A cloud migration is the act of moving your organization’s data and information from on-premises or local servers to a remote cloud-based location. Moving to the cloud enables your employees to access information from anywhere at any time. The cloud also brings a host of additional benefits to your organization when implemented correctly.

The first step in your cloud journey is to work with a cloud migration team to understand the goals and objectives of the migration and ensure important factors such as security and governance are considered. They can help you create a migration strategy and a project management plan to ensure you don’t just upgrade your technology — but also achieve your business goals.

It is important to keep in mind that migrating to the cloud may require a larger-than-expected initial investment — and some organizations may be reluctant to pay the costs required to migrate to the cloud. However, the initial investment must be weighed against long-term costs such as upgrading on-premises hardware or employing an onsite team.

Investing in a cloud migration now results in fewer expenses later — and an experienced cloud migration team can help your organization identify opportunities to reduce costs in the future.

Once your cloud migration team has determined how your data will move, you can begin the process of data grouping — which involves organizing your applications, files, and other supporting dependencies as multiple units to enable easier access to all resources.

After the grouping process has been completed, the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process begins, and the team starts migrating the bulk of your data onto the cloud instance.

While this is one approach, there are several different ways to complete a cloud migration depending on your data architecture. Additionally, data volume may have an impact on which approach works best for you. For example, an organization with a large amount of on-premises data may want to use Azure Data Box to complete a one-time data load, or lift and shift, to the cloud.

The cloud is an essential tool to support collaboration and operational agility as hybrid and remote workplaces continue to grow in popularity. Moving to the cloud helps your organization ensure your data is safe and secure while being easily accessible to members of your organization from any place and at any time.

Some of the benefits your organization could gain from a cloud migration include:

Cloud solutions enable your organization to implement multiple programs within a single cloud instance. By shifting to cloud solutions, you ensure your organization can incorporate pre-existing infrastructure within a new virtual environment, where costs are lower than maintaining expensive data centres.

Cloud servers also allow for quicker growth and customization to meet your organization’s future needs. According to a survey by Microsoft, almost 82 percent of small businesses using cloud solutions noticed a significant decrease in costs following a migration.

According to a 2016 survey, 94 percent of businesses who converted to cloud-based solutions reported security benefits since moving to an online instance. Cloud services receive frequent updates and come equipped with tough firewalls to protect information from unwarranted users. Cloud services generally maintain data in a more secure fashion than on-premises solutions.

Most cloud platforms also use role-based authentication to ensure data protection and privacy. Using various encryption methods, information is housed in an environment that is customized to allow user privileges.

Microsoft Azure specifically uses three different security protocols: role-based security, record-based security, and field-based security.

Role-based security ensures that various members of an organization can each have specific data access permissions. Administrators control this access and can change access levels as required.

Similarly, record-based security establishes which users have access to your organization’s records and what they can do with this information. Moreover, there may be cases where certain fields within an entity contain sensitive data that should not be viewed by all members of your organization. For those instances, field-based security allows administrators to control user access to specific data fields.

It is essential to work with an experienced team of cloud migration experts if you are considering migrating your organization’s data and information to the cloud. A cloud migration team can provide you with the knowledge to identify the challenges you may encounter during your organization’s cloud transformation and potential solutions, including:

• Selecting the right technology — A team of cloud migration experts can help identify the cloud infrastructure that best fits the needs of your business and deploy technology in a way that aligns with your high-level strategy and existing timelines.
• Creating a cloud strategy — There are a host of different systems and strategies within the cloud computing landscape. A team of cloud migration experts can provide you with the knowledge to decide what data remains onsite if you choose a hybrid cloud solution or to determine who will manage your applications after your cloud migration is complete. Additionally, a team of cloud migration experts can help create a customized cloud plan for security and governance to suit the needs of organizations with varying sizes and budgets.
• Cost optimization — While migrating to the cloud has the potential to be expensive initially, a cloud migration team can help find the solution that best fits your budget and estimate your return on investment. It’s also important that you are only paying for what you need, and a cloud migration team will help ensure you don’t encounter any surprises when you begin to see your consumption and storage costs after the migration is complete.