6 Cloud Migration Steps

Moving to The Cloud is a no brainer for many businesses. The cost savings and efficiency gains are almost a given. But before you dive into one, take the time to consider each of the cloud migration steps involved. This will help avoid costly mistakes such as data loss or unnecessary downtime.  

Also, make sure you’re moving for the right reasons. Don’t just move to The Cloud because it’s the thing to do. Only move when you’re confident it’ll help you achieve your business goals, optimise certain processes, etc. If, however, you’ve done your research, then the following cloud migration steps will be yours to follow. 

Form the right team

Make sure all your key stakeholders are involved. This will of course vary from business to business but typically your IT heads (obviously), CFO, and CEO will go without saying. Beyond that, specific team members required will depend on what kind of technology your team will be working with. But you may also want to consider bringing together security specialists, business analysts, and relevant project managers before the migration is in full swing.  

Determine your Cloud-Readiness  

This involves doing a comprehensive business and technical analysis of your entire IT infrastructure. The aim is to determine what tech your business uses, how it uses it, and the various relative dependencies and integrations your applications have with each other. Some apps won’t be ready for cloud environments. Some apps may need small tweaks. Some may need extensive changes in their code. Some apps may be moved as they are. So, analyse everything, typically with external guidance if you don’t have the resources in house. 

Choose the right migration partner, vendor, and environment  

Do you want to go with Microsoft Azure, AWS, or another cloud provider? Do you want to go public, private, or hybrid? And who will you partner with to carry out the migration? A managed service provider can be a solid choice. They’ll have extensive experience navigating these issues and help you pick the ideal path.  

Create a Roadmap  

You’ll probably want to move incrementally so decide on the order IT components will make the move based on factors like business priority and ease of migration. Ensure as little disruption as possible by clarifying milestones and funding whilst prioritising the more business critical applications.  

Migration  

This stage is all about putting controls in place to minimise downtime and data loss. Make sure you backup your data before migrating it and test the backup to make sure it works. Migrating your data incrementally and testing accordingly can ensure nothing is lost. 

Testing, and adapting  

Once the data has been migrated and has populated you can start switching over to using it in its new environment. This should be in a test environment with test users to assess its functionality whilst its on premise equivalent remains intact. If you have a lot of complex data this test period should be taken with extra care. Make sure you don’t make the final switch and don’t say goodbye to your on-premise solution until your team confirms everything is working correctly.   

The end goal with all of these cloud migration steps is of course to optimise your business’s operations and ultimately improve your bottom line. True MSP has a proven track record of delivering cloud migrations that do exactly that. Plus IT can cause serious issues if not looked after properly.   

So, if you’d like help navigating this potentially complex field and increasing your business’s efficiency, click here to book a call with a cloud migrations expert.