KriyaGo - Blog #cloud migration

6 Steps To Assess Your Business Cloud Readiness

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 12:00:00 -0500

According to a report by Flexera, 36% of businesses have increased their cloud spending to $12 million in 2021. While increasing your cloud budget is important, most businesses overlook their cloud readiness when they plan migration.

A cloud readiness assessment is your first step when migrating to the cloud. It ensures a seamless cloud migration by analyzing your applications and resources. But how to know if your business is ready for the cloud? Follow these steps to prepare your business for successful cloud migration.

Why Do You Need A Cloud Readiness Test?

The cloud readiness test provides you a gap analysis between your business requirements and the applications you want to move to the cloud. The readiness test also has further advantages, such as:

Strategy development for your complete migration process.
Budget allotment depending on the type of migration strategy chosen.
Risk mitigation by understanding the likely disruptions during migration.
Prioritizing stability to ensure minimal impact on operational continuity.

Steps To Cloud Readiness Assessment

You can use various tools to assess your cloud readiness. However, you must cover all three aspects of migration: server, infrastructure, and application. These aspects can be broken down into the below 6 steps for a complete assessment.

Determine your migration goals

For cloud migration, answering the "why" is important to determine the "how." Depending on your business objectives, a suitable strategy can be selected. Your migration goals can include reducing IT costs, increasing data security, or even staying ahead in the competition.

Among companies that already use cloud services, 42% chose remote data access, 38% chose disaster recovery, and 37% chose better flexibility as their top reason for cloud migration.

If your goals aren’t well-defined, the migration won’t accomplish much. Determining your objectives early on can help you in the further steps, such as risk mitigation and budgeting.

Analyze current IT infrastructure

All your applications and data don’t need to transition to the cloud. Similarly, your current infrastructure might be lacking in some areas. Analyzing your on-premise data centers helps you determine which applications can be retained and which needs to be re-programmed.

Technologies that are scalable and have a high volume of usage are priorities during the transition. Some applications contain subcomponents that are analyzed and treated differently. During the assessment, correctly grouping such components is essential.

The assessment also needs to cover all your technologies, right from the operating systems to application databases. Understanding the functionality of each application is crucial in determining the right migration strategy for your business.

Determine the budget

For more than 47% of companies, cost optimization is a huge reason to migrate to the cloud. While cloud migration does help with cost-cutting, not planning your budget can lead to more spending than savings. In the last few years, businesses have increased their cloud spending. More than half the companies spend nearly 50% of their budget on cloud services.

Your cloud budget depends on several aspects: the type of cloud you choose, the amount of data, the volume of usage, and server management. Certain applications cost more when they transition to the cloud. Similarly, other applications work better on the cloud.

Public, private or hybrid cloud

Choosing the right type of cloud server will be the basis for your migration strategy.

A public cloud is a shared infrastructure service that organizations can use on a pay-as-you-go basis. These are more affordable servers and make sense for companies that have varying workloads. Small businesses that are just starting with the cloud or have a little budget can opt for the public cloud.

Private cloud servers are expensive but dedicated servers, often used by only one organization. Businesses that prioritize data security need to implement private cloud servers as they provide complete control over the applications.

Hybrid cloud combines both private and public cloud to create a customized cloud server for a business. Instead of treating all the data as the same, the hybrid cloud determines the best transition strategy for each application.

According to Flexera, 87% of enterprises use a hybrid cloud for their business. Use your migration goals and IT infrastructure assessment to decide the right cloud service for your business.

Understand the risks

According to Vormetric, 85% of the companies store sensitive data on cloud servers. Therefore, any organization that migrates to the cloud needs to prioritize security measures. Your on-premise data centers might already have security mechanisms, but security on cloud servers works differently.

The risk of unauthorized access to data is higher, especially with public clouds. More than half of the companies using cloud servers implement encryption, multi-factor identification, and other security measures to protect their sensitive data.

Your security assessment should also include disaster recovery mechanisms. After analyzing your data, choose the security measures that align with your business requirements.

Select a strategy

Depending on how easily you can transition your current IT infrastructure to the cloud, there are several migration strategies you can choose from.

Lift and Shift: This is the simplest strategy where your applications are directly shifted from on-premise storage to cloud storage. This has minimal impact on your operational regularity. Most companies use this strategy for at least some of their applications.

Refactoring: Refactoring optimizes an application for cloud-based usage. While the ‘lift and shift’ method only uses cloud servers to store data, refactoring enables the application to complete its computation within the cloud server itself.

Replatforming: Replatforming is the combination of the above two strategies. While it stores data on cloud servers, it also includes some modifications to the applications to streamline it for the cloud. Since replatforming also uses on-premise storage, you can start small and scale effectively.

KriyaGo: Your Trusted Cloud Migration Service Provider

Finding the right vendor is as important as choosing the right strategy. At KriyaGo, we prioritize client requirements to create customized migration strategies. Our cloud transition services help you move from on-premise data storage to cloud servers seamlessly.

