In our first Business Cloud Solutions Guide we spoke about the uses of cloud computing and its benefits for SMEs. If you’ve decided you want to adopt a cloud strategy to streamline your business’ operations and increase productivity, the challenging part will be in migrating everything over to your new cloud solution.
This is where Part 2 of our guide comes in – here we’ll look at what you need to consider when migrating over and how to ensure successful execution.
Choosing your cloud type
Whatever the solution, whether a storage solution, a CRM software, or an application platform, you’ll need to choose your cloud type. The three principle options are ‘private cloud’, ‘public cloud’ or ‘hybrid cloud’:
- Private cloud: is where you create your own private cloud using a platform.
- Public cloud: where your resources are hosted by a cloud provider
- Hybrid cloud: a combination of private and public where you can choose which resources go where.
If you’d like to find out what the best cloud solution would be for your business, feel free to contact us for advice.
What to consider when migrating to the cloud
Once you’ve chosen your cloud type, setting up the cloud computing infrastructure needs diligent planning. Without taking time to assess the different variables that could be affected by the migration, its execution may not be successful and could leave you with downtime, additional costs and security risks.
Before you migrate over to the cloud you’ll need to consider an effective strategy that includes the following:
- Assessment
- Analysis & Design
- Migration
- Testing
- Optimization
- Deployment
- Post Production Support
Some of the important assessment and migration steps include:
· - Create a detailed inventory of what needs to be migrated over – any programs or applications directly integrating with the cloud system, data, or external interfaces.
- This way you can assess the impact of the migration on your IT environment. How will it affect other applications, security and backup and recovery processes?
- What additional software, hardware or storage will you need to support the migration during and after?
- It’s advisable to carry out a small test migration to see if your chosen option is most suitable and if there are any risks.
- Your cloud service provider will have the tools to be able to assess and test the migration effectively. Their role after deployment will be to monitor its performance, fine-tune it and provide support services for staff.
- Your staff will also need to be properly trained however, to understand the new infrastructure. It’s essential to have a troubleshooting system in place during and after deployment, so that issues can be dealt with quickly and easily.
Carrying out a structured cloud review will help you achieve a smooth mapping and migration, to fully optimise your cloud solution. If you’d like to know more about migrating over to the cloud, or for any help or advice on cloud computing for your business, please call the Net Technical Solutions team on 01252 235 235, or you can email us at sales@ntsols.com.
