5 Key Considerations for Successful Cloud Migration

What are the key considerations for cloud migration that your business needs to keep in mind? Moving your data and applications onto the cloud isn’t a one-step process; it takes time and planning to fully complete successful cloud migration. An enterprise needs the proper strategy and mindset in place if it wants their migration to go smoothly.

There are several key considerations that businesses must think about while they plan out their cloud migration. If these points aren’t considered, your enterprise won’t have a solid understanding of how the migration process works; it might also make a major cloud migration mistake that could cause drastic costs for your business. We’ve compiled five key considerations for cloud migration any company moving data to the cloud needs to address.

If your company needs help migrating its data onto the cloud, it should consider working with a managed service provider. Our free MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

Why are you migrating data to the cloud?

Before you begin migrating enterprise data, you need to understand why your company needs to move its data to the cloud in the first place. Adopting the cloud shouldn’t be done without a clearly defined business purpose, and this applies to data migration as well. Your enterprise can’t just migrate legacy data onto the cloud unless it has a reason to. It’s also important that everybody in your team that will be involved with the migration process knows the driving force behind your cloud migration; that way, they won’t be confused on what they need to do in order to successfully migrate data onto the cloud.

Is your company and infrastructure ready for the cloud?

Your enterprise should assess its readiness for cloud migration before it moves data over. This covers a number of preparations, including training your employees on how to operate your cloud environment to ensuring that your applications and processes are compatible inside the cloud. You also want to ensure that you’ve outlined your cloud migration plan and that you have the right security protocols in place.

Which data should be migrated — and which shouldn’t?

We’ve said this before: just because you can migrate data to the cloud doesn’t mean that you should. If your company has a clear reason for moving a set of data, an application, or a workload onto the cloud, then it should be migrated over. Otherwise, your company needs to consider whether or not it’s worth it to migrate that information; would it be more cost effective or productive to keep something on-premise and continue to use legacy tools? You shouldn’t assume that the cloud will make operating everything better or easier — it’s often a case-by-case basis.

How much will your cloud migration potentially cost?

Fully migrating your cloud-bound data is a process that can take a long time to complete — up to several months and beyond for large-scale enterprises. Because migration is often a long process, your company needs to anticipate the costs of moving your data and processes onto the cloud. This isn’t limited to the financial costs of hosting resources in the cloud, although this is obviously important. You also need to consider the costs of data or service unavailability while it migrates onto the cloud, the costs of bringing on cloud migration experts to help your enterprise with the process (if applicable), and the costs of worker productivity shifting to working on the migration rather than other tasks — among other things.

How do you secure data while and after migrating it?

Migrating data onto the cloud often means changing the way you secure and protect that data. While you (hopefully) have a legacy security solution that protects your data while it’s on-premise, you’ll also need to consider how your enterprise will secure data as it migrates onto the cloud. Encrypting data that’s moving between two systems ensures that the data is much harder to access as it’s transitioning to a new environment. You should also have a solution in place to secure data once it reaches the cloud, whether it be native cloud security tools or third-party security providers.

Looking for more info on managed service providers for your cloud solutions? Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

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