Migrating Your Application to Cloud: Boons and Banes

The migration of business processes and applications to the Cloud is a global trend. The business gradually, completely, or partially abandons the storage of important data on its own equipment and transfers it to Cloud providers. The world's largest virtual platforms belong to IT giants: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Huawei. These companies guarantee customers a high level of reliability and stability of storing unlimited amounts of data with the ability to scale resources.

In this article, you will learn about what types of migration to the Cloud exist, what advantages Cloud services provide to modern businessmen, as well as what problems can be encountered in the process of migration.

Types of app migration to the Cloud.

There are two main ways to migrate data and services to a Cloud provider:

1) Complete migration. Here, the entire IT infrastructure is transferred to the cloud provider: data, applications, and their settings. The client still has terminal clients, through which employees of the central and remote offices get access to the services.

2) Partial migration. Hybrid model, when part of the information systems and resources is transferred to the Cloud, and the rest of the data remains on the company's computing capacity for security reasons, under legal requirements, or for other reasons. A business often chooses a partial migration to evaluate the capabilities of Cloud providers and “try on” a new model for working with data.

Partial migration is also understood as the gradual transfer of individual elements of the IT infrastructure to a virtual platform. This model is suitable for companies with a geographically distributed structure (a large number of remote offices). In this case, a detailed migration roadmap is drawn up and services are migrated sequentially-so as not to stop the execution of business processes in the organization. This is the so-called “seamless migration”, which is possible thanks to clear planning and consistent implementation of pre-defined steps.

Key Benefits of Cloud Migration:

1) Flexible scaling the business. Migration to the cloud is always about development. A business that is growing and needs more resources needs an environment where these resources are provided on-demand and as quickly as possible.

2) Economic efficiency. No capital expenditures and optimization of operating costs, payment for the resources actually used. You do not need to buy expensive equipment, pay for its delivery, installation, and subsequent maintenance. All your data will be stored in cloud storage.

3) Rapid implementation and modernization. A fully operational service can be implemented within one working day, and the implementation of new systems, depending on the complexity, takes only a few hours.

4) Maintaining business continuity. The manager must understand how critical the downtime of business processes will be, how much it will cost the company, how to prevent it or minimize the risks. There are tools for this in the cloud, plus their number is increasing.

5) High-level online security. Effective methods of data protection, round-the-clock monitoring, quick response to incidents, protection of confidential information from leaks. However, using a VPN even with the most reliable and proven Cloud service can be an additional level in your online protection (to find out which virtual access service is most suitable for you, you can scroll through the list of the best VPN around).

6) Data integrity. The ability to restore data from a certain period in the event of their deletion in the office.

8) Transparent pricing of services. The organization pays only for the resources used: computing, network, and storage. It can plan costs based on business growth.

9) 24/7 technical support. Cloud providers solve customer problems in real-time. At the same time, you can count on the highly qualified help of highly specialized engineers.

When migrating to the cloud leads to problems.

Due to lack of experience, it is easy to make critical mistakes that will lead to negative consequences for the business:

1) When migrating to the Сloud, no dependency diagrams were created between the applications. If individual applications or services use the same database, then you can move them to the Сloud only in a complex, otherwise, the business risks disrupting the usual performance of current tasks.

2) There is no general migration plan (IT roadmap). The plan clearly states what will be transferred to the Cloud, in what volume, and in what time frame. This is a consistent description of actions that will help you properly organize the migration, avoid chaos, lost data, and the business process stops.

3) Cloud migration without prior testing. It may turn out that the cloud service provider is not suitable for the company's tasks. To avoid this, request a test period and learn more about the service by running a “raw” project in the cloud. Evaluate the reliability of the service, how quickly technical support responds to questions, whether it is convenient to reallocate resources and perform other actions in your account.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the success of the transition to the cloud is influenced by the maturity of business processes in the company, the availability of its development strategy, and the willingness of management to change. Of course, each such project is individual, customer requirements are diverse, different scenarios are possible, but in general, it is worth recognizing that the migration of business to the cloud has many more boons than banes.

About the author:

My name is Roman, I am a copywriter and a content marketing expert with 10 years of experience. My main specialty is technical, technology and business writing.

Migrating Your Application to Cloud: Boons and Banes

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