By Dennis Oiro

Top 8 Factors to Consider Before Adopting Cloud Computing For Your Business

With cloud computing, businesses of all types and sizes enjoy a host of benefits such as efficiency, scalability, and economy. This allows them to perform their business functions efficiently and quickly. However, shifting to cloud computing is a huge step, and businesses should never be in a hurry to migrate without proper evaluation and planning. Here are several factors that companies need before adopting cloud computing. 

Business Goals

Organizations need to know the business goals they will achieve when they migrate to cloud computing. You need to carry out a risk-benefit analysis that will enable you to understand your company's purpose in moving to the cloud and how this aligns with your strategic growth. For instance, you need to know whether technologies supported by the cloud are compatible with the systems and applications already being used in your company. In addition, you need to know the type of disruption such a transition will have on your business. 

Cloud Computing Security Concerns

 Every business is responsible for its clients and their own confidential and valuable data. Therefore, you must be confident that your data is secure and know where it is. Data security's the primary concern for some industries such as finance, healthcare, and legal sectors. This is because company data is critical and must be secured at all times. Therefore, before adopting cloud solutions, businesses must prepare their security wall to guarantee the safety of their data. 

Impact on Your Business

It would be best to conduct a business impact analysis of cloud computing to evaluate how its adoption will affect your business. It is recommended to start with a cloud application that your business is not highly dependent on. It would be best if you planned first by putting the less critical aspects of your business on the cloud application to get firsthand experience. For instance, you can start with departmental applications, intranets, and email servers first. 

Cloud Computing Infrastructure 

Additionally, companies should create a solid infrastructure on the secure, scalable, and reliable cloud to any amount. This is important because selecting the wrong framework will influence the entire framework and cost your business more money than your stipulated budget. Furthermore, if you do not adjust your development plans, you may end up with a computing infrastructure that does not meet your future needs. 

Select The Right Model of Cloud Computing

Businesses need to determine the best model of cloud computing that suits their applications. In general, there are three main models Public, Private, and Hybrid models. The public model shares resources across the company departments, making it cheap, and it lowers the expenses to a certain extent. However, the public model may breach your security and harm your business. In contrast, the Private cloud tends to be more secure, and the infrastructure resources are restricted to one organization only. Therefore, before you choose the suitable cloud computing model, ensure that you examine the goals and needs of your organization, including the skills you have. 

Disaster Recovery Solutions

Before migrating to cloud solutions, businesses need to implement effective disaster recovery solutions. Choosing to migrate to and actualizing cloud innovation does not mean that organizations can alleviate themselves from the responsibility of backing up their data. You need to have a backup strategy that will come in handy if your preferred cloud computing system experiences downtime or faces a disaster. 

To guarantee business continuity, clients and employees must have access to company data still. In addition, for any downtime, organizations must know what an outage constitutes and when fiscal penalties need to take effect. 

Complexity

Businesses should avoid starting with complex cloud computing architecture systems. You do not need a system that has multiple points that need integration between several applications. In addition, you need a cloud computing system that is easy to use by your employees or clients. You will lose lots of money and business time if your cloud computing system requires hours of training for your employees to use it effectively. 

Find the Best Cloud Computing Provider

If you believe that cloud migration is beneficial to your business, you need to find the best cloud provider. When you look at your business needs, you will notice that different applications have distinct requirements. This is why most businesses choose a hybrid, multi-clod approach involving a range of public cloud, private cloud, and SaaS providers. To determine the specific solution that would work for your business, you should conduct due diligence. When choosing a provider, focus on essential characteristics like experience, technical competency, market leadership, reputation, customer satisfaction, and solutions for handling patches and updates.

Adopting cloud computing solutions for your business is not a one-off decision that should be made in isolation. This migration has company-wide, short-term, and long-term implications. Implementing cloud computing solutions may be pretty straightforward. However, migrating without proper planning and preparation can be very disastrous for your organization. If you consider the factors mentioned above, you will make a sound choice and enjoy a seamless adoption of cloud computing solutions.