Technological advancements have resulted in a paradigm shift towards the cloud to simplify and integrate services. With cloud computing, many businesses are presented with various benefits and opportunities, including reduced capital expenses on physical hardware, enhanced security, and flexible operations, among others. However, the complexity of the cloud migration process remains the most widely discussed topic due to the numerous risks and challenges it presents to organizations. We’ve come up with three steps that you should consider to simplify cloud computing as you transition to an agile and simple integration platform.
Step 1: Consider Your Unique Strategic Needs
Just like individual needs, organizations have unique underlying needs tied to their business operations. Cloud computing services offer various options including infrastructure as a service, platform-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, and more.
With numerous cloud platforms, choosing the right cloud hosting services ultimately depends on your unique requirements. Organizations are often faced with diverse needs, including security, storage, network speed, cost
reduction, virtualization, dynamic consolidation of services, and many more. An outline of your needs provides a clear sense of direction for your cloud computing requirements.
If you have not yet identified your requirements when it comes to your infrastructure, take time to develop a roadmap with reasonable expectations of the benefits you will gain from cloud computing to achieve a competitive edge. Formulate and document a complete strategic plan for cloud service’s impact on your customers and operations. Your roadmap should clearly
outline the right skill set on board (including financial experts, data managers, business strategists, and IT specialists) for your cloud computing journey. Cloud computing engineers will ensure your cloud service deliverables and activities are aligned with your strategic needs by defining your new business standards and practices, such as firewall configuration, software licensing, KPIs, financial models, and access control for optimum cloud resource utilization.
If agility and scalability are your primary requirements, storage, RAM, and bandwidth capacity are key factors. Articulate your strategic plan to encompass the required storage, CPU usage, bandwidth, and RAM expectations that meet your business needs and account for increased traffic in the future.
If your requirements include automation of different operations, it is vital to include cloud computing tools that offer a suite of services that meet your needs. For instance, CloudSigma’s PaaS can help you increase automation for a better customer experience.
Step 2: Consider Testing Cloud Migration
The question of whether to migrate from physical infrastructure to virtual computing services, from one cloud provider to another, or retain them, often depends on the risk/reward ratio. It is vital to select an application that enables you to test out cloud computing services. Predictable workloads can be easily ported to the cloud computing environment. In contrast, complex workloads with on-demand scalability requiring high customization levels are riskier migrating to the cloud. Hence, picking a solution that can provide useful insight regarding the benefits of the cloud, while minimizing business risks during a demonstration is an important way to simplify cloud computing. Pilot migration tools and programs enable you to learn best
practices through a simple test application deployment, blending others’ successful integrations and your hands-on experience.
Optimized cloud computing infrastructures are different for each company but often comprise public, private, and hybrid cloud options. For organizations that fear the potential risk of disrupting their operation, taking advantage of the hybrid cloud model is the ultimate solution. You do not necessarily have to employ one cloud migration strategy. Hybrid cloud infrastructure combines two entities of public and private clouds to allow resource movement between the two for flexible cloud migration.
Step 3: Consider Your Resource Options
Before deciding on whether or not to migrate to the cloud, resource optimization plays a central role in influencing the decision. There is no doubt that cost reduction is a background motivating factor for such a crucial decision. Analyzing your cloud vs. physical hardware cost benefits will help you understand the financial benefits of cloud computing over time.
With the rise of virtual machines, companies are leveraging cloud computing to address their diverse needs. However, virtual infrastructure is characterized by different hosting, storage, and licensing prices. Running your workloads in
the cloud gives you access to unlimited resources, but only if you integrate appropriate capacity management practices. Lack of proper capacity management of your infrastructure results in over-provisioning or under-allocation of the resources, leading to higher costs and cloud waste. In addition, because workload varies greatly, most organizations find it challenging to find a cloud that accommodates sudden spikes in traffic for optimum resource usage.
Migrating to cloud computing requires resource right-sizing as an essential step to optimal use of cloud resources. It involves right-sizing the cloud computing environment, including storage, configurations, network bandwidth, as well as other cost-effective considerations.
One of CloudSigma’s most significant benefits is that it supports highly dynamic and flexible resource usage. Our infrastructure-as-a-service provides a simple and compelling choice for most organizations that require a significant level of customization, control, and integration. IaaS delivers computing, networking, and storage capabilities with on-demand scalability, accommodating unplanned capacity.
Conclusion
Whether you are migrating from physical hardware to online computing services or from one cloud provider to another, start on your path to simplify cloud computing with these three steps. To learn more about the cloud hosting services and the solutions we offer, visit CloudSigma.