Suffice to say, if you haven’t transitioned to cloud technologies yet, now is the time to do it.
In this post, we’ll cover the most effective ways to leverage cloud technologies in your IT strategy and the best processes for making the transition seamless.
Assess Your Current Workloads for Cloud Fit
Your cloud strategy depends on your specific day-to-day workload, so you need to start with an assessment of jobs, processes, and applications that comprise each business units’ duties. Gather information on what is already on the cloud and what would be a good candidate to make the transition.
- The name of the workload
- Who owns it
- Was it created in-house?
- Applications it is dependent on
- Whether there are vendors involved
- Is it a packaged application from a vendor?
Some common examples of workloads that are good candidates for the cloud include web content, databases, analytics, and IoT.
Select the Right Cloud Models
A cloud service model outlines how much control over the data and workload you have compared to the cloud service developer. In general, there are three key options.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
Best For: Virtual servers
This model gives you access to servers, storage, and networks and includes virtualization. The cloud provider handles the operating system, runtime, middleware, and the application.
IaaS means you don’t have to invest in on-site machine management but are still responsible for managing the OS and software.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Best for: Application development
This cloud computing service gives developers the components needed to develop software. A PaaS toolset allows development teams to build, test, deploy, and scale applications much faster and cost-effectively. Examples of PaaS include Google App Engine and Azure App Service.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
Best For: Standardized productivity, CRM systems
Finally, SaaS vendors offer a broad range of productivity tools while managing the software in a cloud environment. This alleviates your business from system maintenance, updates, and support. With SaaS, you get a configurable (not customizable), plug-and-play product like Office 365, Salesforce, or Google Workspace.
You should consider exploring modern SaaS operation software for your business, including accounting software, ERP, inventory management, etc. If you’re unsure where to start, the software consultants at StackPlan can give you expert advice.
Create a Phased Migration Strategy
Migrating to the cloud isn’t easy, especially if your new cloud-based applications need to integrate with the platforms you already have in place. A phased migration strategy allows you to move to cloud-based technologies over time, giving your team and current systems time to adjust.
Prioritize any non-critical, standalone systems for the initial transition, and save any complex integrated systems for closer to the end of your technology roadmap.
When it comes to your migration strategy, there are three different ways to go about it.
Lift & shift
In this strategy, you deploy an existing application as-is to IaaS in the cloud. This allows you to move to the cloud quickly, but you’ll need to operate, patch, and debug the software on your own.
Adopt SaaS
This is the most common option for cloud-based migrations. SaaS allows you to completely ‘switch off’ or decommission old software and switch to new, fully managed systems. This requires a phased approach to avoid data loss or operational challenges, but it does mean zero operational or maintenance efforts on your side.
Cloud-native solutions
Building brand-new cloud-native solutions using PaaS allows you to slowly phase out old on-premise applications more easily, but it is usually significantly more expensive and requires more time to build.
Factor in The Total Cost of Ownership Savings
The total cost of ownership (TCO) combines all the costs involved in purchasing, operating, and maintaining new cloud-based technologies. It’s necessary to perform a cloud TCO analysis when considering moving to cloud technology to weigh the cost of cloud adoption against the running costs of your on-premise systems.
We always recommend using utility-based pricing, meaning you pay for your applications on demand and per user. You should also leverage economies of scale to reduce infrastructure costs.
Address Change Management Needs
Change management is an essential component of the IT industry. It refers to a set of policies and procedures that outline how to properly manage the transition to new technology at every stage of the process.
The appropriate and consistent change management of transitioning to cloud-based technologies will minimize the risk of change collisions and allow you to roll out updates without disrupting operations.
According to one report, having an effective change management strategy allows 93% of organizations to successfully achieve the objectives set out in their tech roadmap.
One of the most important additions to your management strategy is cloud adoption training and support resources for team members. Around 95% of all data breaches are due to human error, so effective training is necessary. But, don’t forget that cloud-based partners provide onboarding training and ongoing support – make sure these services are included in your contract.
You should also develop processes to ensure governance in the cloud. This includes ensuring all data is encrypted and setting policies for data at different levels of sensitivity.
Explore Your New Capabilities
Once you have transitioned your workloads to the cloud, it’s time to test innovations leveraging your new cloud-unique services. A report by Florexa revealed that an average of 30% of cloud spending is wasted due to unused or underutilized features.
Cloud leverage is the ability to use cloud-based services to improve business performance, efficiency, scalability, and security, among other things.
If you’re concerned about underutilizing your new cloud-based technologies, StackPlan software implementation experts can help you get the most out of all available cloud features and ensure you explore all the capabilities on offer.
Ensure Resiliency
Resiliency in cloud computing refers to your company’s ability to handle system failure while remaining operational. You can’t avoid failure entirely, so the goal is to accept it as inevitable and create resilient cloud services to respond to it effectively.
The first step in this process is ensuring data availability via geo-redundant architectures. This involves replicating data and applications across dispersed locations so that if one goes offline due to technical failure or disaster, your system can fail over to another location without interruption.
Secondly, you need to eliminate single points of failure (SPOF) for always-on operations. A SPOF is any non-redundant part of the system that would cause a large-scale system failure should it become dysfunctional.
A SPOF or single point of failure is any non-redundant part of a system that, if dysfunctional, would cause the entire system to fail.
By assuring these two resiliency policies are met, you’ll create a robust cloud system safeguarded against potential failures – for you and your customers’ data.
Get Started With Cloud-Based Technologies
The cloud presents major opportunities when thoughtfully integrated into a long-term technology strategy. The key is planning an optimal strategy that allows for a phased migration and focuses on long-term business goals.
Our StackPlan tech advisors can help you identify the best cloud-based solutions for your business and show you how to effortlessly integrate them into your technology roadmap. Connect with a tech advisor today!
