Cloud Migration Success: Best Practices to Follow

Imagine you are planning a cross-country road trip. Your destination is in mind, but the journey requires strategizing to ensure a successful trip.

To have a hassle-free road trip, you must ensure the following: 

1. You need to plan your route .
2. Factor in potential risks such as weather conditions and road closures.
3. And optimize your car for the journey to ensure efficiency.
4. Gather inputs from travelers to avoid the mistakes they did.

Similarly, cloud migration requires planning and a well-executed migration strategy to achieve maximum benefits. Success comes not just from moving to the cloud but also about how you go about it and choosing the right cloud migration strategy.

“You are what you practice most.”   

― Richard Carlson. 

When an organization migrates to the cloud, it is crucial to focus on critical areas such as cloud migration planning, risk management, cloud infrastructure optimization, and cloud security. Ignoring or neglecting any of these areas can result in significant challenges and issues during and after the migration. 

A well-executed cloud migration strategy can minimize disruptions to business operations. Additionally, it ensures your organization can operate efficiently in the cloud. This can maximize the benefits of the cloud while minimizing the risks and disruptions to your business operations. Following best practices for cloud security can help protect your business from potential data breaches and other security issues. Also, following best practices can help businesses thrive in a competitive environment. So, following them when executing a cloud migration strategy is essential.

Achieving Excellence in Cloud Migration: Best Practices to be Noted 

Practices to be followed before migration

• Define the need for migration: The need for migration can arise due to several reasons, such as the need for better security, scalability, improved performance, or a change in business requirements. Before deciding to migrate, it is essential to analyze and evaluate why you need to migrate and what benefits it will bring your business. This analysis will help you determine whether migration is the right choice for your business. 
• Define your expected returns: It’s essential to have a rough idea of how your business will change after migration. Training your employees early on for any new change is also vital.
• Analyze and list the applications involved: It is essential to successful migration. This involves identifying all the currently used applications, including their versions and dependencies. This helps to determine the compatibility of the applications with the new environment and to identify any potential issues or conflicts that may arise during the migration process.
• Get an idea about the cloud deployment models available: Understanding the different cloud deployment models available and choosing the right one that aligns with your business needs is crucial.
• Spend time in cloud vendor selection: This is a crucial step that cannot be overlooked. Take your time and select the right cloud vendor that aligns with your business needs. Before making a choice, spend time researching and analyzing the various options available in the market. Look for a vendor that provides the features and services that align with your business needs. Consider pricing, security, scalability, reliability, and customer support. Knowing that your cloud vendor will play a significant role in your migration journey is important, so it’s important to choose wisely. Remember, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
• Plan a roadmap: It’s essential to clearly understand how your business will change after migration, and your cloud partner can help you with that. Your cloud partner can provide you with a migration roadmap, which will outline the specific steps needed during the migration process. They can also provide you with a detailed procedure on adapting to the changes that come with migrating to the cloud. Want to know how a leading clinical trial process management company successfully migrated its data, content, and applications to the cloud post-merger? Read this Cloud migration case study.
• Establish the timeline and costs involved: It’s essential to establish the timeline and costs involved in the migration process to avoid any unwanted surprises. This step will help you stay on track and complete the migration process within the set timeframe and budget.

Practices to be followed during migration

• Give priority to the components that need to be migrated: You should identify the critical applications and data to your business operations and prioritize them accordingly. This helps ensure that the most important components are migrated first, reducing the chances of disruptions to business operations. Additionally, this can help identify any dependencies between different components, enabling you to better plan the migration process. By prioritizing the critical components, you can also reduce the downtime required for the migration process, resulting in less disruption to your business.
• Set up baseline measures for performance: Establishing performance benchmarks can help you track the progress of the migration process and ensure that the new system is performing optimally. This can also help you identify any areas requiring improvement or optimization. With performance benchmarks in place, you can easily measure the success of the migration process and ensure that your business is functioning at its best.
• Keep the business continuity and disaster recovery plan in place: These plans help to minimize the impact of any unexpected events that may occur during the migration process. They provide a roadmap to quickly restore critical business functions, data, and systems in case of any disruption caused by the migration process. This is important to ensure that your business operations are not affected and customers do not experience any inconvenience. Therefore, it is essential to test your business continuity and disaster recovery plans before, during, and after the migration process to ensure they are operational and effective.  

Practices to be followed post migration

• Establish Cloud Governance and Management: This involves defining roles and responsibilities, creating policies and procedures for managing cloud resources, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Cloud performance monitoring: It’s crucial to monitor the performance of your cloud environment to identify any issues that may impact the user experience. This includes monitoring network, computing, and storage resources. 
• Continuously Improve Your Cloud Migration Process: After the migration, it’s important to analyze the migration process and identify areas that can be improved for future migrations. This involves identifying gaps and implementing solutions to address them. It’s a continuous process to ensure optimal cloud performance and cost efficiency.  

What Moving to a New House and Cloud Migration Have in Common

Imagine you’re planning to move to a new house. Of course, you want to ensure everything is done smoothly and without issues. So, you hire a professional moving company. What do you look for in them? Whether they have the right equipment, experience, and skills to handle your belongings with care.   

The same applies to cloud migration, where you need to carefully choose a cloud partner who can ensure a smooth and secure transition. Choosing the right partner ensures that your data and applications are moved without damage, giving you peace of mind.  

Take the first step towards a successful cloud migration with CTG.