Unveiling the Benefits of Cloud Migration for Businesses
According to the reports, 95 percent of all the workloads in the upcoming five years will switch to the cloud.
Today, businesses are always looking for the latest technologies and trends to stay ahead in the market.
One widely adopted way is moving their business to the cloud. The benefits of Cloud Migration are remarkable to companies, as it transforms the whole procedure with greater flexibility in resource allocation, including reduced costs, improved scalability, optimized agility, and enhanced data security.
But is it ideal for your business?
Keep reading further to find out.
What is cloud migration?
Cloud migration is moving a company’s IT resources, digital assets, applications, or other business components and essentials into the cloud servers. This “migration” commonly refers to moving from an on-premise system to the cloud.
Let’s take an example of an architectural firm to understand the process better.
So, suppose there’s a large architectural firm with multiple offices across the country.
The firm relies on complex design software that requires significant computing power. Their current on-premise servers struggle to keep up with increasing project demands and collaboration between geographically dispersed teams.
They decide to migrate their design software and project data to the cloud.
The architecture firm moves design software and project data to the cloud. This allows for smoother collaboration across offices, eliminates geographical limitations on processing power, and keeps project files readily accessible and secure for all team members.
In this example, we hinted at how clouds make the workflow smooth. Let’s talk about the benefits of Cloud Migration in detail in the next section.
Let’s explore if Cloud Migration is the right fit for your Business
Anything’s right for you or not depends on what it has to offer and how it aligns with your goals. In this section, we’ll discuss the benefits of Cloud Migration and its services.
Scalability
As your corporation grows, leveraging the benefits of cloud migration emerges as a win-win situation.
Companies pay only for the benefits and resources they use.
Also, they don’t need to keep their IT team run-ragged as the cloud providers take care of all the fundamental infrastructure.
For example, an e-commerce company experiences a surge in sales during the holidays. With cloud migration, they can quickly scale up their server capacity to handle the increased traffic without any downtime. After the holidays, they can scale back down to avoid unnecessary costs.
Scaling is the demand of growing businesses in today’s fluctuating market.
Reduced IT Costs
The benefits of Cloud Migration include minimized IT costs. Therefore, with clouds, businesses can get over expensive hardware and software purchases. Instead, they can leverage the server and infrastructure capacity of their cloud provider.
The cloud service providers manage the maintenance and upgrade part, allowing companies to focus their resources on developing and improving their products.
Automatic Software Updates
When businesses used to host over on-premise servers, there was a lot of work to do for the IT team.
First, they would download the latest version, perform testing, and then schedule downtime to update it on production servers.
Next, they would do troubleshooting, and after jumping through a few more hoops, the update would be complete.
However, companies today do not have to worry about software updates. Cloud providers roll out regular software updates for their clients. Companies can now have updated versions with upgraded servers.
Super Accessibility
This one’s probably the biggest advantage of getting things on cloud servers.
Cloud-based applications and data can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, 24/7. It empowers employees to work remotely, collaborate seamlessly, and stay productive regardless of location.
Data Security
The benefits of Cloud Migration are putting forward high-security measures as they invest heavily in advanced security technologies. Even though there are several misconceptions about it, cloud solutions provide regular updates and patch management, ensuring continuous protection against emerging threats.
Additionally, cloud-based solutions offer robust and faster disaster recovery, making them very reliable in unforeseen circumstances.
Cloud Migration Types
Successfully migrating workload into the cloud isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. You’ll require a well-defined strategy to manage the technical complexities, as well as ensure your team and resources are aligned with the new cloud environment.
Check these strategies below to migrate data into the cloud provider’s framework.
Lift and Shift (Rehosting)
It is moving your applications to the cloud with minimal changes. Suppose your company website is running on your office’s server. Lift and shift would mean moving the entire server and website to the cloud and placing it on a virtual server hosted by the cloud provider.
Repurpose
This means replacing your applications with cloud-based services that meet your needs.
A company might be using a custom application to manage customer accounts. Repurposing would involve replacing that custom app with a cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) SaaS application that offers similar functionality. This eliminates the need to maintain the custom app yourself.
Replatform
Replatforming is the strategy of moving your applications to the cloud environment while also making modifications to them to take advantage of the cloud’s capabilities.
Let’s say that a company website uses a database that is not very scalable. Replatforming would involve migrating the website to the cloud and modifying the code to use a cloud-based database service that can quickly scale up or down based on traffic.
Refactor
It involves a significant transformation of your applications to fully exploit the capabilities and advantages of the cloud environment.
Suppose an investment bank might have a complex trading application that requires significant computing power. Refactoring would involve completely rewriting the application code to take advantage of cloud-based high-performance computing services.
Rebalance
This is an ongoing process of optimizing your cloud resources after migration.
After migrating to the cloud, a company might notice that they are underutilizing some cloud resources or overpaying for others. Rebalancing involves continuously monitoring cloud usage and optimizing deployments to ensure they are using the most cost-effective cloud resources for their needs.
Retain
This refers to keeping specific applications on-premises even after migrating others to the cloud.
A company might have a legacy application that stores sensitive customer data. Due to security or regulatory compliance concerns, they might decide to retain this application on-premises while migrating other applications to the cloud.
Transitioning to the Cloud
We saw that making the move to the cloud is beneficial. Here are specific scenarios where businesses may not prefer cloud migration.
- Companies with high regulations and strong compliance rules
- Businesses dealing with highly sensitive and confidential data
- Enterprises relying on “legacy” applications
- Small businesses that require zero or low data storage requirements.
Conclusion
By carefully considering your business needs, exploring the benefits of Cloud Migration, and taking a strategic approach, cloud migration can be a transformative step towards a more agile, scalable, and future-proof organization. Adopt the cloud and unlock greater efficiency, innovation, and growth potential.
Also, we have other Resources to look at: Ultimate Approval Management System : Key Features & Importance, What is Relationship Management? Definition & Importance, Best 4 Steps for Integrating LMS with CRM Systems
