Processes are highly important and beneficial in business because they guide you through a consistent step-by-step of what to expect and how to get things done to reach your goals. That’s why we created a proven cloud migration strategy, so you don’t have to! We call it the ‘Five Steps of Moving to the Cloud’ and we believe this process is the knight in shining armor our clients have been waiting for with their cloud migration. Let’s find out if that’s true.
NASA’s lack of processes caused a costly mistake resulting in the $193 million Mars Climate Orbiter satellite disintegrating in the planet’s atmosphere. This is obviously an extreme example of not having properly documented processes in place, but it highlights the importance of having well-documented and followed processes whether that’s in migrating to the cloud, implementing a new accounting system, or, in this very expensive and embarrassing example, launching a satellite into outer space. Apparently, even the brainiest of scientists sometimes forget to document and follow procedures.
Transforming your business by migrating to the cloud isn’t easy, but we can help simplify it and secure a smoother transition by following our proven cloud migration roadmap that minimizes disruption and delays and improves performance and scalability.
1. Assessment
The first stage in our cloud migration strategy is the ‘Assessment’. At this part, BT Partners’ cloud experts analyze your needs and advise on the best options for your unique environment and business goals. This step is crucial to get right because an accurate assessment sets you up for a solid foundation through the rest of the migration project.
We’ll help you decide what applications, data, network configurations, and other services and dependencies need to be migrated, and which will remain the status quo because not always does everything need to migrate to the cloud. It’s here, also, that the best available people and resources are pulled in to form a migration team that leads you through to success.
2. Migration
While there are common elements in every migration, each one varies based on the factors discovered during an assessment. It’s almost impossible to know how exactly it will go, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan. During the migration stage, our cloud experts take the results from the previous assessment and build out a customized migration plan. We finalize the cutover steps, the implementation date, and the rollback plan should things sidetrack too far off course.
If you’re working with an experienced and knowledgeable cloud partner, like BT Partners, you’ll experience fewer bumps, and if you do happen to run into some bumps and bends (which can be expected), we can help to rectify them quickly and get you back on track.
3. Configuration
Just as it states, during configuration, we’ll configure the cloud environment to your specific business requirements. We work with you to perform functional and performance testing, and design as required so that it aligns with your organization. To ensure long-term success, we’ll configure your cloud elements so they can safely and effectively communicate with each other in your new cloud environment.
While this is an important step in your initial migration, we recommend making this a part of your ongoing cloud strategy so that your cloud continues to be configured appropriately. You’ll want to adjust settings and tools as your business grows and evolves so that you continue to look for ways to reduce downtime & costs and improve security & performance. A good cloud partner can review your cloud configuration to identify weaknesses and areas of improvement throughout the cloud’s lifecycle.
4. Optimization
Here is where we’ll optimize your new environment, and the final cutover will take place. This stage is devoted to realizing the biggest benefits, cost savings, and ROI that everyone talks about with the cloud. With only 3 out of 10 organizations knowing exactly where their cloud costs are going, it’s helpful to reach out to a cloud expert for some insights. Optimizing the cloud helps eliminate waste and uncover efficiencies in your cloud features and tools. Like the configuration step, after the initial migration we recommend circling back to this as an ongoing activity to make sure the cloud grows and adapts alongside your company’s evolution.
There are many cloud optimization strategies and best practices to help with this step. Luckily, an experienced cloud partner who has worked with a variety of shapes and sizes of companies is well-versed in all of them and can skillfully recommend the ones to leverage so that your company sees its highest returns and richest ROI.
5. Maintenance
During the final stage, our team works with you to formulate a maintenance and support plan to keep your new environment properly monitored, supported, and maintained for the years to come. If you’re maintaining a cloud environment without any insight into it, you’re likely to experience some difficulties, like unexpected cost spikes, poor performance, and a negative ROI. This is where experts can definitely help.
Keeping a pulse on your cloud environment doesn’t have to be annoying. BT Partners proactively monitors all critical network components and implements solutions that improve performance and security so that you can resolve threats quickly and jump on opportunities immediately.
Experience is the best teacher, and with 90% of organizations already using the cloud, there’s a lot around to learn from. Many of our clients have followed our 5-step cloud migration strategy and have seen great success. We want to share this proven process with you so that you can take advantage of what we’ve learned from our years of experience supporting clients through their cloud migration. If you’re looking for help on how to apply this step-by-step process in your organization, reach out to our cloud team today.
