Five Best Practices for Migrating to the Cloud Successfully

A study in 2015 revealed that organizations that find top Cloud companies to embrace the disruptive technology witness 53% higher revenue rate than the laggards. Moving to the Cloud has become the rule of the game and organizations are taking the plunge to reap the various benefits of Cloud.

Similar to any software project, Cloud migration also has its own set of challenges and demands careful planning. Read on to find out some of the best practices of Cloud migration that can help tackle challenges efficiently.

Choose the right applications to be moved to the Cloud

Not all applications are good for the Cloud. For instance, applications that have higher data gravity demand a lot of data replication while being migrated to the Cloud. Some applications may involve security risks or compliance issues once they are moved out of the organization’s premises. Thus, the true value derived from moving an application to the Cloud must be used to prioritize the applications.

Map application dependencies before migration

An application may be connected to a number of other applications, touch the organizational data at various points or maybe too dependent on old hardware. This case of complexity usually arises with larger enterprises where such high dependencies are common. In such cases, the organization must consider the value of re-architecting these applications against the benefits of moving them into the Cloud. This may involve the use of migration tools and techniques and is bound to make the process longer and more arduous.

Address the governance and management requirements

The need to focus on Cloud governance starts from the migration phase as complexities increase after entering into the production stage and this especially true while moving to the hybrid Cloud. Also, retrofitted governance measures are less effective and expensive too. Organizations must invest in the right automated governance tools to keep the chances of migration failure to the minimum.

Prepare your resources for Cloud

Migrating to the Cloud causes a gap in the operational culture of the organization and when left unnoticed, it can have a strong impact on the pace of the migration process. To clear off this complexity, organizations must prepare their internal team with the skills and the mindset to manage applications in the Cloud. Also, since Data Center professionals are more prone to over-provisioning applications in the Cloud, right sizing applications is essential to keep costs under control.

Be prepared for post-migration changes

Some applications, after moving into the Cloud, reveal dependencies that were not obvious earlier. In such cases, organizations must be open to modifications. A phased approach for migration to the Cloud is therefore recommended by experts.

Lack of proper planning is often the reason behind migration failures. Most organizations believe that the mission is accomplished when they find top Cloud companies. However, this is only the start to a long journey and organizations must take the responsibility of working closely with the provider to ensure maximum success.

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