Successful Cloud Migration Secrets

What experts often fail to mention about the cloud migration process which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. At Divio, we know that the challenges associated with the process of cloud migration are not esoteric anymore. However, there are certain valuable tips to make this process easier that industry experts consider too trivial to be shared. Having supported global enterprises and fast-moving technology companies to set up and maintain their cloud infrastructure, here are our top three picks of things to consider to ensure a smooth and successful migration to the cloud.

Clearly define objectives of the proposed cloud migration

Well, this does not appear to be a secret at all, does it? Literally every piece of content available on the web about cloud migration mentions this. However, we can not over emphasize the importance of this activity. It is a necessary prerequisite for establishing the ground rules of the upcoming infrastructure overhaul. Not all cloud migration processes originate from the centralized IT team of the firm. Quite often, it starts from specific lines of business outside of IT, leading to a distributed management of cloud that increases risk, especially at scale. Clearly defining the objectives not only helps to map out this distributed system better in terms of management but also facilitates optimum allocation of resources while identifying workloads suitable for cloud migration. This exercise also helps establish the role of the IT department early on as being “in the way” or “on the side”, as defined by Gartner Research.

Don’t waste time trying to do everything yourself

Having defined the objectives of the cloud migration clearly, it is important to realize that just because you know why you are doing something does not implicitly mean you should jump into doing it yourself. There could be a dozen industry and firm specific arguments about keeping everything in house but the fact of the matter is that it becomes really hard for the IT department to keep up with the huge number of updates that the public cloud providers like AWS push out in a year. Moreover, complete in-house management is an easy way to lock yourself in with respect to infrastructure vendors and limits your options of tools that diverse teams can benefit from in their day to day operations. Decide where to draw the line between a centralized and decentralized IT set up for cloud management by carefully weighing in the benefits and risks of both models for your business.

Ensure that the right skill sets are in place, at all times

Our research reveals that finding and retaining the right talent is one of the toughest issues in the cloud DevOps space. While organizing training to ensure the availability of the right skill sets is the obvious first step, it is equally important to “not” rely on people-specific skills for keeping the cloud environment up and running. Employee turnover is the reality of the corporate world and no matter how hard our HR departments try to retain exceptional talent, some always leave. The easiest way to handle this is to use management software designed for the variable consumption of “aaS” (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) solutions by diverse teams. Most of these softwares come with a service level agreement and white glove on boarding options that quickly brings new employees up to speed, thereby minimizing monetary and time specific losses arising from attrition. We have some really interesting insights to help you evaluate available options in the PaaS and CMP space currently. We have some really interesting insights to help you evaluate available options in the PaaS and CMP space currently.