The move of business operations to the cloud is one of the outcomes of hyper digitization that the world is experiencing today. Even with the subject of digitization aside, companies do gain significant benefits in moving their business processes to the cloud, such as better security and scalability. But for a business to get the full benefits of cloud-centric processes, the implementation must, of course, be seamless.
Moving from traditional processes to the cloud environment requires proper planning. Best cloud consultants would agree that it also needs a change of structure to align with the demands of the new environment. If you’re considering migrating your business to the cloud, look at these five ways to ensure the implementation is successful.
1. Assess Your Current Workflow, Services, And Applications
Assessing your current processes, services, and applications is a crucial part of successful cloud migration, and it’s the best place to start. This is how you’ll determine your migration needs and the areas of your business that need digital innovation. This assessment will help you create a more precise target for cloud implementation.
Also, you will be able to identify cloud-ready areas and those that may prevent you from taking the appropriate steps. You can see which services and applications aren’t compatible with cloud migration. It’s crucial that you perform a thorough assessment, as this stage forms the basis for the following steps in cloud implementation.
2. Choose The Right Cloud Provider
A significant part of the implementation includes selecting the best cloud provider. Your choice determines what will happen during the transition process and afterward. You need to evaluate different providers and see if they match your business needs before engaging them. Implementation and management of cloud-based services aren’t simple, and you need to ensure that you leave no room for error.
You need to partner with a provider with enough experience and expertise. If possible, opt for a managed IT services provider that offers to handle both the migration and management of your cloud infrastructure. A search for managed IT services within your area, such as Houston managed IT services, will get you a narrowed-down list of nearby providers to choose from.
Before you choose a service provider to work with, there are some important questions you need to ask about them.
- What is the provider’s reputation?
- What level of support do they offer during the implementation process?
- What tools do they use to make the process better or easier?
- Is their offering relevant to your business?
- How experienced is the provider in matters of migration and implementation of cloud processes?
3. Start Small And Expand Over Time
One of the worst mistakes you could make would be to implement cloud services only to realize later on that some processes or applications can’t work on cloud. This disrupts the workflow and may cause downtime as you try to remedy the situation. Although the ultimate goal is to move all your operations to the cloud, the best practice would be to start small, with basic use cases that are cloud-ready, and to build on them.
You may start with a simple process like moving data from on-premise infrastructure to cloud storage. Taking it one step at a time ensures an easy reversal for any process that may not work correctly, all without disrupting the business’s workflow.
In this stage, you may need to prioritize things like vendor management, team collaboration, and teamwork spaces. You need to consider these areas as priority zones because they benefit the most from cloud services. In-house, field, and remote teams can collaborate more effectively in a cloud environment, and they also benefit from cloud storage. Always ensure a test run of each implemented process before you fully adopt it.
4. Employ Architecture Standardization
Cloud processes require you to improve and update your IT policies, roadmaps, and standards to match the cloud migration strategy. Similarly, you need to develop cloud-native architecture instead of implementing a lift-and-shift transition method on the existing architecture. You need to build an IT roadmap that ensures your business has the necessary cloud capabilities.
The different types of IT roadmaps you need to develop include enterprise, project, architecture, and engineering. An IT roadmap specifies the process of cloud implementation in clear terms. It will help you create a timeline of events and tasks from start to finish, which will help considerably with the migration process.
5. Cater To The Human Side
Majority of cloud implementation focuses only on the technical side of things. But the users of the cloud applications, services, and workflows also need some consideration. Remember, a lot of what your team is doing is going to change. People may react to the change in different ways; one of them is resistance.
You need to remember the human aspect and plan for reactions that may hinder the cloud implementation. Don’t underestimate the effort you will need to put in to help your teams adapt to the changes. You can ensure that there’s no resistance to the change by clearly communicating with and preparing your teams adequately.
It’s important to ensure that each team or department is aware of how their workflow will change, so you will need to conduct necessary training. Consistently request feedback from your teams to get a general feel of the people on the ground before you start transitioning. Your teams’ readiness will help make the cloud implementation go more smoothly and may ensure an easy adoption of cloud processes.
Final Thoughts
Implementing cloud services can be a complicated and challenging undertaking. The tips discussed above are by no means exhaustive, but they are good pointers of what you can do to make cloud implementation a success. The main thing is to look at your business independently and find ways to meet your specific cloud implementation demands.