Is your organisation considering or planning a successful cloud migration to improve cost, scalability, and mitigate cyber risks? 

So let’s jump right in – what is a cloud migration? What are the benefits? And, why should your business consider adopting the cloud?

In this post, we’ve come up with the seven advantages of cloud migration that will give you an overview of how to manage the many demands of today.

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Cloud migration is the process of moving on-premise IT systems to the cloud. This includes databases, applications, servers and networks. By doing this, businesses can scale quickly with the bonus of lowered IT costs. Creative Networks is a cloud provider that can help with this process and provide better customer journeys.

A survey by O’Reilly found that most companies are using the cloud for most applications, and the rest hope to be fully migrated to the cloud by 2025.

Cloud migration can offer many benefits to businesses, though the complexity of the migration process can vary depending on the resources used. Other factors that can affect cloud migration include remote desktops, IoT, CRM support systems, productivity software, and SD-WAN.

Public cloud hosts offer hardware with built-in maintenance, security, stack configuration, and upgrades as part of the service plan. Public cloud hosts like Microsoft, AWS, Google, and others have significantly reduced the IT costs of some of the world’s influential organisations.

What are different types of Cloud Migration?

1. Mobile/web application and data optimisation
2. Full data centre conversion
3. Migration support for business process platforms 
4. Microsoft 365, email hosting
5. Data Migration

The most common type of cloud migration is transferring mobile or web applications to the cloud architecture. Public cloud host servers have many software elements that can ease the transfer to remote hardware when it comes to databases and software apps.

Full data centre conversion is the most intricate type of cloud migration. This framework involves businesses and government entities outsourcing all their data centre hardware to public cloud hosts. The difficulties of full data centre conversion are what cause businesses to adopt multi-cloud or hybrid operations.

Most companies only migrate some parts of their IT infrastructure, software, or applications to a public cloud host. They do this to maintain a private cloud and support intricate networking management for all internal activities. One thing to note is many corporate security policies don’t allow critical data to be hosted by off-premise third parties.

Cloud Migration process

Here are the key facts. The way you go about deploying cloud migration strategies is a reflection of a few things: 

• Business model

• Complexity and size of your current framework

• Goals of migration

When you’ve reached this point, you’ll want to test the experience of your in-house IT team. We’ll be highlighting some steps that can help you understand the requirements of your environment.

Whether you’re taking the common route of moving your applications in one go or taking the hybrid approach, below are the most basic steps routine migrations follow.

Design your cloud migration journey

Fact: For successful cloud migration, the backbone should include a firm roadmap. Make a list of pros and cons before you begin cloud migration, so that your IT team knows the best approach to support this journey. These tips could come in handy when creating a migration plan:

● Get full visibility of on-premise IT systems

● Assess performance, security needs, and servers. Evaluate what kind of training your team requires. And, consider which cloud level your organisation is currently at.

Pick your cloud provider

After reviewing your application’s resource needs, you can partner with a cloud provider that understands your business requirements.

The leading platforms include Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. They all have their offerings of cloud models, be it hybrid cloud, public cloud, multi-cloud, or private cloud. Still not convinced? Contact Creative Networks today to get a detailed plan and pricing for testing out cloud services.

App and data migration

If deployed correctly, the app and data migration process will pan out without any problems.

What you should really know is that you have three options when it comes to transferring data centres to a public cloud.

• Online transfer

• Public internet /Private network transfer

• Physical online transfer

Honestly, your plan to approach migration boils down to what type of data you’re planning to transfer and the speed it requires.

Post-move update

Yay, you’re on to bigger, better things! Nothing is set in stone until you’re able to see the ROI of cloud migration. 

“We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.” —Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

What are the benefits of cloud migration in 2022?

Ultimately, cloud-based solutions can heighten the productivity and profitability of your company. Read below to learn about the seven advantages of migrating to the cloud.

1. Cloud migration has increased security features

Businesses want cloud providers who have the answers to tough security issues they might be facing. Such as ensuring intelligent methods to make sure that only certain individuals have access to your systems and data.

Although, businesses need to implement safe workplace security policies to keep mobile devices protected, keeping track of employee-related errors (password or sensitive data leaks) that don’t enable data from falling in the wrong hands.

2. Cloud migration offers rapid deployment times

With the changing bandwidth requirements of businesses, choosing the cloud can help upscale or downscale your daily operations. Cloud migration is great for deploying apps and services much more efficiently. Most cloud providers have tools that can rapidly facilitate servers, which is a more convenient process than just buying servers, installing operating systems, and employing them in data centres or networks.

3. Cloud migration promotes greater collaboration  

With cloud services, employees can collaborate on projects from any specific location. The pandemic introduced remote, flexible solutions, and online collaboration, which has become a critical part of today’s workforce strategies. The cloud allows for easy connectivity between employees, so that everyone is always on the same page, no matter where they are in the world.

4. Cloud migration is proven to minimise IT costs

If you accurately manage cloud solutions, you can cut down the need for data centres. What this does is store sensitive all company data in one data centre. Which in the long run, can save costly numbers on managing several data centres.

Cloud providers also offer autoscaling, which allows you to switch on/off services in line with when or if they are necessary. It’s a responsive method that can reduce costs, as you’re only charged for when additional systems are on. By using your services, you can reduce downtime and unnecessary costs by automatically getting suggestions on how to respond with the resources at hand.

5. Cloud migration encourages business agility

We all know that cloud platforms are flexible. That means that businesses have the means today to meet customer and market demands. With advanced cloud platforms, you can easily get started with deploying new features. In addition, cloud platforms support a DevOps implementation of app development, encouraging businesses to develop and utilise new features.

6. Cloud migration provides automatic updates, backup and logging services

One of the best things about cloud migration is that it monitors infrastructure issues and reports back with any security updates needed. This is extremely important for disaster recovery to ensure the best practices in case things go south. With backups, you’re able to run smooth operations, and the logs can help identify any underlying red flags.

Cloud service providers offer a fully managed stack of services to test the resiliency of your operating systems and applications. This means you can have valuable hours of your day back to focus on creating business strategies that maintain safe and secured data.

7. Cloud migration gives you an added edge over your competitors

We can’t stress this enough: Moving your business to the cloud is the best way to gain a competitive lead. Regardless of the size of your enterprise, you have access to top-notch technologies with the cloud. Enhance system serviceability, productivity, and customer trust. Combining these cloud advantages can translate to a newfound success that will serve you handsomely in the future.

With the mentioned advantages of cloud migrations, there are always challenges. The cloud is scalable, resilient, easy to integrate, and highly available, though you need to consider a variety of factors when it comes to cloud migration. But, if your business is well educated on the familiarity and complexities of cloud management, then you’re golden.

So, what next?

Creative Networks offer two types of cloud deployment models. But what’s the difference between private and public cloud? 

Public cloud

• With the public cloud, you get services such as Office 365, SharePoint, and Hosted Exchange. Some of the advantages of the public cloud are 99.9% uptime, pay only for the services you use, scalability and better IT systems management.

Private cloud

• The private cloud allows you to mobilise your team and access business email and applications. The term private means it is not a shared platform, and the services are hosted and managed by a private organisation. Unlike the public cloud, it can be as open or closed as required, and you can have greater control.

We enable IT teams, to confidently migrate to the cloud by offering robust cloud cost intelligence. Visit Creative Networks for a no-obligation security audit, or contact one of our cloud security specialists to learn more about cloud security audits.