10 Expert Tips for a Successful Cloud Migration

As business leaders constantly seek new ways to implement digitization, it’s no surprise that they turn to cloud migration to help grow their businesses and reduce costs. According to the 2020 IDG Cloud Computing Study, 92% of the surveyed organizations are already leveraging the power of cloud management, reducing their on-premise hardware and remotely managing their infrastructure.

The increasing competitive pressure has pushed businesses to new technologies, accelerating their pace of innovation and change, proving that cloud management is here to stay. However, each cloud migration process is unique and dependent on every business’s specific needs. As more and more leaders step into this pool of value, it’s pertinent to plan a successful and meticulous approach to ensure optimal use of both time and resources.

Let’s look at 10 tips that help companies conquer the complexity of cloud migration and stay competitive in the market.

1. Ensure cloud compliance. One of the biggest challenges companies face when adopting cloud strategies is ensuring compliance. Organizations must meet the regulations applicable in their industries to avoid paying fees in the future and eliminate the risk of damaging their customer trust and reputation.

Mass cloud adoption has forced the development of new data privacy and regulatory laws, causing cloud compliance standards to evolve accordingly. This adds pressure for companies to implement scalable security strategies that can expand throughout the migration process, staying updated with the current compliance requirements.

2. Allocate the right talent. Handling cloud migration is not a simple task; it requires a whole set of specific skills to plan and execute the strategy according to a business’s specific needs. Therefore, allocating the right talent is crucial in all five migration phases.

The planning phase is the most crucial step when adopting cloud services. It allows for deep comprehension and analysis of the entire company and its multiple applications and integral operations. In this step, businesses should learn to understand and define the need for cloud migration, which will dictate the following phases and steps. Companies must allocate the right talent to help ease this process, whether it’s internal or external.

3. Identify cloud-friendly applications. In the migration planning stage, it’s important to keep in mind that not all applications are cloud-friendly. Some will perform better on-premise or in a hybrid cloud, while others might need extensive changes to be cloud-ready. A careful evaluation of the applications and their setup will help identify the scope of the cloud migration.

Evaluate the following to identify cloud-friendly applications:

• The complexity of changes needed for cloud migration.
• Carefully identify the short- and long-term costs along with the benefits before approving an application for migration.
• Evaluate any changes in interoperability and integration with other applications, understanding if there’s any interdependence present. A set of closely integrated applications might need a comprehensive plan for all of them together.

4. Select the right cloud provider. With the proliferation of cloud services providers, companies often struggle to settle on one that truly meets their business needs. But this choice can make or break the entire migration project, so it’s crucial to have set expectations and compare providers. Keep in mind the following:

• Level of expertise in migrating applications of similar complexity and scale as your business.
• Level of support they can provide during and after the migration process.
• Level of similarity of the cloud infrastructure with your business setup to avoid any major changes before the migration.

5. Plan the migration. With unprecedented digital advances, many companies rush to move their data to cloud services, often failing to outline a clear and detailed plan of the migration itself. This lack of analysis can result in downtime, distrust and more significant fees in the long run.

While planning the cloud migration, IT experts should define exactly what services they’ll be migrating, the data sequence and architecture, and then decide how to execute these processes. The planning phase is one of the most crucial analyses to execute a successful and sustainable transition to be communicated across the organization and its stakeholders.

6. Continuously test to avoid excessive downtime. Although migrating to cloud services represents more flexibility for companies within their IT management, it can as easily indicate site delays and downtimes. Like with implementing any new process, cloud experts should continuously test their site speed and overall performance to avoid any potential impacts.

Switching to cloud means businesses have a greater ability to scale up or down based on their IT requirements and plan. This translates to the need for continuous improvement in their infrastructure that can only be tracked and measured through regular tests. These agile practices can be particularly useful to advance a fail-fast, learn-fast culture.

7. Cloud bursting for instant scalability. Cloud bursting embodies the dynamic deployment of various applications usually running on a private cloud into a public cloud to expand capacity and utilize public cloud resources when needed. One of the biggest benefits of automatically upgrading this infrastructure is that it is on-demand, and IT teams can increase their resources to handle peak demands and then downgrade them again when they’re no longer required.

8. Monitor usage on a daily basis. The whole purpose of cloud management is to easily accommodate the increasing volume and type of network traffic an application generates. For this, monitoring and analyzing the current network and its behavior makes it possible to perceive value conveyed in the migration and spot any bottlenecks in time to efficiently resolve them.

9. Re-train the staff. Upon switching to cloud services, proper training and support are needed to navigate the new infrastructure. This step must be considered in the migration strategy to avoid any delays and otherwise error-prone manual processes. Cloud experts are essential to ensure optimal performance and resource utilization and for a seamless transition into the migration process itself. It’s highly recommended that this particular cloud expertise is outsourced if it’s not present within IT teams to help lead the migration and make the collaboration as seamless as possible.

10. Define performance baselines. The key behind a successful cloud migration is in-depth planning to baseline performance and continuous evaluation throughout the whole process. To witness categorical improvements from pre-migration status, organizations must define clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).

The KPIs established must outline the improvements expected with cloud migration and allow for a clear overview of the overall performance, making it easier for leaders to determine if they’ll require additional resources as their operations scale. Some common KPIs include average response time, peak response time, CPU utilization and memory utilization – all of which help evaluate performance to track both pre- and post-migration status. 

With the popularity of cloud migration rising, there’s constant pressure on enterprises across industries to transform their business and enhance customer experiences. Equipped with these 10 tips, businesses can confidently leverage the power of cloud management in their companies. Solutions such as bringing in a team of cloud architects and constantly monitoring and scaling for continuous improvement can give businesses the push in the right direction to gain a competitive edge and reach their digital transformation aspirations.