Competitive business scenario and ever-changing challenges compel entrepreneurs to implement ways that can increase productivity. If you want to enhance productivity without compromising on quality, you can consider migration to the cloud. Cloud technology not only assists you to enhance the efficiency of your employees but also
enables you to streamline the workflow. Successful cloud migration can take your organization to the next level.
In this article, we will dig deep into the cloud migration challenges and strategies to make the process successful for your enterprise. But, before discussing the steps for a successful migration to the cloud, let’s understand the concept.
What is cloud migration? An introduction to moving to the cloud
When an enterprise moves some or all of its software, applications, systems, and other data-related capabilities into the cloud, it is known as migration to the cloud. Simply put, cloud migration enables entrepreneurs to run their businesses and access information on the cloud-based infrastructure. Usually, public cloud service providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure provide companies with robust cloud-based infrastructure.
These days, the cloud has become an essential factor of business strategy irrespective of the company’s size and sector. Many companies switch from on-premise to the cloud to make corporate data more accessible for stakeholders and customers. Cloud migration strategies involve several parts but enterprises tend to prefer the application and data transfer model. Let’s understand this model from the perspective of on-premise to cloud migration.
On-premises to cloud migration process
On-premise to cloud migration can give your business higher flexibility, agility, profitability, and scalability. Whether you want to grab new opportunities for business expansion or increase productivity, all you need is a migration to the cloud.
Here it is fair to mention that cloud migration depends on multiple aspects including goals for migration, size of the current business environment, business model, and overall complexity. You can transfer applications and services either at once or take a hybrid path in which you can keep a few applications on-premise and transfer the rest to the cloud.
Here is a step-by-step process of on-premise to cloud migration.
Make a Plan
It starts with making the right roadmap for cloud migration. A successful cloud migration needs a solid strategy consisting of long-term objectives, features, and other necessary information. Companies need to involve their employees and stakeholders during the process of making a roadmap. You can keep the following aspects in mind when making a cloud migration plan-
- Complete visibility into the on-premise platform with individual dependency
- Thorough assessment of security and performance requirements
- Make a strategy for training and implementation process
Select the Cloud Platform
This is another crucial step that ensures the success of migration to the cloud. Today, many popular public cloud environments are available, and therefore, you need to choose the right one for your business. You can consider your business model, market trends, and major requirements or objectives as mentioned in the roadmap while selecting the cloud platform.
Also, you need to consider the pricing and other crucial factors like the type of cloud environments. You can select the most suitable model from private, hybrid, public, and multi-cloud environments.
Migrate Applications and Data
The on-premise to the cloud transfer process offers two options- Online transfer using a private network or public internet or offline transfer to a public cloud. In the offline mode of cloud migration, we can upload applications and data on an appliance and ship it to a cloud provider. Here, you need to consider the type and amount of data as well as the complexity of business applications for determining the migration mode.
Measure the Success
Like any other investment, cloud migration should also give you some return. However, you need to sync and update apps as and when necessary to get the desired outcome. You can measure the ROI with the help of a cloud consultant or an SAP Business One partner in India if you have opted for SAP Business One (SAP B1).
Avoid 5 mistakes for successful cloud migration with SAP Business one solution
Absence of Knowledge
It is one of the biggest cloud migration mistakes organizations can make. The migration process should start with a proper understanding of what we want to achieve and the role of the cloud in getting it. Many companies tend to jump on the cloud migration bandwagon without this understanding.
Lack of Planning
Another common mistake is a lack of proper planning. On-premise to cloud migration involves many steps and it is considered a big investment. Therefore, companies should do proper homework before initiating the process. Ineffective cloud migration strategies can lead to the loss of money and time.
Erroneous Cost Assessment
As mentioned above, cloud migration is a costly affair. If companies fail to assess the cost and allocate the budget accordingly, they may end up spending a lot of money. Though the cloud can reduce IT expenditure, it is better to take all the aspects into account before migrating to the cloud.
Inaccurate Risk Assessment
This is another major mistake enterprises make during cloud migration. When you move the corporate data out of premises, you always add the risk of theft or breach into your business environment. Therefore, it is essential to assess the risks associated with the on-premise to cloud migration.
Migrating Everything Together
When you attempt to migrate everything at once, it can be disastrous for your company. It is because of higher complexity and more time consumption. Migrating to the cloud requires a systematic approach to reduce the chances of errors, but when all things are migrating together, this is not possible.
Apart from these five mistakes, other common migrating mistakes are vague testing, insufficient monitoring, lack of exit plan, and failure in documentation update. Also, when companies skip employees’ training, we can assume some consequences. All these mistakes can fail the entire cloud migration process for any enterprise.
