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Leveraging cloud capabilities allows businesses to unlock numerous benefits, including cost efficiency, elevated security, better collaboration, and cloud automation. However, to get to these advantages, you need to go through a lengthy and costly process of cloud transformation. What makes it so challenging is that there is no universal strategic plan that applies to everyone. Cloud transformation strategy is a complex process involving a thorough assessment of your current infrastructure, adoption of advanced technology, and cumbersome process of data migration. While some businesses can largely win from using AWS migration services, others will benefit from Azure or Google Cloud.
In this article, we’ll cover cloud transformation, investigate its risks and gains, as well as explore a detailed guide on implementing cloud strategy and transformation.
Cloud transformation refers to moving a company’s IT infrastructure from traditional on-premise servers to the cloud. Often confused with cloud migration, cloud transformation is a more inclusive term. Migrating assets to cloud-based environments is just one step of the journey. Digital transformation is another term used interchangeably with cloud transformation. However, digital transformation is a more inclusive definition that incorporates cloud strategy but also involves other steps.
Cloud transformation can bring in numerous advantages and help you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently. Cloud providers’ flexible pricing models allow companies to cut their costs by only paying for the resources they use. Additionally, the auto-scaling function enables businesses to swiftly grow and shrink without generating extra expenses or missing out on opportunities.
Cloud technologies also offer more room for innovation by providing access to the newest tools, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, and big data analytics. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can build stronger cloud solutions that satisfy customer needs.
Cloud platforms also facilitate smoother collaboration across teams by offering a single solution accessible to anyone at any time. When you use the cloud, your assets can be accessed by your overseas employees, contractors, suppliers, and partners, even if they’re based in a different time zone.
Unfortunately, although cloud computing tends to be safer than on-premise infrastructure, the risks of cyber attacks remain relevant. However, most cloud providers offer a list of security protocols to help you safeguard your digital assets. Make sure to follow the cloud security guidelines and stay up to date with the latest advancements as well as common hacking tactics to prevent cyber crime.
Among other important cloud transformation challenges is the incompatibility of cloud services with still-widespread legacy systems. Many companies, especially in heavily regulated industries like healthcare and education, still rely on outdated technology. Integrating cloud computing into legacy software is virtually impossible and requires modernization. Consider partnering up with a trusted IT agency to ensure your systems are ready to join the cloud environment.
Finally, the process of creating and following the cloud transformation roadmap is lengthy and technically complex requiring expert assistance and supervision. Make sure your staff is knowledgeable enough to execute the cloud strategy & transformation or collaborate with a reliable agency.
The actual process of moving the business from a traditional setting to a cloud-based one is called the cloud transformation journey. The process involves three main phases: initial migration, testing and evaluation, and continuous improvement. During the initial migration, you’re likely to make mistakes and miscalculations which you can identify in the testing stage and rectify in the improvement stage.
However, cloud transformation cannot be simply boiled down to a few steps. It’s a complex process that involves a deep understanding of the company, its assets and products, its business strategy and customer base, its goals and opportunities, and its technological provisioning. Although you can look at other companies’ experiences and learn valuable insights from them, you cannot fully copy their cloud transformation strategy and expect the same results.
Investigating the organization’s current state, domain context, market changes, and numerous other aspects helps you build a blueprint for a future cloud strategy. The strategy can be either evolutionary, involving incremental change, or revolutionary, facilitating rapid change. While evolutionary strategy fits companies with complex or legacy systems, the revolutionary approach is ideal for businesses that already partially operate in the cloud.
Regardless, an incremental approach is always a good idea as it allows you to slow down, plan, and make changes on the go. During the process, you’ll gain valuable insights into your performance and readjust your cloud transformation strategy.
Let’s investigate a step-by-step guide to developing a solid cloud transformation strategy that will allow you to navigate the processes and deliver the best outcomes.
First and foremost, it’s imperative to study your current IT infrastructure and catalog all your assets, including software, hardware, and data. Next, identify existing bottlenecks and potential challenges your systems may develop. For instance, your applications offer subpar performance or your systems aren’t as scalable as you need them to be to grow. The analysis should investigate every vulnerability and concern that may lead to problems in the future.
