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    By Shane Britt (Shells™)February 24th 2021

    When making your choice, the most critical and often most complex consideration is to understand exactly what the organization in question is trying to achieve with its migration to the cloud.

    According to Gartner, the global public cloud market is expected to grow by more than six percent this year to a total of $257.9 billion. At the same time, more than $1.3 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the move to the cloud by 2022. Against this backdrop, organizations need to keep in mind a few things that will help ensure a successful migration to the cloud.

    It is necessary to know what one wants to achieve with the cloud. There are many solutions that impact the way the enterprise will be able to adopt HPC capabilities such as AI, machine learning, or RPA (Robotic Process Automation). When making a choice, the most critical and often most complex consideration is to understand exactly what the organization in question is trying to achieve with its migration to the cloud.

    Why make the leap?

    There are several reasons why a company might consider a migration to the cloud. In the current difficult economic climate caused by the pandemic, one of the main reasons is to reduce IT infrastructure costs. The cloud allows an organization to efficiently manage its IT resources according to its needs.

    Its scalability guarantees that the enterprise can adapt in real-time to market changes, and thus reduce its financial burden.

    An essential first step is to assess the existing infrastructure and readiness. Understanding your infrastructure environment and the impact that the introduction of the cloud would have on it will enable you to select the solutions best suited to your needs. It is also essential to understand how the adoption of the cloud computing model will require the reconfiguration of many existing processes and systems.

    Too often, organizations are forced to adopt the latest technology trends. As a result, they rush blindly to implement them without considering the business case or fully understanding the consequences of doing so. Planning the transition to the cloud is therefore essential. A solid cloud migration plan will define the process, its duration, and data migration priorities.

    Understanding your migration plan

    A plan (or roadmap) provides direction, discipline, and accountability for a complex process. For example, by asking questions such as: what applications need to be migrated, how does the shared responsibility model apply to cybersecurity initiatives, and what role should internal data specialists play in minimizing operational disruption?

    Key elements of an effective cloud migration plan include identifying which workloads need to be moved and why.

    The organization must also take the time to define the metrics that will help evaluate the success of cloud migration. Planning is one thing, transitioning is another, but demonstrating the benefits is essential to convince stakeholders that migration has brought value.

    Defining Cloud Migration

    Let's take a step back and make sure we understand exactly what we mean by "migration to the cloud". It can be defined as the process of relocating an organization's data, applications, and workloads to infrastructure in the cloud. An organization may decide to place all of its IT assets in the cloud or keep certain applications and services on-site.

    Migration may also involve one or more clouds - some public, some private. Many organizations use multiple clouds, often a mix of public and private, also known as a hybrid cloud. Moving to the hybrid cloud can improve scalability and control and allow the enterprise to leverage the various strengths of their service provider’s offers. 

    The benefits of the cloud

    Whatever the reasons for moving to the cloud, there are several benefits that go beyond cost-effectiveness and scalability. One of the most critical aspects of migration is security. Leading vendors offer some of the most secure environments and comply with industry standards and government regulations. Cloud-specific security solutions, best practices, and policies are regularly maintained by the vendors themselves.

    Similarly, migration to the cloud enables an organization to adopt new technologies more quickly, making modernization much more efficient and therefore digital transformation simpler.

    Tools to consider

    Each cloud service provider offers its own terminologies, solutions, and ways to configure services. This results in the introduction of unique databases, ETL (extract, transform, load) procedures for copying data from one source to another, etc. It is therefore not surprising that decision-making is a complex process, even for the most experienced CIO.

    Choosing the right tool, therefore, depends heavily on the choice of the cloud service provider. And if the company is looking to adopt a multi-cloud environment, it will be vital to ensure the right configuration between them.

    The year 2020 has highlighted the importance of digital transformation to enable employees to work remotely and access cloud-based solutions. If organizations have not yet taken action, or if they need to do so on a larger scale, 2021 is the time, otherwise they risk losing agility and/or compromising business continuity.
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