How To Migrate Your Business To The Cloud In 4 Easy Steps [Infographic]

How to Migrate To Cloud in 4 Easy Steps

Moving some or all your business data to a private or a public cloud, which usually is provided by a public cloud services provider, such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, has lots of benefits for your business. From increasing your flexibility, resilience, and efficiency to providing your business with 24/7 access to data when you need it, no matter where you are and when it matters the most.

That’s why more and more companies have already migrated to the cloud, and there are even more that are switching from one cloud provider to another (which is known as cloud-to-cloud migration). In 2021, over 70% of companies have been migrating to the cloud.

Now, if this is your first time migrating to a private or public cloud, and you’re not sure what you should expect from the whole process, know that it’s all about planning and attention to detail. And it’s also about choosing the right team of experts to help you migrate to the cloud with minimal disruption to your business while you transition.

In most cases, this migration process is outsourced to a team of experienced, certified cloud specialists that will take you through 4 main steps when moving your business to the cloud – analyze, plan, implement and manage. 

So, what exactly do these steps involve? Check out our infographic below or read the full article to find out.

How to Migrate to Cloud Infographic

Analyze

Your cloud migration strategy depends on your motivation, for example, what influenced your decision. Maybe you decided to migrate and adopt the cloud due to a critical business event, such as a backup failure or cyber attack. Or maybe you wanted to have a more innovative business by switching your IT infrastructure to a private cloud. 

Every business is unique, so the cloud team needs first to understand your business-specific needs and the reasons behind your decision. This initial audit or analysis can include everything related to your background and technology needs, current IT infrastructure, company services, products and platforms, business goals and plans for the future.

Once the cloud specialists know your background and the reasons you want to migrate to the cloud, they can build a cloud migration plan that will take into account critical business aspects, including technical requirements and financial investments.

Plan

Together with the cloud specialists, you need to decide on specific cloud requirements, for example, public cloud or private, fully cloud or hybrid, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure? 

After you’ve decided on a platform and vendor, you also have to discuss adequate measures to protect your data and prevent unauthorized access, including data encryption, two-factor authentication, and disaster recovery plans.

How to move to cloud in 4 easy steps

Based on these decisions and the initial analysis, the cloud team designs a tailor-made private or public cloud solution that can include hardware acquisition, data center selection, ISP, and bandwidth management, among many others. 

Having a solid plan will help you choose the right tools to use during migration, and identify the critical data that needs to be migrated first, or if your data should be moved without any downtime. 

Implement

As said also at the beginning of this article, successful migration to the cloud involves lots of planning and attention to detail, and that can be achieved only with proper testing. The testing stage can help you avoid unexpected problems and ensure everything is in place before moving your data to the cloud.

Once you agree on the plan and all the technical details, and go through the testing stage, the cloud specialists will start implementing a dedicated cloud environment with the best-in-class technologies, while ensuring everything will be ready within the agreed timeline. Most of the time, the main challenge will always be carrying out your migration with minimal disruption to normal operation, at the lowest cost, and over the shortest period of time.

To be sure everything is taken care of, choose a cloud team that can manage and support you through the entire process, from start to finish. That means they should provide everything from initial audit and planning to final documentation, report, handover and training. 

Manage and Train

Now that you made your transition to the cloud, it’s very important to actively monitor everything, and be ready to fix issues as they come up. It’s also recommended to back up everything in case something goes wrong. Even though you may experience a few drawbacks, migrating to the cloud will benefit your business in the long run.

So, again, make sure the cloud team you’re working with is ready to step in if something doesn’t go as planned. This means that the cloud service you choose should include ongoing monitoring and management of your new cloud environment, 24/7 helpdesk support and training for all departments involved. 

Secure, cost-effective, and tailor-made cloud migration 

Now that you made the choice and understand how beneficial is to move your data to the cloud, the Haar cloud team can help in the following specific situations: from on-premise infrastructure to a private cloud, migrate to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, or even move from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud to your own private cloud.

With us, you can rest assured that your company’s digital assets, services, databases, IT resources, and applications are safe and secure at all times. Also, if you ever want to scale up and down your infrastructure, you can easily choose to incorporate high-performance dedicated servers, equipped with the latest technology.

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