Cloud computing has been around for a couple of decades but is now invading the technology landscape like fire. From business to personal communication, cloud services have eased the availability of data and made remote digital connectivity a reality. Your New York office can conduct meetings with the team in India, while the team has instant access to data, at the click of a button. This is possible due to your systems and operations on the cloud. Migration to the cloud is the most beneficial decision for enterprises that seek multi location presence or have a remote workforce. However, it can also present several challenges that make cloud migration difficult to adopt.
Here we cover the benefits and challenges of cloud migration services, including what is cloud migration, its advantages and disadvantages, cloud migration strategies, and how to migrate to cloud.
What is Cloud Migration?
The cloud migration process involves moving files, data, applications, and other critical digital business systems to the cloud, where the term “Cloud” refers to servers, resources, data storage, and more that are accessed on-demand over the internet instead of hosting, managing, or running physical servers.
There are various ways to migrate to the cloud, depending on the use case and the objectives of your project. In the IT space, there are different cloud migration strategies you can adopt.
- Rehost— Also called “lift and shift,” moves applications from on-premises environments to the servers in different locations.
- Replatform—Replace or retool applications to take better advantage of cloud services
- Repurchase— Decommissioning an application and replacing it with a cloud-based version.
- Refactor— Re-architecting an application from scratch to build a cloud-optimized application.
- Retire— Decommission redundant legacy applications without moving it to the cloud.
- Retain – Hold on few to on-premises solutions just in case the migration cost is higher.
Cloud migration services
- Infrastructure as a Service
With IaaS, the service provider manages the infrastructure, including the physical servers and storage capabilities. You, as the subscriber, are responsible for installing, configuring, and managing your own software.
- Platform as a Service
A PaaS provider manages all the infrastructure, as well as for analytics, databases, and operating systems. PaaS allows high levels of software customization because you build it yourself, but without the coding or infrastructure management required in traditional software building. - Software as a Service
With SaaS, the provider manages all technical aspects, from applications and upgrades to analytics and infrastructure. Applications are delivered to users via the internet and can typically be accessed in a browser, so there is no downloading or installation required.
Benefits of cloud migration
There are several reasons why businesses migrate to the cloud, but the biggest reason is that working in the cloud gives you access to virtually limitless computer resources. Not only is cloud computing cheaper, more flexible, and scalable, it’s also more secure, and easier to use than on-premises options. Here are the main benefits of cloud migration.
- Flexibility and scalability – Scale server needs as business requirements fluctuate
- Lower cost – No more expensive procurements and maintenance of equipment
- Mobility – Anytime and anywhere availability of data and resources
- Ease – cloud services are managed externally
- Performance – continuous high performance at a lower cost
- Security – robust built-in security mechanisms
- Compliance – offer a range of security and governance settings
- Superior Disaster Recovery – automatically back up data at regular intervals
Cloud Migration Challenges
Cloud migrations are complex, and even with proper planning, they take time to be implemented. While there are numerous tools and services that offer change management or consulting arms, there are numerous cloud migration challenges to consider.
- Financial Implications
- Adoption resistance
- Skill shortage
- Multi-cloud data integration
- Data and application portability
- Security issues
- Business continuity
From infrastructure deployments in the cloud, managed cloud services, cloud enterprise resource planning, to complete cloud migration services, SamaraTech empowers your enterprise with smooth and effortless migration to the cloud.
We smoothen the cloud migration process for enterprises, to migrate their infrastructure, middleware components and applications to a cloud of their choice. With our strategic partnership with AWS, Azure, Oracle, and Google Cloud, we enable businesses to evolve their cloud capabilities, define new revenue streams, develop cloud-based applications, accelerate product release, reduce infrastructure costs, and gain data insights. Cloud computing services require architecting and deploying the right way, to move businesses to the cloud…and we know it all!
