Moving to the cloud provides many advantages and can open up many opportunities. Once you’ve determined that a cloud transition is right for your organization, it’s time to start thinking about a cloud migration strategy.
How will you make the move? Who will be involved? Is your company ready?
If you’re developing a cloud migration strategy, you should have completed your cloud readiness assessment and created a cloud enablement strategy. This will give you a solid foundation before moving data or applications to the cloud. That solid foundation also includes selecting a cloud migration services partner who understands your concerns, requirements, and the opportunities you hope to take advantage of.
The Migration Team
When developing your organization’s cloud migration strategy, it’s important to consult all the relevant stakeholders. All departments’ priorities, challenges, and concerns should be considered when planning. Check that you’ve addressed issues raised by:
- Enterprise architecture
- Information security and risk management
- Data classification
- Enterprise risk management
- Finance
- Operations
- Human resources
- Applications teams
- Business units
Once you’ve done that, assigning responsibility for different aspects of your cloud migration strategy to specific people is essential. Otherwise, it’s easy for the transition to get derailed by too many chiefs — or too few. Depending on your organization’s resources, some of these people might be members of an external cloud migration services team. That’s OK. Here’s an example of what a cloud migration team might look like:
- Lead: This person owns your migration. They are typically a CTO or CIO but can be anyone in leadership with at least basic knowledge of the benefits of cloud.
- Manager: This person keeps the migration on track. They must understand both the cloud and business sides of the move and be able to motivate team members.
- Architect: This person is responsible for designing and managing your cloud architecture. They will work with other team members to address any migration issues.
- System Administrator: If you have an SA already, the migration can change their role significantly. Task this person with managing new cloud resources to meet your needs.
- Security Manager: This person will configure, deploy, and maintain security measures for your new cloud environment. They will identify and communicate potential vulnerabilities.
- Compliance Specialist: If compliance requirements for your industry bind you, ensure someone on your migration team understands them and can ensure they are maintained.
Cloud Migration Services
There are several stages involved in successful cloud migrations. Ensure you include all of these (or find a cloud migration services partner who can) as you begin your move to the cloud.
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Requirements analysis and readiness assessment
Determining your organization’s needs and whether or not a cloud solution can meet them, as well as selecting applications most suited to a cloud transition
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Planning and architecture
Designing and building a public, private, or hybrid cloud solution that fits your business needs
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Migration strategy and application prioritization
Developing a transition plan that addresses the concerns of all stakeholders and determining in which order applications will be moved.
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Application and data migration
Moving selected data and applications to the cloud with consideration for security, compliance, and operations requirements.
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Testing and optimization
Ensuring the migration has been completed, identifying inefficiencies and vulnerabilities, and addressing them.
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Operation and maintenance
Overseeing and maintaining your cloud environment with an eye to reliability, security, backups, and performance.
Experts in Cloud Migration Strategy
At AISN, we can provide the strategic reasoning, best practices, and common sense guidance your organization needs to develop a successful cloud migration strategy. We’ll help you assess your needs, explore proven practices, and adopt a cloud platform with enterprise-grade rigor and governance. Whether you’re only considering cloud enablement or ready to move and need expert support, we can help. Talk to our experts about what we can do for you.