If your business is like other companies in Indianapolis, Indiana, the time has come to do away with inefficient legacy systems, unreliable firewalls, and poor-performing hardware. The answer is either a full or partial cloud migration strategy.
Importance of a Cloud Migration Strategy
A plan for moving existing applications and data from on-premises to the cloud can help with executing a low-cost transition. The goal is to deliver the most benefits with minimal disruption to your operations. A successful strategy prioritizes workloads based on which ones are suitable for migration.
By using a cloud strategy roadmap, your IT team and managed services provider will outline the following key aspects:
• Tasks
• Deliverables
• Deadlines
This visual communication tool keeps all stakeholders accountable. Following a roadmap throughout the migration process helps to ensure the best implementation possible.
Typically, the plan will include a public migration with Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. It is also essential to have a strategy tailored to your business needs to achieve the desired outcomes.
4 Types of Cloud Deployment Models
Each deployment model outlined below offers unique value to your Indianapolis business. Following the DevOps principles is a good practice regardless of which model you choose.
DevOps emphasizes communication, collaboration, and automation between all teams involved with the migration process.
1. Private Cloud
A private cloud model is a good choice if you prefer to maintain the most control over business data and resources. Your IT team maintains a private cloud that is hosted in the data center.
Capital expenditure and ongoing operational costs can put a dent in the budget. However, less physical hardware can deliver a lower total cost of ownership with more cloud computing power. Additionally, you can get support for legacy systems that cannot transition to a public cloud.
2. Public Cloud
A public cloud platform might work best if you want to avoid significant upfront costs and require quick access to computing services. This is an ideal solution where a cloud service provider delivers servers and storage over the internet.
The service provider refactors which applications will move to a cloud infrastructure. If necessary, the provider re-architects your applications to ensure they function correctly in a cloud environment.
3. Hybrid Cloud
As the name implies, it uses private and public cloud environments that sometimes include data centers on the business site. The Azure cloud computing platform is an example. Generally, Indiana companies use hybrid resources to build, deploy, and manage apps and services.
With the hybrid model, your workforce can seamlessly use services between the public and your company’s infrastructure. As such, cybersecurity is an important consideration to ensure your network remains secure.
4. Multi-Cloud
There are different types of workloads with just as many requirements. If this is your company, a multi-cloud platform is an excellent migrating approach. This requires having a combination of services from multiple cloud providers.
Not only does using the multi-cloud model provide different service offerings, but you also have more flexibility with costs. A successful network environment that uses this approach heavily depends on secure data sharing and strong connectivity.
Important Areas of Focus for Cloud Migration
Moving to cloud technology presents many benefits to optimize how your company functions. Even if you still rely heavily on a traditional infrastructure, there are models and price tiers to support the modernization of your company.
The right strategy for cloud migration can deliver the following:
• Capacity
• Data security
• Lower costs
• Performance
• Scalability
There are other factors to consider that can maximize the benefits and ensure a smooth transition from on-premises applications to the cloud.
Find out compliance issues for your industry related to cloud migration. A good cloud provider offers solutions for current and future business goals. In addition, adopting a cloud-native approach allows you to take advantage of a resilient and modern IT infrastructure.
Data Security
Generally, cloud migration offers more security than most on-premise applications. The advantage comes from managed services providers that use state-of-the-art technologies.
They also stay abreast of the latest cyber threats with dedicated security teams to detect and mitigate breaches. This is added assurance if you do not have in-house expertise and tools to deal with a security issue immediately.
A common misconception is that apps and data on cloud-based platforms are not safe. However, the cloud uses encryption security intelligence, access control, and other cybersecurity measures to keep your business data safe.
Cost-Effective
Like other companies in Indiana, you may have a simple reason for using cloud services: You can lower costs by not having a data center onsite.
To ensure you do not overburden the budget, consider these steps in the strategy planning phase:
• Audit the current costs of running your existing infrastructure
• Use price calculators offered by most cloud service providers to estimate migration costs
• Include the cost of rewriting code for collaboration applications to transition to the cloud
• Calculate productivity interruptions during the migration process
Resource Flexibility and Scalability
How well cloud migration initiatives provide flexibility and scalability options are important considerations. Your company should have the freedom to increase or decrease computing power as needed.
For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many companies to find creative ways to continue business as usual. This required shifts to remote and hybrid work through cloud-based environments.
With cloud application deployment, your IT team and service provider can deliver business applications when needed. You can scale up resources to meet peak demands and scale down once demand slows.
An added benefit is having access to general maintenance and security updates that ensure sustainable operations.
Migrate to the Cloud with Meriplex
If you are considering migrating to the cloud, Meriplex can help you begin the process with a complete data center assessment. During the evaluation, we determine your company’s capacity for growth, disaster recovery capabilities, and other necessary processes.
Our cloud services can enable your Indianapolis business to transform digitally with greater reliability and scalability. Once we identify the details, we can advise you on which deployment option and cloud service model is best and most cost-effective.
Contact us today to schedule a cloud solutions consultation.
