Taking one’s business to the sky has been an age old metaphor used to describe the achievement of tremendous success. Little did we know that soon this would rather turn into a way of ensuring business success. We are living in an era where business behemoths are competing with smaller companies and startups, as the latter are introducing innovative ideas to challenge the legacy solutions and spoiling customers for choices. This rise in competition and need for optimization has triggered a war of agility, innovation and omnipresence, in which cloud is serving as a potent weapon.
Moving to the cloud is a global phenomenon which has gripped businesses alike, irrespective of the industry or offerings. If not already a cloud subscriber, businesses are so perplexed by the concept of an asset-light business, that moving to the cloud is an inevitable business decision in the near future. But, amidst this race to the cloud and the delirium that surrounds it, business decision-makers need to take a time-out to really block-out all the pressure, expectations and assess it as one of the business solutions, rather than thinking of it as the only solution or a self-imposed mandate. And, even if you are a business that absolutely needs to move to the cloud or one with a business where cloud migration would actually turn out to be a game-changer, there are few critical things that you should analyze and address before taking this leap.
Here are 5 things IT decision-makers should consider before moving to the cloud:
- Is it really required/are you moving too quickly?
This might seem to be a no-brainer, but is actually the most important thing to consider. Is your business and its offerings such that you would benefit from the migration. Is your infrastructure huge enough or is ceaseless operation of utmost importance, that your business continuity demands a migration? After you identify the benefitting areas or the business impact it will have, only then you would be able to justify your move to the cloud.
- How dependable is your cloud platform and service provider?
Your cloud platform provider and your migration service provider need to be in sync with the requirement and also about the responsibility and clauses. In case of a business-critical requirement or a major issue, your cloud service provider should be capable and dependable enough to address your concerns in time.
- Allocation of responsibilities and application support
After migrating to the cloud, most issues faced by companies result from the fact that the post-implementation responsibilities were not well defined. Businesses often end-up suffering as the implementor and the cloud provider try to avoid taking responsibility for operational issues. This results in serious problems in the case of a fix required to ensure efficient operation. Ensure that you have allocated detailed responsibilities and a thought-out and well-defined scope of support & maintenance responsibilities to your vendor.
- Study and choose the best-suitable subscription
Evaluate your current requirements and also be mindful of your near future requirements. Make sure you accommodate all your business needs and all the business necessities that need to be migrated. Also, study the available pricing options and choose the best-suited one as per your requirements and business objectives.
- Consider the maintaining and upgrading costs
The best benefit of moving to the cloud is its subscription model. You pay as you use the cloud services, but it is essential to consider your maintenance as well as upgrading costs. Basis seasonal/campaign requirements, your cloud requirements can always be up-scaled, but as a business investment, it is necessary to consider this cost as a part of your overall cost. Failing to do this, your actual investment and the expected investment would eventually vary drastically.
Cloud migration or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) offerings are rapidly finding buyers as businesses are trying to reduce infrastructure investments. The pricing, storage, upgradation and operational ease that cloud offers provide immense benefits to a business. Moving to the cloud not only saves your upfront capital expenditure, but also makes your critical data and applications always available. With a cloud migration, your business is also well-equipped to counter disasters and natural calamities, ensuring data protection and operational continuity.
So, now that you have made the important decision to take your business to the cloud, it is an equally critical task to choose a reliable services provider for your IaaS requirements.
(Views expressed in this article are of Preethi Menon, Vice President and Head- Practices, Clover Infotech.)