On-premises to cloud migration challenges to overcome
When you opt for migrating the data from on-premises to the cloud environment, you need to overcome several challenges. Let’s go through these challenges quickly so that you can able to mitigate them effectively.
Over budget
Total cost of ownership (TCO), other expenses, and post-migration costs can increase quickly if you have not planned the migration. You need to allocate resources again and spend more money to meet additional bandwidth requirements if your plan has mistakes in terms of usage and implementation. You can avoid this over-budget situation by planning carefully in advance.
Legacy infrastructure
Another major challenge is the legacy infrastructure that does not support an advanced cloud environment. It is possible that some legacy business systems are built even before the advent of the cloud. You can consider such systems while planning for cloud migration. You can take any option like re-platforming, refactoring, or replacing the data before migrating it to the cloud.
Data security
Cloud service providers offer security during and after migration but this security is limited to the cloud infrastructure. It is necessary for you to ensure that the workload and crucial data are already secured before moving to the cloud. You can opt for deploying and maintaining a cloud FWaaS to protect cloud resources and on-premise infrastructure alike.
Database-related issues
Sometimes, you may find the migration of on-premise databases to the cloud is slower than transferring business applications. However, you can address this challenge by collaborating with your IT team and cloud vendor representative. This collaboration can also assist you to mitigate any disruption in operations caused during the migration.
Types of cloud migration strategies and key benefits for migration to cloud
Cloud migration strategies can ensure the success of migrating your data to a cloud. Any business can leverage the benefits of cloud technology by implementing these strategies. As per Gartner, these strategies are known as ‘the six Rs of migration’. Let’s discuss these strategies in detail.
Rehosting
Also known as lift-and-shift, this is the most common path of cloud migration. As it sounds, you can hold all the applications and drop it into a new cloud-driven hosting platform without making any changes. Enterprises unfamiliar with the cloud concept can opt for this general migration process. Rehosting can save money and time while giving businesses more flexibility and scalability.
Re-platforming
It is known as the lift-tinker-and-shift model. The re-platforming option includes some optimization in the cloud without modifying the core architecture of business apps. Enterprises that are not ready for configuration and expansion can opt for this option. Re-platforming is a good option for companies that have a lack of trust in the cloud environment.
Re-purchasing
It is defined as a replacement of existing applications with a new SaaS-based, cloud-native platform. Here, the complexity of the process is high but the code’s familiarity and training are not very important for your employees. Also, you can get more profit in a short time against the cost of development.
Re-factoring
It is rebuilding business applications from scratch to leverage the benefits of the cloud platform. Here, the vendor lock-in may come because the vendor recreates the application to make it suitable for the cloud infrastructure. This option is time-consuming and more expensive than re-platforming or rehosting models.
Retiring
It is closing or inactivating unwanted applications. When it comes to application migration, this option can save a lot of time and money by offering some savings on maintaining unnecessary applications.
Re-visiting
As per this option, some of the applications remain on-premise. For example, highly sensitive or applications with internal processes can be kept within the enterprise.
After going through different strategies, let’s go through the key benefits of migration to the cloud.
1. Reduced Cost
Cloud service providers also offer managed services to facilitate corporate users to reduce operational expenses. Cloud-managed services include maintenance, upgrade, and support for cloud-driven solutions or applications. You can save big bucks on IT operations by migrating to the cloud.
2. Enhanced Performance
Cloud migration can improve the overall performance and user experience. Both applications and websites can easily scale up for higher throughput while hosted in the cloud. The cloud environment also makes it possible to run business applications in locations near their potential or existing users. This can reduce the network latency issue effectively.
3. Better Experience
One of the most significant benefits of migration to the cloud is digital experience. Users can easily access the application’s features anytime and from anywhere. It can support digital transformation and improve the overall experience for customers and employees alike.
4. High Scalability
Cloud computing can support larger workloads and multiple users at once. Traditionally, companies had to purchase and set up servers and take software licenses. Also, it was necessary to buy additional storage and network equipment to scale up their business operations. Cloud platforms are designed to enable enterprises to get rid of this difficulty by offering high scalability and flexibility.
Conclusion
On-premise to cloud migration becomes highly beneficial for modern enterprises over the period. However, you need to consult a reliable and reputed service provider for successful cloud migration while overcoming challenges. Hope this guide will help you make an effective strategy for cloud migration and take your business to a new level.
SAP Silver Touch is a preferred SAP Business One partner in India. We offer 360-degree SAP ERP consulting, implementation, and add-on services to startups and SMEs. If you want to know more about the scope of SAP Business One for the manufacturing industry or any other sector, feel free to contact us. We assist you at every stage of cloud migration and SAP ERP implementation in line with your business requirements.
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