Combine it with our software specialization and premium consultancy services, and KriyaGo becomes a one-stop solution for all your business requirements.

Choose seamless cloud migration. Contact KriyaGo!

Get Started Now

10 Common Cloud Migration Mistakes to Avoid

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Cloud migration is becoming increasingly popular and for all the right reasons. Recent figures from the 451 Research Group show that 90% of the companies use some form of cloud computing. Moving to the cloud has several benefits such as reduced costs, improved security, and more storage space.

As more and more companies move their data to the cloud, let us look at some of the common cloud migration mistakes you can avoid. Understanding these can help you with a better, more secure data migration to cloud platforms.

1. Lack of clear strategy

With cloud technology growing at a fast pace, the rush to migrate to the cloud is understandable. But without a proper plan, this migration may cost you more time and resources. When moving data and infrastructure, companies need to have a proper migration strategy. Your strategy should depend on the amount and complexity of the data to be moved.

Depending on your current infrastructure and migration goals, you can choose among various cloud models like public, private or hybrid. Make sure that your chosen strategy aligns with your business goals.

2. Thinking all clouds are the same

You can easily access cloud storage by choosing a subscription and migrating your data. But choosing the right cloud platform is also equally important. Every cloud platform differs in its features and addresses different problems. Even if you are migrating from one cloud platform to another, the data might not be compatible as they will differ in capabilities.

For example, companies storing classified information can benefit from a private cloud model. Similarly, companies that want to store large amounts of data can use public cloud platforms.

3. Poor cost estimation

Cloud migration takes up a significant part of your tech budget. Migration options with varying costs are available in the market. But, if you want to opt for a low-cost option without looking at the features, you could be spending more money in the long term.

Cloud migrations can be expensive but they also have a good return on investment. Service providers like KriyaGo can help you with proper cost estimation. They can also give you a migration strategy suiting your requirements so you don’t overrun your budget and time.

4. Neglecting security

Data security is of utmost importance to every company. With 48% of companies storing private data on cloud platforms, taking cloud security measures is inevitable. Without adequate measures, you can risk a data breach. The results of security breaches can have a severe financial impact on the organization. You can also risk the personal details of your staff and clients.

There are several measures you can take to ensure your data is safe on the cloud. Data encryption, firewalls, and multifactor authentication are well-known security measures. These prevent your data from getting stolen by ensuring authenticated access to the cloud.

5. Lack of training

Cloud migrations can be handled by managed service providers. Yet, your staff needs to be trained on how to use this new platform. Proper knowledge of the functioning and features of cloud infrastructure can make sure your employees handle the data efficiently.

Without training, your cloud migration may not be as efficient and productive in the long run. Even with cloud-to-cloud migrations, employees need to be acquainted with the differences in both platforms. Companies need to keep in mind that training is not a one-time process but a continuous effort to make the staff comfortable with the new infrastructure.

6. Not having backups

Migrating and storing data on the cloud is risky without having a proper backup plan. Data loss is a serious issue with more than 40% of small businesses failing to recover from a data disaster. No matter how secure your data is, you need to prepare for failures. Your cloud service provider might face an outage or you might face a data breach. Even a simple human error can cause data loss.

In such cases, having a secure data backup is essential. Planning for disaster recovery can save your business from devastating disasters.

7. Not configuring infrastructure for cloud

Some companies choose the “lift and shift” approach for cloud migration. This simply means migrating all the data as it is to the cloud platform. Even if this approach is fast and least complicated, it may not suit every cloud platform. Ideally, you need to configure your data for the cloud model you chose. This ensures a smoother and error-free migration.

8. Migrating everything at once

Cloud migrations are not an instantaneous process. Depending on the amount and sensitivity of the data, it can take several days or even months to complete the process. Rushed data migrations can have immediate and long-term consequences. It can cause data loss or even breaks in infrastructure. If important data is lost during the process, the financial repercussions can be irreparable.

9. Moving sensitive data first

Another common cloud migration mistake is moving sensitive data first. This can lead to a data breach if the cloud platform or strategy isn't correctly implemented. The proper way to deal with cloud migration is to divide it into steps. First, you need to move the least crucial information.

This lets you check the security of the infrastructure and also prepares the platform for sensitive data. Move crucial information only after adequately testing the platform after the initial data migration.

10. Inadequate testing

The process of cloud migration doesn’t end at moving data to the platform. Once the migration is done, you need to test the data and infrastructure to ensure everything is working correctly. Rigorous testing allows you to notice small errors that may cause problems later on. Testing also lets your staff get hands-on experience with the platform.

Migrate to the Cloud with KriyaGo

Want to move your data to the cloud? KriyaGo can help you build the right strategy and choose the required platforms for your company. Depending on your budget and requirements, our experts can help you complete your cloud migration process.

Our resources are built for all types of property management companies, no matter the size and requirements. By choosing KriyaGo, you can ensure a hassle-free, smooth and secure data migration to the cloud!

To know more--contact us at KriyaGo!