In recent years, there has been a lot of buzz surrounding cloud computing and how it can benefit businesses, such as the cost savings and flexibility of being able to work from anywhere. Even if businesses want to make the transition, the endless options attached to it can seem overwhelming. Decisions such as which cloud platform businesses should use, what aspects of a business’s infrastructure should migrate over to the cloud, and the exact process that will be used to control the migration are all things that need to be considered.
In other words, every detail needs to be planned and executed perfectly. Here are some ideas on how to insure a smooth migration over to the cloud:
Develop a Strategy
No business can transition to the cloud successfully without having a detailed transition strategy. Too often, businesses execute cloud migration long before they’re ready. At this stage, companies should list the data, apps, and workloads that will make the transition to the cloud. It is also a good idea at this stage to outline any potential challenges that may be faced during the transition in order to plan for them.
Another thing to consider as part of the planning phase is that the migration shouldn’t interrupt a company’s daily activities. At the very least, this interruption should be minimized as best as possible. The company’s IT department or managed IT service provider can help not only plan and execute the cloud migration, but also insure that the daily operations are minimally interrupt.
Execute the Strategy
Once the plan is developed, the next step is to execute it. The IT department of managed IT service provider will help insure that the process is as smooth as possible. Even while following a well-designed plan, kinks can still occur. Typically, non-essential items should be moved to the cloud first. Essential applications, such as email and data storage, should transition to the cloud during off-peak hours.
Once the transition is complete, the IT department should check to make sure that everything was moved correctly and that the same information can be easily accessed in the cloud as it was when the company used the on-premise exchange as an example. If the transition was done correctly, employees won’t even notice the difference. The key is to make sure that the data itself was moved 100% accurately from the on-premise exchange to the cloud. To do this, the company’s IT department or a managed IT provider needs to monitor the transition every step of the way.
Business of all sizes can take advantage of the many benefits that the cloud has to offer. However, in order to allow these benefits to be fully realized, the migration from an on-premise exchange to the cloud needs to be as smooth as possible. This takes advanced planning, knowledge, and a focused effort to make sure that all data components were migrated effectively.
