any issues while using the applications. This is also your tweaking phase, where regression testing should come into play.
Implement Monitoring
We would not necessarily call this a phase in the migration process, but monitoring should be implemented. This will help identify and issues needing to be fixed due to your new cloud environment.
If you are considering moving your organization’s applications to the cloud and would like to talk to an experienced team of IT and hosting specialists, contact us at 1 (866) 216-4366 or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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