Migrating to the Cloud has been a rising trend among organisations looking to go global and become more agile. Moving data from on-premises to the cloud can seem daunting or easy depending on how you see it. However the fact is that like all the other things on the internet, cloud migration has its benefits and risks. Therefore it’s essential to know what you are in for before taking the plunge. I will be highlighting and explaining the benefits, challenges and solutions to cloud migration and how we, at Ecomm India Cloud IT strive to make the transition a breeze for you.
Benefits
A lot of factors can make cloud migration a necessity rather than a choice. An organisation may have to turn to the cloud because of increasing traffic to their applications & websites, expanding the company geographically or for growing the core IT infrastructure stack.
For many, migration to the cloud has been an extremely succesful business decision despite the initial apprehensions. Moving to the cloud has some significant benefits
- Flexibility – Starting up new servers, adding tons of storage, removing unwanted resources etc. is very flexible with the cloud i.e. it can scale up and down depending on the needs of the business very easily as compared to its onsite rivals. Remote or public cloud infrastructure is very agile without any of the constrains that come with setting your own physical IT infrastructure.
- Disaster recovery – Cloud systems win hands down in this area over their traditional counterparts. Disaster recovery systems on the cloud are cheaper, easier to set up and give much more control. Setting up a disaster recovery system onsite on physical servers can be a nightmare & difficult to switch over during a disaster. Time and money both will be spent in abundance and the constant need to take and maintain backups will hit you hard in the on-premise model
- Maintenance – The servers are offsite and maintained by a cloud provider, hence you need not have to worry about administering and maintaining them! As a managed cloud provider, we pro-actively manage everything for you. All the updates including security patches will be handled by the managed cloud provider which will save you lots of time and money.
- No hardware costs – Storing data onsite comes with the baggage of buying and maintaining the servers which have long term financial consequences to your organisation and stifles the pace of innovation. Adopting the cloud takes away such tasks leaving you to concentrate on what matters most – the growth of your business.
- Work from anywhere – Cloud enables you to access the data and update it from anywhere in the world. This is especially beneficial to businesses that have employees and branches in different parts of the world working on the same project. They can easily access, update and save the files on the cloud from any location without any hurdles.
- Security – Lost or corrupted hardware will no longer be a problem. You will be able to access data in the cloud no matter what happens to your machines. Imagine you lose your laptop, the cost of the sensitive data in it will probably be more than the cost of itself. Security is step zero at Ecomm India Cloud IT. Step 1 doesn’t take place till security is implemented.
- Competitiveness – Small businesses cannot keep endlessly buying their own servers beyond a certain limit due to financial constrains and hence reflects in the performance of their applications and lose out to the competition. Migrating to the cloud levels the playing field and will give you the freedom to take on much larger organization. We as a managed cloud service provider enable small businesses to make that transition to the cloud .
- Environment friendly – This may not seem like a benefit from a business point of view but it does matter! Unlike physical servers, cloud servers scale up and down depending on demand and thus do not consume more energy than they need, resulting in a lower carbon footprint and a clearer conscience for you!
Challenges
Despite all the benefits, cloud migration also has a number of challenges associated with it. Organisations need to be mindful of these when they decide to take the plunge.
- Data security – This is one the biggest mental roadblocks that makes business leaders fear cloud migration. They feel sensitive data is put at risk when you migrate to the cloud from physical servers that they can touch and feel. This is a myth has been debunked over time. Data on the cloud is probably as secure if not more secure with the right architecture than your own premises environment.
- Potential latency – Some operations may suffer from added delay if the data is in the cloud as opposed to physical servers which are directly connected to the machines locally. This can be overcome by using cloud providers that have data centers that are closer to your physical location.
- Portability – The data or software to be migrated needs to be portable with cloud environments. Different environments have different needs and it’s vital to adapt your data to the needs of each one.
- Adaptability – An organisation moving to the cloud will also undergo other changes. Employees will need to adapt to using the cloud, security will need to be refurbished and funding will also have to be re-distributed according to the new needs. All of this will be challenging as it will impact the business directly.
- Time – Organisations need to carefully consider the time involved in moving data to the cloud and assess the readiness and business deadlines.
- Cost – Even though the cloud saves the cost of physical servers the cost of migrating data should not to be neglected.
Solutions
To migrate to the cloud, it’s necessary to plan well ahead of the actual migration. Businesses need to come up with a proper strategy to avoid the pitfalls.
For a start, you need to make sure that your application code is compatible with the cloud environment to which you are migrating. Some systems may need tweaking to set them up for the cloud which is highly elastic compared to bare-metal fixed resource on-premises systems.
Picking the right cloud migration partner that can support you in architecting and implementing your cloud move is very important as well. This is where Ecomm India Cloud IT comes in. After we take a close look at your migration requirements and create an architecture ready for implementation, we ensure that the migration is done by following established industry standard migration models and tailoring it to your needs. Downtime, data accessibility and porting availability are some other areas to consider.
Data security needs to be prioritized to prevent leaks. We ensure the use of proper encryption for data in-transit and at-rest. Also proper access authentication are put in place so no unauthorized party can get access to your data. Even we as the support partner do not have access to your sensitive data as they are encrypted using keys available only with you.
The ‘test before migration’ technique is where the Master-Slave model is used for replicating your database on to the cloud and only when all the data has been replicated and tested will the switch over be initiated. We also ensure there is plan for any foreseeable problems between environments to reduce the overall complexity of the migration. This way, if a problem does occur, the solution has already been identified beforehand.
In conclusion
At the end of the day, only you can decide whether your business/organisation will benefit from migrating to the cloud. You need to weigh up all the potential benefits, challenges and solutions with respect to the current situation.
If done right, cloud migration is one of the best things a business can undertake to become more efficient and competitive.
However, the wrong choices can even lead to a mini-disaster. Therefore, one must choose and implement the chosen course of action wisely with a trusted partner like Ecomm India Cloud IT.
If you have any questions or need any guidance on migrating your environments to the cloud, feel free to contact us at 
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