publive-image

Organizations should consider factors like security and compliance before moving to the cloud.

IDC forecast reveals that by 2022, over 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a mix of on-premise/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs. Cloud migration is witnessing huge growth with industries aiming to achieve rapid digital transformation. The Covid-19 pandemic had a great impact on the expansion of cloud computing and the quick migration across organizations. The demand for agility, scalability, IT optimization, etc., powered the escalation in cloud adoption. 

According to Gartner, the cloud is projected to make 14.2% of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024. Since enterprises are investing time and money in the cloud, there are certain factors to consider while migrating to the cloud. Are you planning to shift to the cloud? If yes, these suggestions might help. 

Defining Business Goals

Migrating to the cloud is not an easy task considering the age-old usage o legacy systems and the sudden shift might have negative impacts on your business operations. Organizations should consider defining their business goals before they move to the cloud. Evaluating the impact that cloud might have on your business and weighing the risks and benefits involved will provide a better understanding. Since many applications and legacy systems will have cloud compatibility issues, it is advisable to analyze the barriers and business needs before you migrate. 

Reduce Complexity and Plan Recovery 

While starting the journey on the cloud, organizations should restrict to less critical applications to minimize issues. Increased complexity of applications might disturb the functioning. Creating a migration architecture will reduce the complexity while moving to the cloud since it will define step by step strategy for the process. If you are facing downtime, what are your crisis management plans? If you haven’t thought about it, you should. Before you start your cloud migration, it is necessary to formulate a disaster recovery strategy so that the problem does not affect your business continuity. The recovery strategy should be obtained from the vendor while outsourcing the service, which defines service levels, remedies, risk management criteria, and penalties. 

Securing Data on Cloud

Cloud is considered one of the safest platforms to store and share data with strict security measures in place. However, it should not be ignored that the cloud is after all a third-party server. It is necessary to check whether the cloud provider has enough security frameworks and strategies to combat breaches. Organizations should develop a baseline security control plan to ensure secure access to information across the cloud. Data breaches due to ineffective security policies are increasing thus demanding better security regulations on both onsite and cloud. The data on the cloud should also meet the compliance requirements since the cloud does not have a physical or geographical presence and can be present in many places. 

Analyzing the Cost of Migration

Cloud services are paid through operation expenditure (OPEX) and thus demand very less capital investment. Organizations should study the total cost of cloud resources and pricing strategies of different cloud platforms before migrating. Cloud applications are scalable and hence provide a pay-as-you-go strategy. Although, a company should evaluate its running infrastructure, computing needs, disaster recovery plans, and estimate the costs before initiating its operations on the cloud.