How to Move Apps to the Cloud

Businesses are currently evolving at an unprecedented rate in response to market opportunities, regulatory environments, competitor moves, and technology evolution. A few businesses are still reaping lots of benefits from system decisions they made several years ago.

But many of them find that the older applications are limiting their digital transformation options. To increase the options as required, they focus on moving their apps to the cloud. But there are numerous steps to achieving the goal. The good news is that you can make the process painless by following these steps:

1. Look for a Trusted Vendor

This advice may appear a no-brainer. But many people ignore the need to carry out in-depth research to find the right partner. But that can be costly. Here are the best ways to find the best cloud vendor:

Consider online and off-line reviews from experts in the industry;
Assess your existing business technology and see how it can help you to negotiate;
Benchmark once you have identified a few credible vendors.

2. Find a Skilled Technology and Service Expert

The application migration process requires some technical skills. If you do not have them, you have to look for a technology and service partner best suited to help move your business to the cloud as required. Here again, you need to do some homework and benchmark to find the right candidate. Find out about compliance and security, as well, before you decide.

3. Decide on the Right Way to Integrate Your IT Infrastructure

Determine how you will connect to your on-premise location and how you intend to secure the connection. Some businesses use their ISPs as well as service providers to connect to the cloud. Others utilize their telecom providers, which provides a more secure and durable implementation.

4. Test the Applications

Your company needs to set aside about 12 months to plan and test the apps. This process can help to figure out how to migrate the apps safely to the cloud. Once the app is cloud-ready, you can move on to the implementation stage without the fear of wasting your resources and time. There are a wide variety of things that you need to pay close attention to during this stage. But you need to prioritize the most important areas such as:

Storage input and output requirements: The degree of dependence on the storage input and output data process directly impacts the cost of application migration to the cloud. The higher the workload, the higher the cost.
CPU usage: Find out how much memory and storage space you require in the cloud.
Security: Consider whether your cloud provider will offer backups and disaster management services and the costs. Depending on your needs, the services may not be suitable for your business. As such, be sure you understand their pros and cons before making the decision.

5. Automate

In the initial days after moving your application to the cloud, some recurring costs, including labor, may shoot up, at least temporarily. For that matter, you need to consider automating the workloads to mitigate the risk of increased overhead.

Conclusion

As long as you can follow these simple steps to move apps to the cloud, you are set for success. You also need to understand the apps and the required changes and combine this with automation to make the process seamless and craft solutions that are suitable for your needs.

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