With most organizations unexpectedly thrust into the remote work scene all of a sudden, the popularity of cloud environments has been at an all-time high. While cloud enables an anywhere and anytime kind of access, allowing businesses to function efficiently even in the post-pandemic era, it has also helped businesses see other upsides to it: cost and process streamlining to name a few.
Migrating an entire organization’s data to the cloud is not an easy task. Despite careful considerations and strategic planning initiatives, leaders often are blindsided by unexpected pitfalls that affect their overall business.
Here are 5 best practices to ensure your cloud migration happens without any unforeseen complications.
Plan, plan and plan some more
Of course, no organization would embark on a cloud migration journey without planning its budget. But what companies often fail to account for is their future needs, the maintenance costs for the infrastructure, application modernization requirements, and the price variations between different cloud environments. When they’re hit with sudden costs that they previously thought didn’t exist, organizations hit a roadblock.
It is therefore very important to figure out which cloud solution—public, private, hybrid and multi-cloud—suits your organizational needs and meets your budget.
The road not taken might be your right approach
Your organization is unique and therefore your migration strategy must also be unique. Simply “lifting and shifting” data is not what cloud migration is about. Many on-premise applications might not function efficiently after rehosting. This might become a huge bottleneck, especially when major departments are dependent on malfunctioning applications. No organization wants to deal with IT downtimes, especially after they’ve migrated to the cloud. This will also strain the budget when application modernization requirements arise.
Run a discovery and assessment of all the applications and plan your cloud migration approach: rehosting, re-platforming, refactoring or a mix of all these.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork
It’s common for even the technology workforce to experience digital disdain. Involve your workforce, listen to their apprehensions, provide thorough training and give them enough time to get acquainted with the new system. Involving them after the migration is entirely complete could become a very costly mistake.
This also applies if you choose to seek help from an external team for the migration. Form a team with members from both the migration partner and your workforce. Create a checklist, assign ownerships and streamline the process. Choose the right partner with proven experience in migrating for a company of your scale.
Take one safe step at a time
Another big mistake organizations tend to make is not taking it slow. Create a checklist to not miss anything and follow it strictly. Set goals, prepare for worst-case scenarios, break the process down into stages, and start with smaller departments such as HR or marketing that have the least business impact. This will help you identify potential issues that could occur later when the important datasets are migrated.
Measure your success
Ideally, measuring your success should be your first and your last step in your migration journey. In the first step, you will create a vision of how this migration will positively impact your business and outline your expectations. Once the migration is complete, measure the performance of your applications and business units and see where you stand.
On a side note, documenting this success could also come in handy when you have to convince your stakeholders when you embark on more technology adoption projects.
Cloud is here, and it is here to stay
And that’s a good thing because it helps organizations of all sizes to leverage the best of technologies and make their business thrive better. Now it’s up to us to take the big step.
