SME Cloud Migration – Where to begin?

In the past few years, cloud computing has experienced rapid growth among businesses. Not just for large corporations either, small to medium-size enterprises that accelerated their move to the cloud, have become more agile, cost-efficient, and innovative. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has only further motivated businesses to move their operations onto the cloud.

 

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More than ever, the cloud is vital in helping businesses reopen, reinvent and achieve an end-to-end digital transformation. And there are more reasons to adapt to the cloud such as lower costs, ability to collaborate, flexibility, and virtualization which, all together, lets businesses do more with fewer resources. If you are considering making the change or need to learn more about cloud migration, this blog post will tell you everything you need to know about cloud computing, and where to start!

What is cloud migration?

 

Cloud migration is the process of moving your company’s digital databases, services, digital assets, applications, and IT resources either partially, or fully, into cloud-based systems. Furthermore, cloud migration means that you can move all these properties from one cloud to another.

At ADT Systems, we have been helping many small to medium-sized businesses move from their dated, less efficient infrastructures to fully reliable, up-to-date cloud systems. This progression for most businesses is critical to achieving higher performance, efficiency, and staying up to date. However, every business is unique and migration to the cloud should start with planning and an overall assessment of your business needs and goals. It is important to note that moving to the cloud is not a one-click job, it is a process that scales over time and requires a well-planned strategy.

 

What are the benefits of cloud migration?

 

Cloud migration can have a massive impact on your business, this includes faster delivery times, a reduction in the total cost of ownership, and enhanced innovation opportunities. Access to the cloud will enable more flexibility and agility within your business, which are vital to meeting the ever-changing market and consumer demands. The list of reasons to migrate goes on and on but some of the core benefits of shifting to the cloud are:

 

  • Reduced upfront costs
  • Improved performance
  • Increased agility and flexibility
  • Better consumption management
  • Cloud scalability
  • Mobility
  • Increased collaboration
  • Quality control
  • Disaster recovery
  • Loss prevention
  • Automatic software updates
  • Insights and AI analytics

 

Cloud strategy

 

Determining what is most important for your business and what functions you should start adding to your cloud infrastructure, will help you to migrate seamlessly. First and foremost, we always recommend consulting the cloud migration with an IT specialist, who will advise you on how best to start your move to the cloud. With that being said, we have also listed the key cloud migrations steps, so you have an idea of what the process will look like:

 

  1. First and foremost, define and build your strategy. It is important that you know what your business is going to gain and what you want to improve. Knowing these objectives will help to develop a cloud migration strategy where you will need to determine which applications, assets, and data should be moved to the cloud, what type of cloud, and ultimately, what your infrastructure should look like.
  2. Assessment of migration – what, when, and where. Knowing your current business infrastructure, applications and data landscape will help identify which applications and data are the most appropriate to migrate to the cloud. Through mapping out, pre-migration analysis, and risk assessment, you will be able to make informed decisions with minimized risk of migrating less appropriate assets.
  3. Cloud migration – moving assets to the cloud. This typically will involve modernizing existing applications, developing new cloud-native applications, and transforming the infrastructure and the architecture. This eventually will create your business cloud operating model and enable you to enjoy all the aforementioned benefits of the cloud.

 

Our clients usually ask us what functions they should start migrating, of course, we prefer to discuss and analyze their business infrastructure first, but we have prepared a list of the most important applications to start with:

 

  • Email – a cloud-based email system is easy to deploy, it will give you peace of mind about your company information being exchanged among employees. This is because the cloud-based systems automatically archive everything on all connected devices, even deleted emails. This will prevent data loss, as well as freeing your IT team from constant maintenance.

 

  • Collaborative software - collaborative cloud-based file sharing apps, allow teams to share project information, large files, edit documents, assign tasks, communicate effectively – all from any location (with internet access.) This is also a great step to expand your business globally, allowing you to work with people around the world at a reduced cost.

 

  • IP phone system – an IP phone system can provide you with functions such as conference calling, voice messaging and other advanced features. IP phone systems hosted in the cloud can save a significant amount of money especially the upfront costs.

 

What else is important to consider?

 

  • Fast and reliable internet connection - as cloud-based systems are the Internet dependant, you need to make sure that the connection is stable, consistent, and fast. A disruption caused by a weak internet connection could potentially bring your business to a standstill. That is why it is important to consider what Internet connectivity you have. We discuss this topic in a separate blog, which you can read here. Alternatively, please contact us! Our IT specialists are a great source of information and always happy to advise.

 

  • Online security and data recovery – Once you have a cloud migration strategy in place, you need to make sure that your provider offers adequate security. Your IT manager should verify that all transferable data is protected by 256-bit encryption, and you can always have access to it. If you are giving permission to other members of your business, they should be strictly monitored. This will give you a clear view of how your data is used, which is a great means of preventing data breaches. To fully understand what can cause data breaches, our blog post explains everything that you need to know.

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Cloud migration can be a challenging process that requires constructive planning. The more complex your infrastructure, the harder these challenges may be to overcome. However, the transformation will be beneficial, innovative, collaborative, and above all – it is a step toward the future, that is rapidly digitalizing. That is why it is imperative that you have an IT team that you can rely on and trust to build this exciting transformation for your business. If you are still searching for the best cloud solution and are not sure where to start, you can speak to one of our IT experts to find out how we can help in the cloud migrations process.

 

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ADT has been providing expertise and great customer service since 1993, we have plenty of great advice that we can share with you! Call us on 0330 333 7439 or simply drop us an email at sales@adtsystems.co.uk We have many interesting News posts that are worth reading, so, please take a look!

 

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ADT Systems Team