Don’t let the headline to this post fool you. Cloud migrations are challenging. They require thought, strategy, resources and the efforts of many people.
But we have been helping companies successfully migrate their operations to the cloud for years now. That experience has taught us that while every migration is unique, they inevitably follow the same four steps:
- Defining the migration strategy.
- Choosing the right architecture.
- Moving data and assets.
- Monitoring the system’s performance.
With the right planning, any business can navigate each of those four steps.
Below, we’ll outline some of the questions you should ask yourself as your company proceeds with each step of the migration. Asking these questions will help your team clear hurdles more easily and keep their momentum moving forward.
Questions to Ask When Defining the Migration Strategy
Creating a strategy is all about making sure everyone knows who is responsible for what, and when. Ask yourself:
- Who is responsible for taking inventory of all of the company’s assets?
- Whose input is necessary when defining project milestones?
- How do you translate this into a budget that someone can own?
From there, you can begin to explore the migration methodologies that are the best fit for your strategy.
Questions to Ask When Selecting the Architecture
Cloud service models can be confusing, but the model you choose will have a major impact on your business. This stage is all about evaluating which is right for your organization. Ask yourself:
- Do you need to own or have your hardware on-premise?
- Does your team need tools and a development platform to work from? Will you build your own applications?
- What’s your capacity for monitoring your own infrastructure?
Questions to Ask When Moving Data and Assets
There are still plenty of questions to answer before you can start migrating applications and workloads. Ask yourself:
- Whose input will be useful when prioritizing when assets and applications move?
- How will you support employees during the migration?
- How will you get buy-in from everyone whose work will be impacted by the migration?
Questions to Ask When You Begin Monitoring the New System
There are major benefits to realize from a cloud migration. A successful migration can lower your operating costs and improve business performance. However, those benefits only manifest when you can manage and monitor the system you’ve built. Ask yourself:
- How will you look for unused resources or resources that aren’t rightsized?
- What can you do to manage spikes in resource demand?
- What vulnerabilities can get introduced during, for example, new employee onboarding?
Considering a migration project? For greater depth and detail, our cloud migration ebook is a clear and thorough resource.