Moving to the cloud is flexible, I know with high responsiveness for the IT department. But what about moving the data to the cloud and its security? Want to know more about it? If yes, then here is the answer. Today I am here top 10 points to consider while moving to the cloud.
Many of the people have a question that does could application less expansive and reliable than on-premise applications. My friend, the answer is yes and no both. Why? Go through the post to get your answer. Let’s start.
#1 Things To Think Before Moving To The Cloud Environment
#1 Goals
The first question is, why are you moving to the cloud? For reducing cost, improve efficiency, reduce workload, time to deployment, or others. Deciding the reason and goals are the basis of successful migration.
That’s why first of all, list them, prioritize and quantify them. With this, you can get some level of an idea about the level of cloud migration that is perfect for you.
#2 Security
Before choosing the provider, look for the security and data encryption while working and well as rest. For example, does cloud application offer secure and encrypt data, or is it safe against breaches. Can it analyze and perform penetration tests in advance to find errors in the system?
Ask all such questions to the providers and wait until you get a satisfactory answer. Security breaches cost your data, and it equally worth your business. Remember, never make a compromise with it.
#3 Reliability
After the security confirmation, please go through the cloud application’s service level agreement to check whether it meets your requirements and reliability level. See 9 to 6 support seems okay for the HR applications but not for the application that runs your business and stores all critical data of it.
Cloud application includes finance, account, employee information, etc. and hence it must be available each day with a minimum of 99.99% uptime. Does the cloud provider have this level of availability at all places with load-balancing? If yes, go for the next consideration. Otherwise, quit the name.
#4 Disaster Recovery
Is the cloud application provider of your choice has disaster-recovery data back up the center, which is located in different physical locations, then the live data center? What is the data backup policy for the live data center?
How frequently they take the back up of data? How would they recover data due to some malfunctioning, or interruption in transection or process? Look at all these things carefully.
#5 Monitoring
Cloud provider monitors some of the system health metrics on your behalf. Please take a look at all such parameters and find will they really catch and solve problems asap. Here are the essential parameters you should consider:
- High load balancing
- CPU thresholds
- Volume capacity and disk utilization
- App specified metrics
- Database metrics
- User interface access via URL
- Security attacks including illegal log-in attempts, denial-of-service, and brute force attacks, unauthorized file access, virus scanning
All these alerts and metrics will not ensure application performance, like output or response time. For that, your cloud provider regularly sends a test transaction. Otherwise, you can find the application is meeting your criteria or not.
#6 Self-service Dashboards
A self-service dashboard allows you to take a close look at your application and its health. It is your cloud provider’s responsibility but looking at all your application never loss you.
In case of emergency, a self-service dashboard helps a lot to connect with cloud application providers and solve the problem as soon as possible.
#7 Transparent Pricing
Have you checked the pricing model of your cloud application? No, ask below-given questions and understand them.
- Does it charge per user in real or just put the number for formal appearance?
- What are the charges for adding users, and additional is hassle-free or not?
- Is there a fee for exceeding transaction quotas or not? If yes, then how much?
- Will it upgrade to the higher cost plan or higher quota in case of the exceeding transaction?
- What is the cancellation or refund policy?
Keep in mind, be aware of all the possible costs before sign up and avoid all extra and unexpected fees before it’s too late.
#8 Migration
The migration of data to the cloud platform is an important task. It involves:
- Converting data into a supportive format according to the cloud application demand
- bulk data import capabilities of the application provider
- Replacement of outdated customer information with the latest one
- Deleting obsolete pricing and products
- Cleansing and renewing the data before import
Migration to the new platform also needed training for it. are your users learning the application in stages or simultaneously?
#9 Integration
The silo structure of application creates fragmented and inefficient processes for business, such as duplicate data or manual steps. You can avoid it by integrating cloud applications with existing applications and operations of your business. here are the questions you have to ask:
- Does the API support protocols like SOAP/XML or REST?
- Will you access the functionality of cloud and data via an API?
- Does XML, CSV, JSON, or other formats are supportable in batch import/export?
- Do you have an in-house expertise person or team who understands all these formats and protocols?
#10 Managed Services
Managed services reduce the workload of IT staff from administering and managing cloud applications. Managed services make it easier to get value and time for the new application. Ask the cloud providers about the managed service. Precisely, ask:
- Are their limited working hours for the included or performed tasks?
- What are the scopes of service?
- What would be the response time?
- How would you submit work orders for on-boarding new users?
- Will they facilitate urgent requests as a priority?
The list is unlimited. As per the circumstance, it demands extra consideration that make some of these considerations controversial.
#2 Conclusion
All these are the point you have to take care of while considering the cloud provider and cloud environment. Even if you think about these marks as a starting point, you can shoot the right question to the service provider.
It makes a difference between educated and blindly optimizes the cloud. Even you get a basic idea about internal challenges before the beginning. And when you do begin after complete assurance, your IT team becomes more productive, your data are more secure, and your applications and software are more reliable and available than before.