If you have been running your business for a while, your eyes might turn to the cloud migration strategy for any specific purpose.

The main objective of the cloud migration strategy is to provide a great place for apps and data to run smoothly. In the long run, the businesses strive for cost savings, improved performance, and ample security. You will be able to attain those three benefits with the help of the cloud migration.

Executing the cloud migration is straightforward, but not a simple thing to do. It involves a lot of parties, time, as well as adequate efforts. Here is a checklist you’d like to use to carry your successful cloud migration strategy.

Prepare your cloud migration

It is highly probable that most of your company’s staff do not grasp the ideas of cloud migration. Therefore, it is not exaggerating to say that the IT department is not the only one party who is responsible for the execution. The leadership and senior, as well as executive staff will need to provide good guidance for their subordinates.

It is important to conduct the pleno meeting or seminary to introduce the basics of the cloud migration. The unbiased information should be delivered by all of the leaders to the employees, clients, as well as the other involved parties. That includes the necessity of the support training programs which enable all the personnels in charge to comprehend the the cloud migration.

Without a doubt, the cloud migration strategy can offer tons of benefits for your company. But it involves big funding to make it successful. So, it is crucial to reserve the fund first before proceeding with any action. You don’t want to get stopped in the middle of the way just because you’ve run out of funds.

Keep in mind that the fund reservation is not only relevant to the cloud migration process itself, but also the resources, training, after-sales service, and so on. Normally, your full-stack developer or cloud provider will disclose the detailed information to you.

Visualize how your business runs so that the IT and other department staff in your company understand what they need to do when they use the new platform.

Decide your cloud migration strategy

You will want to pick the right cloud migration strategy. To determine it, you can look at your level of migration first. in most cases, full migration is impossible if there are tons of heavy workloads involved in the process. It is a tedious work and won’t happen overnight.

The cloud migration strategy can refer to the shallow or deep migration. Depending on your needs, you will want to direct the migration to the best possible way. The shallow integration is about to move the apps to the cloud without further changes, but open to the possibility of minor changes. Meanwhile, the deep migration is about to move the app and data with the huge changes in the future. That means there will be scalability, infrastructure changes (both minors and majors), as well as cloud computing.

Besides taking a look at the changes, your cloud migration strategy could also be based on the cloud providers you pick. The organizations can manage the cloud migration strategy with the single cloud or multiple cloud providers.

For many companies, the single cloud provider can be more straightforward and simpler option. It is because the single cloud conducts everything with the easy implementation. However, the catch here is the provider’s lock-in. Clients will have certain limitations in changing some features of the cloud platform.

If you need more flexibility, you could consider picking the multi cloud approach. This offers greater flexibility in managing the platform as you need. You can independently handle the data storage needs and apps in the environment without the provider’s lock-in.

Assess your cloud infrastructure

After finding the right cloud migration strategy, you will want to make sure  that all the hardware and software components are ready.

Map out your future state plans. What you will do in the future? Consider to make an estimation with your current software and hardware. In scale 1-10, you should be able to determine the workloads that your expecting cloud environment can cater to. it is an important step to help you decide which cloud provider you pick.

Each provider has different tools to support you and make the cloud migration strategy successful. You will want to research them first before proceeding.

Define your future state and compare it with the current one. With clear future state plan, you will be able to determine your apps and data migration. In the future, you will also be able to decide whether you need the remediation or not.

There’s a chance that the successful rate of the cloud migration strategy could not be comprehended by all the staff. Well, it is not surprising because you might not know how to measure your cloud performance later. However, you can always look at these following metrics:

• Lag
• Latency
• Load time
• CPU usage
• Conversion

You can actually make your own metrics since every business owner should have their own goal. However, do not overlook the top five metrics which we mentioned above.

Brainstorm the metrics with your internal team. Your developer or cloud provider might be involved in this. But you will need the views of your internal team because your staff will be the end users of your new platform.

The Transition process

the next step is to make the transition. the cloud migrations can be complicated and time-consuming. the good plan will set your migration process on the right track. Everyone in your internal team should know the exact process.

The transition will be more prevalent with the informative diagrams which everyone can see. Uit is also great idea to visualize your cloud migration strategy to give you insights and adequate knowledge. As a leader, you will want to be prepared if some of your ordinates ask questions. You will just need to refer to the trustworthy and reliable source to answer those questions.