Complete checklist to help you with a successful cloud migration

• Md. Shahnawaz Israil

It is obviously a tempting proposition to move in the cloud. Which business wouldn’t like to expand the functionalities and capabilities of their existing infrastructure? If businesses move in the cloud, they can save cost and enhance productivity with the ability to access data from anywhere and anytime.  It is believed that an organization can breathe new life into their IT portfolio with moving to a more agile environment that cloud computing can enable.

Once you decide to move in the cloud, you must list all the compelling business reasons. Migrating in the cloud is a great decision as it can take your business and applications to the next level, and alleviate all your infrastructure concerns. However, cloud migration can go wrong if there’s no proper planning, execution or testing.

You might have an endless list of questions related to cloud migration. How to select the right cloud services provider? What are the applications that you can migrate in the cloud? What is the best approach to migrate? Will the cloud hosting provider be able to manage your capacity demands? Will there be any gaps even after you migrate your data and application in the cloud? Is the cloud secure?

We have collated a cloud migration checklist that can help you identify your requirements better and the list is helpful for all kinds of businesses. These are related to business and technology aspects and cloud hosting provider.

Image Source: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/08/26/15/54/checklist-1622517_960_720.png

Business Aspects

• Determine the objectives of cloud migration and prioritize each of these objectives. For example, do you wish to achieve scalability, efficiencies with the help of consolidation of services, cost savings and better customer experience.
• Develop use cases for example, how do you expect customer experience to improve after cloud migration?
• What are the biggest impediments in achieving these objectives in the current situation? For example, high capital expenditure or lack of internal resources
• List down the major roadblocks to migration for example, the internal teams that will be impacted and the business practices that will be affected?
• List the platforms, infrastructure and services that you intend to move in the cloud.

Technology Aspects

• List down the services of the cloud hosting provider that you intend to use. For example, Platform/dedicated hosting (PaaS) and Managed hosting and software services (SaaS)
• Evaluate if you need dedicated servers or VM environment?
• Determine the storage that you will need.
• Prepare a list of software and services that you use at present.
• Evaluate if the applications that you intend to move have been optimized for the cloud
• Assess your testing plan
• Weigh the level of customer performance required
• Consider if your hardware infrastructure must be optimized
• How will downtime be managed?

Cloud Hosting Provider

• Consider the experience of the cloud hosting provider and do they have a solid footing
• Do they have the capacity to scale up?
• Does the cloud hosting provider have any industry specialization?
• Evaluate their case studies and client references
• What are the available pricing models?
• How flexible are they on their packages?
• Will they work with you to provide a solution customized to your business?
• Are they using modern hardware?
• Evaluate the security and privacy policies of the cloud hosting provider. Assess if the cloud hosting provider can address all your concerns related to data and application security
• Assess their Disaster Recovery Plan and if they perform incremental backup for your data
• Determine if the cloud hosting provider has 24X7 support staff and a dedicated SPOC (single point of contact)

Even once you’ve migrated, you need to ensure that everything is working as expected. If you have an automated testing strategy, it can help you reach the desired goals from a cloud implementation.

It is obviously challenging to determine everything by yourself. You can take the help of an expert cloud hosting provider for an evaluation that can yield results.

AnythingCloud has worked on several cloud migration projects and can give you practical advice on the best approach to successfully move to a cloud environment.