Are you considering moving enterprise applications and critical data to cloud storage? Well, there are many reasons why this is a good idea for your business. These include remote access, scalability, security and support. However, there are challenges and pitfalls associated with moving your data to the cloud. You can avoid these issues by planning your cloud migration well. Here is a checklist to get you started on your cloud migration.
Know Who Is In Charge Of The Migration
Before you begin the cloud migration process, you need to know who is in charge of it. You can appoint someone from your team or use Azure migration planning to handle the cloud migration from start to finish. Cloud Migrations such as Exchange 2010 Migration or Azure Migration Services need to be executed with intense monitoring for days because there are chances of data loss. Remember, this is a highly-specialized role so you must choose a system architect with enough experience in scoping, planning, implementing and monitoring the entire process.
2. What Level Of Cloud Integration Is Needed?
There are two basic ways to migrate. You can choose between deep cloud integration or shallow cloud integration. With the shallow option, there is the less heavy lifting of the data and the relevant applications. The deep integration requires more cloud computing power to improve application capability.
3. Do You Need One Cloud System Or More?
Before choosing one cloud provider, you need to do a proper analysis of what different providers are offering. That way, you can decide to use one provider or share the hosted services with different providers. For instance, you might find one cloud host with better AI options while the other might be cheaper to scale to larger support. With a single provider, you will be locked into a limiting contract but with multiple providers, it’s easier to manage especially from an SLA perspective.
4. Measure Cloud Performance Against Your Business Requirements
Moving to a cloud storage system is a good thing. However, you need to assess whether it meets or exceeds your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). These include support response time, uptime and the site application performance such as conversions, site load time and user experience analytics.
5. Staggered Or All At Once Migration
As part of the risk analysis, you should assess whether to do a staggered migration or use an all-at-once approach. Of course, there are a few things to consider in this case. These include;
• What will be the end-user experience?
• What should be the top priority?
• If there are issues, what is the contingency plan?
• What to migrate first? Is it the internal applications (central to your team or the external ones (affecting your clients)?
Choosing the right migration process is integral to ensuring ease of cloud migration.
6. Data Migration
There are expected challenges in data migration compared to migrating the applications. For instance, how will you access the data during migration? Are there access permissions in place to prevent issues for staff or clients who need access immediately? Will the migration affect day-to-day business and how will the issues be handled if it happens?
7. Seamless Switch-over
Assessing from the user experience perspective, you need to plan the switch-on after the migration has been implemented. You can choose to switch it on at once or in different stages. Both approaches need significant testing before implementation. With the staged switch on, you can test smaller groups before everything is completed.
8. Ongoing Analysis
After full migration, there should be plans to assess and monitor the cloud hosting provider’s capabilities to ensure full benefits.
With these 8 tips, your cloud migration should be effortless!