Another important detail of the initial examination is cost analysis. A comprehensive calculation of the costs of cloud transformation will help you understand the financial burden you are about to take. These findings will also allow your cloud migration partner and cloud provider to help you maximize the outcomes.
Based on your assessment, select your main priorities and establish concrete goals you’d like to achieve with the cloud transformation strategy. For example, improving operational efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, reducing costs of infrastructure, and securing your data. If feeling overwhelmed with all the goals you want to achieve, opt for an incremental journey and prioritize. Start with the objectives that align with your overall business goals.
When we talk about cloud strategies, we differentiate between public, private, and hybrid cloud services. While the public cloud offers greater scalability, it lacks security. In the same vein, the private cloud offers better security but also does come at a higher cost. Hybrid is the combination of both, where you can choose different aspects to balance out the negatives of both options.
To ensure industry-standard cybersecurity in your cloud, adopt the security guidelines that the cloud provider offers. These include data encryption, access controls, identity and access management, multi-factor authentication, and many others. Ongoing monitoring is another vital part of ensuring the safety of your data. Track your performance, identify vulnerabilities, and adjust your cloud security strategy to improve.
Compliance is another aspect of ensuring the safety of your data. Make sure you’re in compliance with the regulations and perform regular audits to stay up to date.
Cloud migration is an essential part of the cloud transformation strategy involving moving your data from on-premise to a cloud infrastructure. To ensure a smooth transition, you’ll need to facilitate workload compatibility with the cloud. If some of your systems aren’t compatible with the cloud, you’ll need to modernize them. Let’s dive into the specifics of cloud migration:
Rehosting involves moving data to the cloud without making any major changes to the architecture and can be used for solutions that can already operate in the cloud environment but require small adjustments to improve scalability and save costs.
Refactoring is a cloud migration strategy that includes optimizing applications to fit in the cloud infrastructure without changing core functionalities. Refactoring is perfect for applications that need small performance boosts or cost savings without an in-depth redesign.
Rearchitecting is a more extensive rebuild of applications to take advantage of everything cloud services have to offer and is used for apps that require substantial changes in performance and scalability.
Finally, if your applications are beyond saving, they can also be retired or maintained in their current state. This process involves a careful analysis and consideration and cost assessment to determine whether it’s feasible to rearchitect them or simply let them rest.
Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud are the biggest players in the cloud market. Examine their offerings, pricing models, and global data centers to choose a partner that aligns with your goals. However, to avoid vendor lock-in, it’s highly recommended to utilize a multi-cloud transformation strategy that involves collaborating with two or more cloud platforms.
Pricing models usually include flexible pay-as-you-go, reserved instances, and spot instances. All of these pricing structures can be beneficial or destructive depending on your assets, used resources, and goals. Consider them carefully before investing in an expensive contract.
Cloud computing technologies like Kubernetes have become industry standards for application development and deployment in recent years. Kubernetes offers automated deployment, self-healing functions, configuration management, and other features required for a successful digital transformation with a cloud-first strategy.
Serverless computing is another prominent cloud technology that eliminates the need for manual and direct infrastructure management. Additionally, companies can adopt a microservice architecture to break down monolithic systems into independent services. This approach simplifies maintenance, expedites development, and enhances scalability.
Finally, DevOps is an integral part of the cloud transformation journey combining development and operations. DevOps facilitates the adoption of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, offers automated testing, and vastly improves collaboration between teams.
If you lack an in-house team of cloud transformation professionals, it’s highly recommended to partner with a trustworthy and seasoned IT agency. Make sure your future partner has extensive experience in cloud strategy, case studies in your domain, and positive reviews from previous clients. Cloud consulting can also be a helpful service for you to learn more about cloud transformation and answer more of your questions.
If you’re interested in cloud adoption, don’t hesitate to reach out to our experts at NIX. From AWS consulting and migration to developing a comprehensive cloud transformation journey, we’ll be with you at every step of the way. Our decades of experience in conjunction with in-depth domain prowess and a vast pool of professionals will help you complete your cloud transformation without bottlenecks. Get in touch with our team to get a consultation and begin your journey today.
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