Are You Behind on Cloud Migration?

The cloud is quickly becoming the standard for IT operations. However, concerns over costs, disruption, control and security still keep some businesses from making that transition. While you shouldn’t embrace a technology simply because others are, it’s important to ask if and why you’re behind on cloud migration.

As many as 94% of global organizations use at least one cloud, though some rely on it more heavily than others. If you’re one of the businesses still using on-premise solutions for the bulk of your IT workloads, it’s worth considering why. As cloud adoption has soared, its benefits have become increasingly clear. Here’s a look at these advantages and how you can capitalize on them.

On-premise solutions have some reliability advantages in some cases and place more control in your hands. However, in many situations, the cloud’s benefits outweigh those of conventional computing. Here are a few of the most significant.

Accessibility

One of cloud migration's most substantial and well-known advantages is improved accessibility. By moving resources and workflows to the cloud, you can access them from anywhere. That accessibility enables easier sharing and collaboration, especially for remote and hybrid teams.

Remote work is becoming a standard in some industries, with 58% of American workers being able to work from home at least once a week. Many remote employees also report higher productivity and job satisfaction. If you want to capitalize on those benefits, you need to make work resources available from anywhere, which means moving to the cloud.

Scalability and Cost

Cloud migration can also improve scalability. Because you don’t have to implement extra resources yourself in a cloud setup, you can scale up far faster. This flexibility lets you accommodate new growth without disruption affecting your existing customers, who represent the most profitable source of revenue in most companies. Similarly, you can scale down without ending up with surplus equipment.

That scalability also means that cloud environments are often more cost-effective. In a cloud arrangement, you pay for capacity and services by your usage. That way, you get everything you need but don’t have to pay for anything you don’t.

Security

One of the things holding many companies back from cloud migration is security concerns. While cloud services are becoming a more popular target for cybercriminals, the idea that the cloud is less secure than on-premise solutions is a misconception. Securing the cloud does look different than securing on-prem alternatives, but it can actually provide several security benefits.

Most notably, when you use a cloud vendor, you offload some of the responsibility for security. You can take advantage of your vendor’s cutting-edge security systems and larger response teams that you may not be able to match on your own. Because the cloud helps consolidate your data and boosts transparency, it also makes it easier to see and patch vulnerabilities.

These benefits highlight that if you’re behind on cloud migration, it’s time to start the transition. However, your caution isn’t a bad thing. Effective cloud migration requires careful planning and implementation.

First, you should review your current system, what you like about it and what you wish was better. Your answers will help you set goals and narrow down your ideal cloud vendor, looking for those with features and specialties that meet your needs. It’s also important to review cloud vendors carefully to ensure they meet high security and availability standards.

Next, make sure you understand what each of your applications needs. Failing to understand the workloads you need to migrate is one of the most common mistakes in cloud migration. Take the time to learn each process’s dependencies, network needs and potential pitfalls so you can decide when and how best to move them to the cloud.

Once you have a plan in place, set benchmarks for relevant KPIs for your goals and start small. Move one or two applications to the cloud and monitor their performance along the same KPIs. This analysis will let you see what worked and what went wrong, helping you improve future migration projects.

Cloud migration can be intimidating, but its benefits are hard to overlook. As more of your competition moves to the cloud, you may fall behind if you wait too long to start this journey. Once you know what you need and what you stand to gain, you can plan an effective, cost-efficient migration to make the most of this technology.