As lots of organizations are increasingly adopting cloud for their business operations, many are wondering if they should make the switch. For small businesses, cloud migration can provide several benefits including increased flexibility, scalability, and agility. For larger businesses, however, it can help to improve operational efficiency as well as reduce costs by getting rid of the need to invest in expensive traditional on-premises hardware and software. Many businesses now use cloud-based solutions for a variety of tasks, from emails, compute capacity, databases and storage to CRM and accounting, opening up new opportunities for the development of innovative applications and services.
In deciding whether or not to migrate an organization’s business operations to the cloud, several things need to be considered before making the move. The business requirements driving the move, a cloud migration plan defining objectives and goals and an assessment of the current infrastructure and its compatibility with a cloud environment are all essential points to consider before migration. Also considering the type of workloads the organization is presently running and whether or not they are suited for the cloud will be a huge factor in determining if migration will be cost-effective in the long run. Another important thing to consider is the cloud deployment model and choice of a cloud provider. Based on where the infrastructure of the migration or deployment will reside, organizations can select their type of model and a corresponding cloud provider that meets their need. There are 4 cloud deployment models associated with cloud computing, the public cloud model with providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. The private cloud model with cloud providers like IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle. Both public and private models are the most popular deployment models, with AWS considered the most widely used and leader in the public cloud provider space. Other deployment models include hybrid and multi-cloud deployment models
When migrating to the cloud, it is important to consider protection measures and the security implications of moving data and applications to an off-site location. The risk of data loss can be high during the migration process therefore security and data protection need to be maintained and taken seriously. Depending on the industry, compliance and regulatory requirements can apply to the transfer and migration of data and applications, so understanding the industry storage, backup, encryption and transfer requirements is key to ensuring compliance with the relevant regulatory bodies.
From the assessment of current business infrastructure and its compatibility with the cloud, businesses can understand what they have in terms of applications and data content, and their current and future usability. Cloud migration and data management tools can help understand these data contents, and so migration can also be leveraged as an opportunity to clean up redundant and unnecessary data taking up massive storage space. Restriction of data access to authorized personnel during the migration process also helps in ensuring security and data protection.
Migration to the cloud should be performed in phases, this ensures the security and team familiarization with the cloud systems. By starting migration with low-priority data, configuration tests can be carried out and security gaps checked before moving to critical and high-risk data. One key important step is the encryption of data while at rest and in transit. Data in transit is highly vulnerable to theft and attacks, encrypting data will prevent unauthorized access in the event it is intercepted in transit when exposed to the internet so using secure transport protocols like HTTPS will ensure data protection.
For most businesses, cost savings, increased flexibility, scalability and security are the major reasons for migration. Cloud providers offer a pay-as-you-go model for cloud-based solutions, services and resources to customers, making it easy for businesses to automate and adjust cloud usage in other to accommodate growth and changing needs. Organization-wide collaboration is also a huge benefit of cloud migration. With applications and data stored in the cloud, employees and team members can work together on projects, share files, access software from anywhere at any time and stay up-to-date on the latest information.
The time has never been better for businesses to make the move to the cloud. Making the switch may seem like a daunting task, especially for larger organizations with huge amounts of data and applications. By taking things a step at a time and enlisting the services of experts, migration can be made with ease and peace of mind, leading to major long-term benefits.
For Further reading:
https://acloudguru.com/blog/business/what-is-cloud-migration
https://www.alliantcybersecurity.com/data-security-tips-cloud-migration-process/