Why you Need a Cloud Migration Project Plan

What is a Cloud Migration Project Plan?

A cloud migration project plan is simply a step by step plan your organization will use to complete your cloud migration. According to a survey of IT professionals, the top three reasons why cloud computing implementations fail include a lack of understanding of cloud security and compliance and a lack of planning before carrying out the cloud migration. You need an effective step-by-step implementation strategy. The number one priority for businesses today is the ability to harness cloud computing’s increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and improved infrastructure. Over 80% of workloads will be processed using the cloud in 2020, according to the latest study from Logic Monitor – Cloud Vision 2020: The Future of the Cloud Study. 

Businesses of all sizes are migrating some or all of their essential data, business applications to business processes to the cloud. Migrating to the cloud comes with many advantages like lower IT costs, increased IT efficiency, ease of use for remote workers, and faster deployment times. A successful cloud migration starts with a thorough cloud migration plan. Read ahead to learn the most important things to include in your cloud migration project plan. 

The first question to ask – what will I gain from a cloud migration?

Here are some benefits that a cloud migration can confer.

1. Reduced IT costs
2. Faster deployment time 
3. Increased Scalability
4. Faster Time to Market
5. IT Operational Efficiency
6. Infrastructure Reduction
7. Expanded Developer Productivity
8. Faster issue resolution

What questions do I need to answer before I begin a cloud migration?

1. Why does my business need or want to move to the cloud?
2. What is our strategy?
3. What cloud provider will we choose?
4. What steps do we need to take to get to our goal?
5. How will we migrate the people, processes, environments, data, and technology smoothly?
6. How long will it take?
7. How will we take to train users? (if needed)
8. What is the final cut off date for the old servers?

What steps do I need to include in my Cloud Migration Project Plan?

1. Evaluate:

In the evaluation phase, you will need to ensure that you have buy-in from all executive team members, the IT department, and any other influential members of your team. An effective cloud migration first needs to have all organization members working in concert to create a cohesive and error-free migration plan. A successful cloud migration cannot be the sole responsibility of your organization’s IT Department. All leadership team members and executive team members should work together with the IT department throughout the migration process and planning process to ensure that the migration goes smoothly and any issues can be resolved quickly. 

Cloud migrations allow your business to grow, scale, save on IT costs, and create greater flexibility in your organization. However, this may mean that some business processes change during or after migration. To ensure a smooth transition, we encourage you to talk with all team members, from accounting to HR to product development, to ensure all employee questions are answered. Your employees may need additional support, training, or new role responsibilities to adapt and thrive after a migration. If your leadership team works closely with internal communications to create a positive message discussing cloud migration benefits and communicates this effectively to employees, you will be able to ensure buy-in from all members of the team easily. 

Although a cloud migration can decrease IT and data costs, the initial investment may be required to ensure a smooth transition and a well-secured cloud environment. Before migrating to the cloud, you should discuss these factors with your technology and finance team:

1. Data storage capacity 
2. Security services and virtualization
3. Employee training requirements
4. Testing and monitoring tools needed 
5. Processing power and operating systems

2. Plan:

The evaluation stage is complete once your team has reviewed your current IT infrastructure’s cost, performance, speed, security, and scalability. When you have completed this stage, you must determine what IT assets and applications can be migrated directly to the cloud and what may need to be redesigned. Once your evaluation stage is complete, you can move on to the planning stage and make design decisions on cloud providers. 

Choosing a cloud provider in 2020 allows you to have many options at your disposal. There are many public cloud providers you may be familiar with, like Azure from Microsoft, AWS from Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and the Google Cloud Platform. Your team also has the option to design a multi-cloud strategy, using two or more cloud platforms, depending on your needs. In this stage, it is essential to assess what your business needs are in the following categories:

1. Security 
2. Compliance requirements
3. Technical Support
4. Network capabilities
5. Application Performance
6. Cost and feasibility analysis

3. Migrate:

The migration stage is the most important and most complex of your entire cloud migration plan. Before migration day, ensure all employees are successfully trained and prepared for the migration and any changes it may bring. This is especially important if your business works with large amounts of data, if you deal with sensitive data like PHI (Personal Health Information) or PII (Personally Identifiable Information), or if your business has compliance requirements like HIPAA, NYDFS, GDPR, CCPA, CMMC or FERPA. All employees should be trained on how business processes will now look running on the cloud and what critical application architecture may look like. Before your business makes the final cut over on launch day, be sure to test all applications to ensure there is no latency or data loss after launch. We recommend performing tests on your new cloud monitoring capabilities, along with stress testing and root cause analysis, for a more straightforward cloud migration process.

You may be asking, in what order should I perform my cloud migration?

We recommend migrating your least complex applications first to mitigate any risks from data loss or application latency. Once those applications and data have been migrated successfully, we recommend finally moving the most critical applications and data last. This ensures a smooth transition with fewer headaches. We also recommend employing a secure data backup of any required data your organization may need before migrating. This ensures that your business will still access all the vital data it needs if any data loss or outages occur. With proper planning, IT Support, and buy-in from start to finish, your team can execute a successful cloud migration project plan and easily benefit from all the cloud features you need. 

Our experienced team at ThorTech can help your company execute a streamlined cloud migration. In our free consultation session, we work with you to evaluate your needs and identify the optimal set of cloud migration solutions to meet your business goals. Whether you are seeking to transition on-premise applications to your cloud platform — or if you need to construct a new application on the cloud — ThorTech can help.