KriyaGo - Blog #IT service provider

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

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Hiring a Managed IT Service Provider

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Most businesses nowadays prefer outsourcing their IT needs. Whether they are a small startup or a big company, a managed IT service provider can take charge of an organization’s technology requirements. It is a cost-effective and time-saving decision to hire an expert.

Outsourcing can address different problems effectively. Some may not want to have an in-house IT department, while others may want to utilize new technologies. No matter what the reason, every organization needs to answer these five questions to understand their requirements better.

What do you want to achieve by hiring an IT provider

Each company defines its own targets for hiring an IT provider. The main benefits of outsourcing your IT needs are:

Rely on pre-trained IT providers to save up on cost and effort
Free up internal IT resources
Access to better technology and services
Better handling of IT issues like downtime

Determining your goals before hiring an IT provider can make the process much easier. Managed service providers have different services based on the client’s requirements. It is essential to discuss your needs as well as their approach to avoid any confusion later.

How much do you want to outsource?

Managed IT service providers are not only for those companies who do not have an in-house IT department. Some companies choose to work out a balance between outsourcing and relying on their internal team.

If you have a dedicated IT department, identify the areas your team lacks in. Do you need to utilize the latest technology? Or are there too many projects for your staff to handle? Specific functions can

You can choose to hire a provider for a single project, or hand over specific functions, or completely outsource your IT requirements.

What is the change in ROI?

Most companies outsource their IT requirements to reduce the total cost. By outsourcing, you have control over your expenses. Depending on the company’s requirements, you can pause the services or scale them and pay accordingly. This isn’t possible with an internal IT department as you will have to pay employee compensation regardless of the workload.

But a short-term increase in ROI isn’t something you should be looking for. Technology evolves regularly. If your IT provider isn’t updating themselves or growing with your company, this deal can become expensive in the longer run. All this, without having your IT needs met.

How can the IT provider help with your current requirements?

There are specific requirements you would want to address when hiring an IT service provider. If you already have an in-house team, you should look for additional benefits an IT provider can help you with.

For example, most businesses do not have a data recovery plan. In today’s cyber-centric world, no one can predict an IT disaster. If you are investing in an IT service provider, you should consider their ability to recover data if your infrastructure goes down.

Another aspect you should consider is their reliability. While you are outsourcing, you have little control over the way your work is handled. Hiring a trustworthy provider will ensure they perform their duties diligently.

Your service provider is an active part of your business growth. Understand what value the MSP will add if you choose to outsource to them. With the development of your business, your needs will also change. Is the MSP willing to accommodate any changes in plans? Are they able to take up the additional workload? When hiring a managed service provider, it would be good to ensure that you are their priority.

How does the service provider plan to keep you in the loop?

When hiring a managed service provider, monitoring their work is a little tricky. But, there are multiple ways through which you can keep check of the progress they make. Most MSPs have a procedure to keep their clients updated. You should check for these:

Reports: How often will the firm provide you reports of the work? (weekly, monthly, or quarterly)
Meetings: In-person or online sessions can give you insights into their work and help you convey any changes if necessary.
Admin Portals: Some service providers have portals where you can check on their work anytime. They will include reports and updates on different projects assigned to them.

Your business heavily depends on the digital infrastructure, and if people outside your company handle this, you wouldn’t want to be ignorant about it.

What are the Pros and Cons of outsourcing your IT requirements?

Hiring a managed IT service provider has several benefits like reduced costs, access to better technology, and access to a better skillset. It also has some minor drawbacks that can be handled well with proper planning.

Issues often arise if you work with an unqualified agency. When you outsource, you hand over a major part of your company’s data to your service provider. This data is both valuable and confidential. The first significant risk would be data loss. If the MSP doesn’t have a data recovery plan, bringing all your data back will be difficult.

Another risk is leaking confidential data. You can avoid this risk by choosing a trustworthy and reliable MSP.

An indirect effect of outsourcing would be on your employees. They can assume you are planning to lay them off. If you do or do not have such plans, it is important to discuss them with your employees beforehand.

Choose the right service provider

Digital infrastructure and the data it holds are your company’s most significant assets. When hiring a managed IT service provider, keep your requirements in mind. Thoroughly research the potential of outsourcing your IT needs and knowing about the service provider.

MSPs can add value to your firm by bringing in the latest innovations and helping your firm grow with technology. Your relationship with your MSP should be built on confidentiality, reliability, and efficiency.

KriyaGo can help you in integrating different real estate technologies so you can work with them easily.