The cloud technology market continues to grow. Companies are interested in the cloud for several reasons:
- Employees can access company data from anywhere in the world where Internet is available.
- The business avoids capital expenditures for purchasing server hardware and replaces them with operating expenditures - a monthly fee at the cloud service rate.
- Backup copies of company data are automatically created and stored separately from the main data, so the risk of data loss due to equipment failure is reduced.
- The company pays only for the cloud storage resources it uses.
- It is possible to connect new users to the service in a couple of minutes without having to buy additional licenses.
- The provider assumes responsibility for protecting the company's data from DDoS attacks.
Tip 1. Check with your provider to see if they can develop a personalized solution for your company
Moving to the cloud begins with choosing a cloud provider - a company that will provide you with its cloud services. Experts who understand cloud technology should be prepared to develop a customized solution that works for your business. Less qualified specialists, in order to save time and resources, may offer you a template solution that works successfully for their clients. However, that doesn't mean it will work for your company.
The team that understands cloud technology begins working with the client by studying the specifics of their business, analyzing the internal and external processes of the company. The volume of the database and the seasonality of demand for the company's services all affect the choice of the product that the provider will offer you.
Tip 2. Check if the provider uses the software legally
From the legal point of view, providers do not sell non-exclusive rights to use the software of vendors: it is something between a product and a service - the right to use the product.
Each vendor - the software developer - has requirements for the providers, which they have to meet. Each provider has to have a contract or agreement with the vendor and a license for all the products he or she provides to the end customers.
Checking the agreement with the vendor is quite easy: the necessary documents have to be requested from the provider. The provider is obliged to provide the software licenses at your first request.
Tip 3. Conduct a test migration to the cloud
Once the contractor has been selected, it's time to prepare the data for migration. First, you should carefully describe the type and size of data stored on the company's system so that IT can decide on the migration tools and timeline. Once you've given this information to the provider, they can begin migrating the company's work to the cloud.
Next, you will need a test data migration to make sure that the provider's tools work and the company's resources are available to your team after the move. Smaller organizations can try to migrate all records to the cloud in such an experiment. A large business with large amounts of information can stop at a small amount of data in order to save time.
Tip 4. Prepare your employees and IT system for cloud migration
The best time to migrate to the cloud is on weekends, when employees are not working with company data. Warn the team that technical work is planned for that time. Before the migration begins, back up your data to avoid the risk of losing it. No new information should appear in them while work is being migrated to the cloud - otherwise it could be lost.
After migrating the data, check if it was corrupted during the migration. To do so, see if text documents, videos, and other file formats open.
Cloud technology today helps businesses not only avoid the cost of buying server hardware, but also gain access to corporate data from anywhere in the world, as well as further protect company resources from hacker attacks.
To make the process of migration to the cloud painless, we recommend following a few tips:
- Find out in advance whether the cloud provider will be able to develop a customized solution that takes into account the specifics of your company's business processes;
- Find out if the contractor is using the software legally: ask for a vendor agreement and software licenses;
- Conduct a test data migration to ensure that the mechanisms for migrating company resources to the cloud are working;
- Take care to back up corporate data in advance and warn the team that it will not be available during the migration.
