There are many advantages to migrating your office applications to the cloud. It improves operational performance and agility, security, and workload scalability. Businesses can migrate workloads from virtually any source and begin to experience the following hybrid cloud benefits:
. Improved agility with IT resources on-demand - enabling your business to scale during seasonal usage patterns and unexpected surges.
. Enhanced security throughout the stack with various options - from networking and physical hardware to people and software.
. Reduced capital expenditure - this becomes possible when you shift from an operating expenses model to a pay-as-you-go model.
Before you begin to migrate application to cloud, you should have a clear understanding of what's involved in it. Here are 6 steps to migrate your applications to the cloud.
1. Develop a strategy
You should have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish before you begin the journey to the cloud. First, capture the baseline metrics of your IT infrastructure in order to map workloads to your applications. Knowing where you stand right now will help establish your cloud migration key performance indicators (KPIs) including response times, page load times, CPU usage, availability, conversion rates, and memory usage. Strategy development needs to be done early in order to prioritize business objectives over technology. In fact, these metrics help enable measurements across a number of categories.
2. Identify the right applications
Not all office applications are cloud-friendly. In fact, some applications will perform better on private or hybrid clouds compared to a public cloud. Some of your apps may require minor tweaking while others may require in-depth code changes. You should perform a full analysis of complexity, architecture, and implementation before the migration rather than after the process. Here are some questions to keep in mind as you analyze which applications should be moved to the cloud:
. Which apps require a redesign while which ones can I move as-is?
. If I need to redesign an app, what level of complexity is required?
. What is the ROI for each app you plan to move and how long will it take to achieve it?
. Does the cloud service offer services to allow app migration without reconfiguring workloads?
. For apps that are cost-effective and secure to move, which type of cloud environment is best? Public, private, or multi-cloud?
A thorough analysis of app architecture will help you decide which apps should be migrated.
3. Secure the right cloud provider
Selecting the right cloud provider is a key aspect of migrating your apps to the cloud. The right provider will guide you through the cloud migration process. Here are some key questions to ask when searching for the best cloud provider:
. What is your level of experience?
. Do you have the right tools - including third-party tools - to help make the process easier?
. What level of support do you provide during the migration process?
. Can you support public, private, and multi-cloud environments at any scale?
. How do you deal with inflexible architectures, complex interdependencies, or redundant and out-of-date technology?
Moving to the cloud can be complex. The cloud provider you choose should have extensive experience in managing the complicated tasks involved in migrating your apps to the cloud. They should provide service-level agreements that include milestone-based progress & results.
4. Maintain data integrity and operational continuity
Managing the risk is a critical aspect of cloud migration. In fact, sensitive data can be exposed during the process. Validating the business process post-migration is important to make sure that automated responses are producing the same outcomes without disrupting your business operations.
5. Adopt an end-to-end approach
The cloud provider should have a proven technique to handle every aspect of the cloud migration process. It should include techniques to manage complicated transactions on a global scale. All these should be spelled out in the service-level agreement (SLA). You should agree on certain milestones for progress and results.
6. Execute your cloud migration
Once you follow the previous steps successfully, the last step shouldn't be difficult. But the process will mostly depend on the architecture and complexity of your apps. In fact, you can move an entire application over and run a test to see if it works. On the other hand, you can go step by step by moving the customers over, validating, and continuing the process until the rest of your apps are moved to the cloud.
