Tuesday, 17 November 2015 Blog ehdf

Best Practices for Migrating your Data to the Cloud

For most businesses, cloud computing is proving to be an option— too difficult to ignore. Considering the never-ending list of benefits, the holistic capabilities of the cloud have now become irrefutable.

If you aren’t already familiar with these benefits, here are some good reads:

http://www.ehdf.com/blog/why-start-ups-need-cloud-computing/

http://www.ehdf.com/blog/how-cloud-drives-innovation-in-business/

http://www.ehdf.com/blog/what-can-the-cloud-do-for-small-businesses/

Much has been written about the benefits of moving your data to the cloud, and IT decision makes around the world are embracing the cloud in growing numbers. Yet the move also presents challenges. In fact, a poor migration strategy can be responsible for costly time delays, data loss and other roadblocks on your way to successfully modernizing your IT infrastructure. To simplify your journey to the cloud, we share best practices:

1.Research well!

For any business decision, success is dependent on knowledge and this can be achieved through research. As a first step towards moving to the cloud, senior management and IT teams must gain a working knowledge of the cloud migration process. They must also allocate a suitable time frame for safe and secure data migration to the cloud. Once the decision to migrate to the cloud is made, the company should evaluate whether to invest in its own IT infrastructure or seek the support of a managed services provider.

2.Analyze costs against benefits

IT and finance experts must calculate the costs incurred through current computing systems versus those involved with adopting cloud computing. This includes hardware and software costs, security costs, maintenance and management expenses and costs of training and retaining employees. Once this has been determined, companies can choose their ideal cloud platform. Both capital and operational expenditures need to be analyzed to get an idea of the net investments.

3.Determine a transition strategy

Outline the best possible strategy to implement and migrate to the cloud. Also determine which applications will be migrated to the cloud platform. This decision will depend on several factors – internal budgets, data storage needs, nature of applications, and security concerns. Your cloud service provider can help you in outlining this transition strategy.
Know if your app is cloud ready: https://www.ehdf.com/blog/is-your-app-cloud-ready/

4.Identify areas requiring external support

Consult an expert on the complex technological mechanisms that will manage and store business information and internal data on the cloud so that your organization can leverage maximum benefits from the cloud.

5.Assess business needs and cloud scalability

In case a company needs to scale up because of increased storage requirements over a period of time, the IT team has to ensure cloud scalability without any significant downtime. Additionally, this may take time as new hardware and software resources get procured and deployed.

6.Customize your SLA (Service Level Agreement)

With a cloud services provider, organizations can maximize the benefits of cloud through customized SLAs. This would typically outline terms and conditions specific to an organization’s IT needs.

7.Avoiding Downtime

Organizations must read the fine-print of their Service Level Agreement before migrating to the cloud in order to be aware of the guaranteed uptime.