Some businesses are already on the cloud, but migrating to the cloud entirely is a whole new ball game. Moving an entire business to cloud can become a full-fledged nightmare if not handled by a team of experts. Please note the not-so-subtle addition of the word – Team. Cloud migration is not something that one person can do without the entire system comes crashing down. There are numerous roles to be filled and countless decisions to be made. Join us as we explore who does what and how during a cloud migration.
Top decisions to be made and meet the makers:
Business Impact and Expectations: Decisions taken by the top management based on recommendations by the CIO’s team
Is the application that you are moving to the cloud critical for business? Can you handle the outage? Is it the money spinner? If yes, take it slow and move the less-impact functions first, like the internal ERP or departmental ops management tools. Move on to email and then the eCommerce elements.
Investment In Architecture & Technology: This is a long-term decision made primarily by the IT department.
What is the budget a company can afford to expend on Cloud Architecture? Can the company afford Public or Private Cloud? And if you are looking at a combination – Hybrid Cloud, can you afford the complexity?
Sustainability and Maintenance: This long-term decision is taken by the CIO, along with budgetary recommendations from the CFO.
And even if you hire an external team for migration but decide to keep the maintenance in-house, can the team manage 24/7 real-time upkeep? After all, everything that can go wrong in Cloud-based applications happens in real-time and needs a speedy turnaround. Can the in-house team handle it? And is the current vendor’s cloud model expensive to move out of if the relationship does not work out?
The CIO takes this long-term decision along with budgetary recommendations from the CFO. Both parties play an equally important role as they are most aware of the technical and long-term sustainability implications.
Testing and Production: Determined by the Cloud Experts based on a testing or production environment behavior.
There are numerous points to consider, like licenses, performance, response time, number of users at any given time, transactions per minute, workloads, peak timings, and more. All of these factors are affected based on what cloud type the business decides to use.
Cloud migration can be costly or cost-effective. There are numerous decisions before here and then. And the best recommendation we can give is to hire a reliable vendor – an experienced team. Having individual cloud experts working on each function will only add to the costs and confusion regarding execution. Hire a trusted vendor and outsource your cloud computing needs. Contact us for a free consultation.
[Read Next: Best Practices To Revamp Your Cloud Migration Strategy]
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