Businesses are widely adopting cloud migration to move their digital business operations into the cloud i.e., shifting the on-premise or legacy infrastructure to the cloud. The major reason for the same is that it helps them avoid the need to build and maintain an on-premise infrastructure. Not only this, but it also brings ease of data back-up and recovery.
Cloud migration requires quite a lot of preparation and advance work but in the end, it’s all worth the effort as it saves cost and brings flexibility to your business. Other benefits offered by cloud migration include availability, accessibility, flexibility, scalability and security, making it a viable business strategy having massive economic advantages.
Enterprises across all verticals have their eyes on the digital revolution since it makes a huge impact, and cloud migration is emerging as one of the most promising ways to go about it. The increased number of connected devices along with greater reliance on AI is acting as a contributing factor for organisations to consider more robust cybersecurity solutions and data protection methods. Today, we will discuss how cloud migration is helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation initiatives.
Trends in Cloud Computing: Organizations are putting a lot of focus on agility and automation as it facilitates a faster time to market. Unlike traditional data-centre infrastructure that limits these capabilities, migrating your mission-critical IT workloads on the cloud can prove to be more useful since it addresses the business demands of faster compute performance and scalable resources. This is the reason why cloud services are continuously growing in value for mid-sized and SMBs that are pursuing cloud solutions at an affordable OPEX rather than investing in significant CAPEX into on-premise infrastructure deployments. By 2022, the public cloud services market is forecasted to exceed 362.3 billion U.S. dollars.
Strategies For Cloud Application Migration: Ideally, you must analyse the application using a tool that can help you determine the right path or strategy for moving it to the cloud. Amazon’s 6 Rs model: Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Retire and Retain, works best for this scenario. Here’s how you can do it:
Rehosting: It’s ideal if you are looking to migrate to the cloud quickly with minimum to no modification. This approach is also called as “Lift-and-Shift”.
Replatforming: Unlike Rehosting, Replatforming requires a few modifications to achieve benefits such as moving relational database service, if enterprises are unable to manage database instances. Nevertheless, the core architecture remains untouched i.e., it stays the same.
Repurchasing: This approach includes purchasing new products or services so that you can incorporate a few changes in the core architecture. This strategy can only be implemented if you are already on the cloud and want to transit significant workloads.
Refactoring/Re-architecting: Refactoring fits well with your context if your enterprise wants to boost agility and maintain business needs. As compared to other cloud migration strategies, it’s an expensive solution as it requires re-architecting of the existing model.
Retire: For this approach, you need to identify the IT assets that you don’t require anymore and that can be turned off without impacting the migration process. Retain: It’s used with other strategies to achieve an optimal solution. This strategy can help you save money if you have clearly identified the IT assets to be retained.
Benefits of Cloud Migration That Accelerate Digital Transformation
Scalability: Cloud computing helps you scale your business that will support larger workloads and greater numbers of users more easily than on-premise infrastructure, which usually requires a setup for additional physical servers, networking equipment, or software licenses.
On-demand Computing: Cloud technologies provide you with computing resources on-demand without having to invest in specific hardware and software. It will facilitate you to optimize the hardware needs of data centres as per business requirements.
Better Customer Experience: Helps you improve customer satisfaction rate since digital transformation results in increased business revenue.
Empowered Decision Making: Well-organized data in hand allows you to make informed decisions while accomplishing your business goals.
Improved Efficiency and Flexibility: Digital transformation smoothens the operations and increases their speed which makes your business a profitable one. Users can easily access the cloud services and data they need, whenever and wherever they want. It also helps in global expansion.
Improved Market Infiltration: Enhanced efficiency and improved decision-making led by digital transformation along with the flow of market penetration, develop into being more competent. It helps you build a vast customer base, satisfaction, and profit margins.
No Upfront Capital Cost: By outsourcing the business needs from cloud service providers, the cost of hiring more IT staff to manage the servers can be reduced.
Facilitate Employee Collaboration: Cloud migration allows your businesses to operate in distributed work environments and the opportunity to work remotely with your employees. Cloud-based communication and collaboration tools will further simply the communication between them.
Ensure Business Continuity: As cloud service providers have multiple data centre locations, they offer far better resilience. Not only this, but they also keep duplicating data frequently: a cheaper way of enjoying cloud economies.
Endnote The cloud market is expanding quickly and it offers a wide range of innovative and emerging technologies. It is also coming across as a major benefactor for the ever-changing business landscape while accelerating the digital transformation journeys of enterprises across the globe. Today, when organizations are highly focused on addressing financial challenges, the cost benefits of cloud computing services are also a point of fascination. One only needs to embark on this journey.