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Pre-migration strategy is just as important as its implementation for firms wishing to migrate to the cloud. Before proceeding forward with plans, a cloud assessment is a crucial first move that can give a firm foundation. Cloud assessment is the process of examining your applications and data to see if they can be migrated to the cloud with minimal disruption to operations.
Addressing certain cloud advisory questions will give you a fair idea on how to ensure a cloud migration that meets the requirements of your firm. 37% of businesses stated their annual cloud spending surpasses $12 million, and 80% said their yearly cloud spending exceeds $1.2 million. In this article, we will go through six crucial cloud assessment actions you should take to evaluate your cloud readiness.
- Identify your business objectives
It’s essential to comprehend why you want to go to the cloud before you can plan your cloud migration strategy. The following are some of the most prevalent business reasons for moving to the cloud:
- Keeping data center maintenance costs to a minimum
- Increasing the scalability of the system
- Better failover capabilities will improve resiliency
- Increase in number of remote collaborations2. Examine your team’s potential and uncover any skill shortages
Understanding your in-house IT team’s capabilities is the next critical step for cloud assessment. In order to accomplish so, you must first determine the answers to these questions:
- Is your staff equipped with the necessary skills to enable a successful cloud transition?
- Is there any previous cloud migration experience on your team?
- Are you equipped with the required tools and technologies for migration?
- Is there enough time for them to complete cloud migration, or do they have other priorities?
Some of the necessary skills that your team needs to have include cloud infrastructure and security knowledge, data engineering, project management, and cloud networking. It’s critical to address the skill and resource gaps accordingly.
3. Examine your existing IT infrastructure
This is the most important step in your cloud advisory evaluation because it determines the feasibility of the cloud migration project. It entails looking at the apps you want to shift to the cloud as well as gathering enough data about your storage, data collection, network, operating system, and on-premise hardware.
4.Determine your security needs
Many firms considering cloud migration have traditionally prioritized security as a high priority. As a result, any firm moving to the cloud must evaluate their current security methods and determine their compliance and security requirements. The following are some critical factors to include in a security assessment checklist as part of the cloud assessment:
- Identity and access management
- Compliance obligations
- Disaster recovery mechanisms
- Endpoint security and firewalls5. Examine your operational readiness
Despite the introduction of cutting-edge technologies, cloud operations have been a major undertaking. In this step, you’ll assess your readiness to manage the cloud’s operational features. This entails answering a series of questions, including:
- Who will be in charge of the cloud-based apps and systems’ operations?
- What is the deployment and update operating model?
- Have you gotten everyone’s agreement on the roles, duties, and operating model?
- Has your team thought about and documented how cloud operations would work?
- Have you adopted any operational best practices to handle cloud computing?
- Have you devised a strategy for cloud-based business operations or disaster recovery?
Addressing these questions will help you determine whether your team is capable of handling post-migration cloud operations or whether you need to outsource these responsibilities to a cloud-managed service provider.
Why Cloud Assessment Is Important
Cloud migration isn’t merely a matter of moving data from one location to another. It’s a difficult process with numerous complexities. As a result, it’s critical to assess your cloud readiness while keeping all possible situations in mind, including the ones mentioned above. Since SMBs have considerably fewer workloads, it logically follows that their cloud costs would be cheaper as well. However, 53% of small businesses invest more than $1.2 million, up from 38% last year. Cloud assessment allows you to acquire a thorough understanding of your present IT infrastructure and the potential problems associated with cloud migration. It also allows you to meticulously plan the next steps to ensure a successful move.
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