In 2020, Forbes in its article listed the top 25 technological trends that will define this decade. Cloud computing was 7th on that list. But many of us are still not quite sure what IS the cloud.
Most of us are used to the concept of walking into an office where an IT department looks after the in-house infrastructure, servers, power, cables, security, the laptop and all the software needed to do the job.
But let us say, you are in a healthcare profession at private practice – what kind of IT equipment and support you may need to do your job? Probably a monitor or laptop, a way to see and update your patient details; a way to record your time in the practice, telephone or maybe even a video option to have a conversation with your patient.
None of these services is required to be in the practice of surgery for you to care for your patient. But these services may improve the quality of the service you provide and make your operation processes a little bit more organised. And these non-essential services can all be moved away from on-premise (in this case, healthcare practice) to the cloud.
What is Cloud computing?
Cloud computing is defined as “the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user”.
Cloud has enabled users to share information and services across different devices and different location purely by using the internet. Sadly, a pandemic had to bring the notice of cloud technologies and their benefits to the forefront of many businesses who still carried on with the legacy services. So when a business decides to move to the cloud, what should you be aware of that could derail your plan for the migration? This article talks exactly about the various challenges that businesses need to focus on when undertaking the cloud migration journey.
Migration Strategy
As a company, the business case of moving to the cloud is stacked in the favour and the decision has been made to move to the cloud. It is vitally important to have the migration strategy discussed and nailed out. A very important strategy that often gets overlooked is the training of employees in the new environment. Make sure you incorporate a user workshop in your short-listed cloud environments. This helps to narrow your choice as well as to lay the foundation of a successful migration. Instead of dumping an environment to your employees, get them involved in selecting one. The strategy should also include process mapping, estimated downtime, projected cost analysis, scalability of the platform as well as the overall time taken to complete the migration from a cross-functional team.
Prioritise Migration
At this point, your cloud software or software’s are chosen. It is important to consider breaking the migration into stages. One of the mistakes commonly undertaken is to migrate all applications at once. Doing so makes the transition difficult and time-consuming. Always attempt to migrate non-critical applications first and then move to complex and critical applications. It becomes easier to resolve issues if the phased migration of application strategy is used.
Data Migration
Now that you have a plan and a priority list of applications to migrate, the most critical aspect of the application migration is the migration of the data. Just like it is important to prioritise which applications need to move first, it is important to prioritise which data within an application needs to move first. This will help mitigate the risk of accidental mistakes that could erase, corrupt, or insecure your data. Most cloud providers operate on a “pay as you go model”, and the more space you use the bigger the invoice. Thus, it is a good time to remove redundant data and have a process that regularly looks to remove redundant data. Reconciliation should not only be part of your data migration process but also feature in post-migration and checkpoint stages.
Security
Security is the biggest barrier when it comes to cloud adoption and rightfully so. Be aware of dual security obligations. Your security practices must change when you move to the cloud. Apart from keeping your house in order, make sure the provider you choose to go with has all the necessary compliance in place. You are essentially trusting your provider with your organisation's data, so you need to be completely aware of the provider's security practices, and how they encrypt incoming and outgoing data.
Business continuity
This should be covered in detail as you plan the cloud strategy but while the process of migration is kicked off, your IT department will be facing a multitude of issues from application errors, performance errors to security issues, all of which will impact business continuity. Your DR process at the very least should align with that of the cloud providers. Therefore, support arrangements need to be made during and post-migration from the cloud providers.
About the author: Sarbani Bose is a Managing Director of ei² niche consulting for #data #insights #performance www.eisquare.co.uk
Editor: Aleksandra Pavlovic
To conclude, adopting cloud technology gives a powerful advantage to businesses to focus their efforts and resources on their own service offerings. However, if migration to the cloud is done in a haste, it may significantly damage the business and leaves a deeper hole in the pocket than initially envisaged along with all the annoyance and frustrations of a weak foundation. Therefore, it is extremely important to have a thorough and outlined migration strategy and plan before conducting the migration process which should also cover the data migration process, security regulations and policies you wish to apply as well as an arrangement of supportive services to your business during and post-migration.