6 Questions You Should Ask Before Migrating Your Business to the Cloud
You could avoid damaging your org in a failed cloud migration by looking for these signs. So you’re planning to move to the cloud.
You don't want your organization to be yet another failed cloud migration, do you? Here are the signs to look out for.
6 QUESTIONS THAT CAN HELP AVOID CLOUD MIGRATION MISTAKES
- Why are you moving to the cloud?
- What is your cloud play?
- What are your expectations?
- How have you solved the competency gap?
- What is the plan for your business applications?
- How are you going to manage your cloud assets?
By answering these questions, you can improve your odds of success with cloud migration.
Why are you moving to the cloud?
What are the benefits you expect to derive from your move to the cloud? Are you looking for the scalability of the cloud?
Without a clear definition of success, it will be difficult to gauge whether or not a move to the cloud is the right decision.
What Is Your Cloud Play?
The term "cloud" is used to describe a wide range of architectures and capabilities. From an infrastructure perspective, are you looking to use the cloud to supplement your data center or replace it entirely (i.e. a hybrid cloud)? Would you feel comfortable living in a multi-tenant, shared cloud environment?
Would you like to get rid of data center facilities and equipment but manage everything else (i.e. infrastructure-as-a-service)?
What are the compliance standards for your industry? Have you done your due diligence, and is your CIO in alignment with the rest of the executive suite regarding these questions?
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What are your expectations?
The cloud provides a variety of architectures, from very reliable to very simple. What are your expectations for measures such as performance, availability, recoverability, continuity, security, and compliance?
How Have You Solved the Competency Gap?
If you want to make the most of the cloud, your IT team needs to be on board. Here's what to keep in mind. The days of buying excessive compute and storage capabilities to accommodate expected growth and peak periods are gone. It's time to change our mindset about the cloud.
How do you plan on acquiring the cloud competencies necessary for success, given that the environment is constantly changing?
What is the plan for your business applications?
Building a foundation of infrastructure using the cloud can be complicated. Migrating business applications adds another layer of complexity. If you want to move your legacy applications to the cloud, we can help you with that. Are you looking to gain the full set of benefits available through a complete overhaul of your application architectures?
If you want to re-structure, do you have the necessary DevOps and container skills? Or do you need to develop or acquire them?
How are you going to manage your cloud assets?
Although it may be tempting to believe that a shift to the cloud will absolve your organization of information technology responsibilities, this is unfortunately not the truth.
For example, the organization often retains ownership of patch management, antivirus and antimalware protection, security monitoring, disaster recovery testing, and other core responsibilities.
In addition to these conventional responsibilities, a transition to the cloud entails new expenditure management and governance responsibilities. It is not uncommon for organizations to be surprised by how much their cloud invoices have increased from one month to the next, due to changes in usage patterns. Will you create a roles and responsibilities matrix for the future state of your information technology organization?
Migrating to the cloud can be challenging, but it is by no means impossible. Having clear answers to these questions - that are agreed upon by everyone in the organization - can simplify your cloud journey and improve your chances of success.
