Moving to Cloud: Considering Your Cloud Migration Strategy
It feels like everyone is talking about cloud migration, as many organisations realise the benefits of using software as a service. Increasingly, IT and transformation teams are passed the edict from the c-suite to move to cloud. The cornerstone to a successful move to the cloud is a carefully considered cloud migration strategy - read on to find out more.
The Rising Popularity of the Cloud
Cloud-based services are more popular now than ever before. We’ve seen demand for this technology increase steadily in previous years, but according to Paul Delory, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, the pandemic has had a real impact on this:
“Cloud adoption accelerated rapidly during the pandemic, and will accelerate still further in the years to come. Cloud services let smart business leaders respond quickly to opportunities — or threats. Businesses that successfully exploit cloud computing will have a competitive advantage, and it might even determine whether they survive.”
The instances of suitable use cases for cloud services are also increasing, according to Gartner, as technology continues to advance. Atlassian is a strong proponent of cloud-based services, as they see the value that these solutions offer.
Looking into the future, some experts predict that by 2025, 80% of enterprises will migrate entirely away from on-premises data centers in favour of colocation and cloud infrastructure.
Why Move to Cloud?
As we’ve covered, we’re aware of more and more businesses moving to cloud, but what’s the reasoning behind the change?
The Advantages
There are immense benefits that arise from moving to cloud. For many businesses, the reduced operational costs and lower staffing requirements give them a real advantage over their competitors. If your competitors are already taking advantage of these elements, then your business may struggle to keep up.
The lower maintenance and operational costs offered by the cloud platform can have a serious impact on the bottom line of any business. The costs associated with hardware and hosting (as well as any unscheduled downtime) could also be eating into your IT budget, which may be better used elsewhere.
Enough about the cost element; what about reliability? In terms of outages, cloud vendors pride themselves on high availability, whereas on premises server issues can halt work for teams until they are resolved.
If you are using Atlassian tools, like Confluence or Jira, then the cloud-based versions of these are increasingly outstripping their server counterparts - as Atlassian place more and more of their R&D funds into cloud products.
Finally, scalability is a real advantage of the cloud. In a server-based setting, you have limitations imposed by hardware that require upgrades for larger user groups or additional data. With cloud-based platforms, it’s simpler to scale up and down to meet business requirements.
The Disadvantages
There are cons to moving to cloud too. As with any new technology implementation, it takes time to learn about the options available, get c-suite buy-in, and educate users. While the rewards of moving to cloud are great, if you don’t have capacity for the initial overhead then you won’t be able to get to that point.
When your new cloud infrastructure is in place, you’ll also have new issues to diagnose and fix such as updating existing resources to point to your new infrastructure, performing a post-migration clean-up of unused configurations, or refactoring existing customisations and integrations to be compatible with the new platform. There are plenty of guides, courses, and communities out there that will help you with this, but you’ll need to get into the right mindset to take advantage of these.
One of the most daunting elements that a cloud migration poses is the risk of data loss - you don’t want your CEO’s presentation to go missing right when they need it! The fear of losing important data can be off-putting, but there are many things that you can do to mitigate this risk. It’s essential to work with all departments to inventory their data and create a clear migration plan.
There are many more pros and cons to consider before you decide to move to cloud; we’re only touching on a few of them in this article. Keep your eyes peeled for in-depth articles from us in future.
Outlining Your Cloud Migration Strategy
With all of these elements in mind, it’s time to start thinking about your cloud migration strategy. Your cloud migration strategy is your roadmap to success and will inform your process. Taking this time to prepare and research can save you vast amounts of time and effort later.
If you’re unsure about how to approach your cloud migration strategy, then engaging a solutions partner can be helpful. Companies like ours specialise in lending their expertise to your cloud migration; we kick the process off with a discovery exercise, which allows us to create a tailored roadmap and make recommendations for next steps.
To start this process, you should assess the current state of affairs. This is a good time to run through the apps you use, the current number of users, the capacity of your team, and any contractual obligations to suppliers. This investigative process will be key to identify risks and gaps in your current knowledge.
Ideally, this should be a team effort, rather than relying solely on one person. It’s a big job and one that also requires oversight from others to highlight any areas you may have overlooked. Getting this part of the process right starts things off on the right foot, so be sure to emphasise its importance with your team and the wider organisation.
Once you’ve gathered this information, you’ll be able to start using it to decide what your next steps should be. This will also assist in creating the timeline portion of your cloud migration strategy, as you begin to understand the scope of the work.
There are many types of migration and tools that you can choose from when it comes to executing the move to cloud. You’ll want to take time to evaluate which of these is best for your organisation, as they vary greatly. Atlassian’s Migration Program contains a lot of literature and interactive tests to help you determine the best route. Whether you opt to select a date to move everything at once or choose to migrate on a departmental basis with breaks between migrations for support, it’s good to understand your options.
As you reason through these steps, you should also be documenting your rationale and plans. Working centrally in a tool like Confluence allows for collaboration and knowledge-sharing. As you build up your knowledge, you can use this to share user guides, runbooks and other helpful documentation across the business.
At the end of your cloud migration strategy is the biggest step of all: execution. This is when you take all of that research and planning, then put them to use! Top tip: using Jira to help you track the workload can ensure that no vital steps are missed! With a well-thought-out plan, you’ll be ready to take this step with all of the necessary information on your side.
For those of you who like getting your hands dirty, Atlassian offers migration assistant apps which empower you to execute your migration strategy for basic migrations in just a few clicks. However, if your site includes complex configurations, bespoke customisations, and a lot of third-party apps, then we’re here to help! Our solutions team have helped many organisations just like yours with successful and smooth cloud migrations.
Related Articles
Want to learn more about cloud migration? Check out our blog on Migrating Jira Server to Cloud with Exalate.
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