How to Transfer your Business to the Cloud: A Step-by-step Guide

Starting your company’s journey to the cloud is a good time to streamline the mess in your information systems. We offer this guide to help you prepare for the transfer and set priorities for new changes.

Preparation and General Description of the Process

Audit

The first stage of a journey into the "clouds" is a fully-fledged audit of your current IT infrastructure, including:

Hardware and software inventory;
Resource usage;
User help desk request statistics.

Pay attention to the network infrastructure perimeter, because the quality and availability of cloud services directly depends on how the "last mile" is organised and what reserves or alternatives are available to you.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Every time you contact a cloud service provider, a service level agreement (SLA) will form the cornerstone of your relationship. Therefore, you should immediately set about choosing a professional IT service provider who works under time-tested contracts.

Business Case

Having a detailed picture of the current infrastructure and expectations on the level of service, you can analyse how the transition to a cloud platform will save you money.

For example: you use your own virtualisation platform to host an online store with an average load of 40%. In this case, the warranty period of the equipment is coming to an end. What to do? Obviously, this infrastructure block is a good candidate for migration to the cloud.

Migration

The cloud service provider is always interested in moving your virtual machines and applications as quickly and painlessly as possible. In this case, it is always better to outline a fully-fledged project for migrating apps to the "cloud". Hire a cloud infrastructure architect to work out an IT support service model and consider adding outsource support services to your ITSM processes. For critical business systems, carry out stress tests.

Exploitation

At the operation stage, make sure that the "cloud" doesn’t become a personal "black box". Ideally, relations should be maintained at 3 levels of management:

executive (Business Executive, CEO);
operational (IT Operations, CIO);
technical (Service Desk, IT Support).

Never hesitate to ask cloud providers what new services they plan to launch in the near future. Make sure that these new services fit well into your own IT development plans.

5 Main Points you Need to Resolve when Migrating to the Cloud

1. Outsourcing

You pay a fixed monthly fee to a professional organisation and you have a team of specialists at your disposal. Experts should come to you promptly whenever you call them. Read about how to choose outsourcing contractors.

Outsourcing services here include:

Current repair and preventive maintenance of computers, servers, printers (malfunction diagnostics, out-of-order component replacement, software adjustment, refilling and cleaning of cartridges for laser printers and copiers);
Administration of your servers and LAN (user access rights delineation, backup organisation);
LAN cable system operative maintenance;
Technical consultations by phone when diagnostics and direct intervention of a specialist is not required.

2. Hosting

Hosting is the service of providing computing power to allow for the physical placement of information on a server that is constantly online. Hosting also involves placing client equipment within the territory of the provider, ensuring its connection to high-bandwidth communication channels (colocation).

Usually, the concept of hosting services implies at least the service of placing site files on the server on which the software is running, which is necessary for processing requests to these files (web server). As a rule, a hosting service already includes the provision of a domain for email correspondence, databases, DNS, file storage, etc., as well as operative support for any corresponding services.

3. Data Centre

A Data Centre is a specialised building for hosting server and communication equipment and connecting to Internet channels.

The Data Centre performs the functions of processing, storing and disseminating information, usually in the interests of corporate clients. It is focused primarily on the solution of business problems via the provision of information services. Consolidation of computing resources and data storage in the data centre allows for a reduction in the total cost of ownership of the IT infrastructure due to the possibility of effective use of technical means - for example, redistribution of loads for the optimal solution of business tasks - as well as by reducing administrative costs.

Data centres are usually located within or in the immediate vicinity of the communication centre or the point of presence of one or more operators. The quality and bandwidth of channels affect the level of services provided, since the main criterion for assessing the performance of any data centre is server availability.

4. Virtual machine

A virtual machine is a software and / or hardware system that emulates the hardware of some platform. On a virtual machine, as on a real computer, you can install operating systems (for example, Windows can run on a virtual machine under Linux or vice versa). Multiple virtual machines can function on the same computer (this can be used to simulate multiple servers on a single real server in order to optimise the use of server resources).

5. Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a service (SaaS) / software on demand (SoD) is a business model for the sale and use of software in which a vendor develops a web application and then independently manages it, giving customers access to the software via the Internet.

Unexpected Expenses for Primary System Migration

In addition to software licencing fees and support, cloud provider services, cloud management and data transfer, there are other, less obvious costs of migration. They include the cost of reworking applications so that they work in a virtual environment, changing data formats to match the formats of the SaaS provider, organising a unified identity and access management and developing processes for managing the cloud. These costs can come as a surprise to the IT manager.

How Custom Development Can Solve the Problem

When you approach a professional development company like Magora you get support at all stages of your business migration to the cloud:

We study the business model of your company, project, web service or application and design the optimal working logic.
We develop an intuitive interface for your project for quick and easy operation.
We implement all the planned functionality of the system. We use reliable and modern tools.
When the work is complete, you can always increase the functionality of your product and get technical support.

Read about our PoS solution development case.

We create cloud mobile and web apps, integrate enterprise systems with their migration to the cloud and even migrate applications from one cloud provider to another. If you need help choosing a reliable cloud provider and developing and implementing a cloud storage solution, drop us a line.