5 Key Considerations for Choosing a Cloud Migration Strategy
In today’s competitive business landscape, migrating to the cloud has become crucial for organizations wanting to meet the expectations of tech-savvy consumers.
Yet cloud migration isn’t easy, even for experienced cloud professionals. Using the wrong approach or toolset can lead to downtime, data loss or other severe consequences.
That’s why WWT recommends a cloud-smart approach to cloud migration. One that identifies the right migration strategy and delivers an actionable roadmap to fast-track digital transformation initiatives — from nascent solutioning through deployment and management.
Once a cloud migration roadmap is built and any lingering misconceptions about cloud are clarified, your organization will be one step closer to realizing the unmatched flexibility, scalability and innovation that cloud computing can deliver across a myriad of use cases.
To better design cloud migration roadmaps, we recommend business leaders keep these five things in mind when weighing different migration strategies and options.
It’s important for business leaders to identify the specific outcomes they wish to achieve from cloud migration — whether related to cost savings, speed and agility, or unlocking innovation capabilities. Then they should determine how success will be measured by establishing key performance indicators (KPIs).
The right migration strategy for your business will depend on several factors:
These factors can greatly influence which migration strategy will be most effective. For example, a strategy that works well for small and medium businesses is unlikely to work as well for large enterprises whose applications span multiple departments.
Information security, data management and asset management capabilities are all important considerations in choosing a cloud migration strategy. Companies that routinely handle sensitive personal, corporate and government data need to abide by countless regulations. For such companies, the right cloud migration strategy should mitigate their risk posture and complement existing regulatory compliance protocols.
Data security also plays a major role in choosing a cloud provider or platform. It’s necessary for organizations to assess the maturity of a prospective service provider’s security operations and governance processes, particularly with respect to:
Migrating data and workloads to the cloud requires IT personnel with hands-on experience in key areas, such as:
Unfortunately, few companies employ IT personnel with the right skills, expertise, technical know-how and tools needed to successfully perform cloud migrations on their own.
In most cases, we recommend finding a trusted technology partner experienced in multicloud strategy, migration and optimization to plan and execute your cloud initiatives. This partner should have strong partnerships with the leading cloud service providers and employ best practices and lessons learned from past successful projects.
The success of any cloud migration is ultimately measured by user adoption. That means the digital proficiency of employees who will use the new cloud instances should influence your choice of migration strategy.
