Why Should Your Business Migrate to Cloud?

“There was a time when every household, town, farm or village had its own water well. Today, shared public utilities give us access to clean water by simply turning on the tap; cloud computing works in a similar fashion. Just like water from the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off quickly as needed. Like at the water company, there is a team of dedicated professionals making sure the service provided is safe, secure, and available on a 24/7 basis. When the tap isn’t on, not only are you saving water, but you aren’t paying for resources you don’t currently need.”

–Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO, United States Government, 2010.

Cloud migration is the process of moving your digital operations into the cloud. It includes your databases, servers, storage, software, intelligence, networking, and analytics. Cloud computing depends upon sharing resources for consistency and typically operates as a “pay-as-you-go” model. Though the payment model is beneficial in minimizing capital expenses, it may also result in unexpected operational costs for the users. 

The last few years have seen a significant shift from on-premises to cloud computing. According to a Morgan Stanley report, the total on-premises data centers will drop from 63% in 2019 to 32% in 2022. Also, as per Gartner’s research, 85% of companies will have a cloud-first principle by 2025. Have you ever wondered why so many companies are moving from the on-premises set-up and flocking to the cloud?

Benefits & Challenges of Cloud Migration

Steve Jobs, Co-founder, CEO & Chairman of Apple Inc, said, “I don’t need a hard disk in my computer if I can get to the server faster… carrying around these non-connected computers is byzantine by comparison.”

The recent pandemic saw a massive shift in operational mindsets, and businesses migrated their services and data to the cloud to adapt to the changing work environment. Cloud migration facilitated this shift to a flexible digital workplace as they dealt with increased online demand and remote working.

Many businesses are turning to cloud computing mainly due to the benefits of cloud computing. Other reasons could be outdated and inefficient legacy infrastructures, ancient servers, and unreliable firewall applications or to do away with software or hardware solutions that are either obsolete or not operating at optimum capacity. 

Cloud migration helps to achieve real-time, updated performance and enhanced efficiency. However, the migration process requires thorough due diligence, analysis, planning, and execution to ensure that the cloud solution is compatible with your current business requirements and long-term business goals.

Top benefits of cloud migration for businesses-

• Cost reduction, high scalability & enhanced security
• Fast implementation & better data recovery
• Ease of accessibility from anywhere, anytime
• Increased business agility and flexibility
• No need for licensing agreements and long-term service contracts
• Leveraging new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Kubernetes, Data Lakes, etc.
• Ability to deliver immediate business results

But before you make your cloud migration strategy, it’s essential to focus on critical considerations like; does your business have the option to rebuild applications to perform optimally in the cloud? Would you need application modernization? Will it be a lift-and-shift cloud migration? Does your business also need modernization services like automated language translation, data processing, and backup? There are several such questions to be answered along the way, but one thing is clear, businesses of all sizes would require assistance making their cloud journeys. Companies today want to adapt to the changing market demands and be flexible & agile. But what are organizations grappling with?

Top challenges businesses face while moving from legacy systems and on-premises data centers to the cloud:

• One of the major concerns for businesses is over regulations and compliance, global privacy regulations.
• Since data integration from one system to another is complex, infrastructure and security are also challenging.
• Businesses are uncertain about the budget requirements for cloud migration, including the total cost of ownership and return on their investment. 
• Data migration is complex mainly due to its volume and structured Vs. Unstructured data.
• Often businesses do not have the talent or technical resources needed to perform the migration.
• The lack of complete ownership and control of data in their cloud is a daunting thought for many businesses.

How can Industries Benefit from Cloud Migration?

Insurance Industry

With increasing customer demands for behavior and usage-based offers, insurers need a cloud migration strategy that supports their aims and priorities. The insurance industry needs a cloud adoption framework that adds value and optimizes the benefits of existing platforms.  

• Cloud computing solutions can be specifically tailored and can be deployed quickly, and this agility makes the implementation process faster for insurance companies.
• Even though the insurance industry is relatively stable and doesn’t see too many fluctuations, cloud systems equip them to scale as per the demand.
• Regular risk assessment and identification protects the data against thefts; moreover, in case of suspicious activity, the system immediately flags it and notifies the team for appropriate follow-up action.
• The identity and Access Management functionality of cloud systems simplify the sign-in functionality. It also allows users to access critical information only from the office premises.

Finance & Banking Industry

An increasing number of finance companies across the globe are embracing the cloud to meet client demands for more efficient customer-centric services. This highly regulated sector must address compliance, security, and governance requirements effectively. Other opportunities & trends in the finance and banking industry with cloud-

• Cloud’s zero-trust verification and encrypted data strength the security, and its tracked records help to build robust audit trails.
• Reduced time-to-market for new services and enhanced agility in operations and data processing
• Conducting Analytics can be easily accomplished in the cloud, which in turn enhances business intelligence and helps in strategic planning.
• Cloud adoption and migration help the finance industry shorten the time to market for their new services, lower costs with improved operational efficiency, enhance consumer engagement & satisfaction, and much more.
• Cloud migration improves transparency for banks, helping their employees easily audit processes and information. They can access and backup data in real-time, improve security controls, enhance productivity & collaboration, and add value to their offerings. 

Choosing a suitable computing model and having the correct cloud migration strategy can go a long way in leveraging the benefits of the cloud in the finance and banking industry. 

Healthcare Industry

Cloud migration can help healthcare organizations comply with the HIPAA‘s privacy rule, which establishes privacy rules for protecting patients’ healthcare information, and security rule that sets a national security standard to safeguard specific health information recorded or passed on in electronic form.

• Cloud services providers automate several security tasks, which in turn improves the security posture of the organization.
• Significant reduction of capital costs, since servers, storage, and devices can all be obtained on a pay-as-you-go basis, there is no need for large purchases. This helps the organization save itself from additional costs and waste of over-provisioning hardware.
• Collaboration is easily fostered with cloud migration; this makes the information easily accessible to colleagues or other healthcare service partners, irrespective of geographic boundaries.
• According to the HIPAA mandate, all healthcare businesses should maintain access to health information in case of a disaster. There must be a business continuity plan to ensure that all systems and sensitive data can be restored effectively. Cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is an attractive method of addressing this challenge and requirement.
• Cloud platforms advocate collaboration and enhanced efficiency, which leads to faster development and deployment cycles. The healthcare industry can utilize emerging trends to efficiently address customer demands and expectations.

In summary, cloud migration benefits physicians and patients in the healthcare industry by increasing cost-effectiveness and building a self-sufficient health ecosystem. This technology can create an information ecosystem comprising patients, hospitals, R&D centers, insurance companies, etc.

 Education

Cloud computing empowers the education industry by providing virtual classrooms, easing accessibility of course content, applications & data anywhere-anytime. This helps in saving costs, securing data storage, facilitating innovation & agility, increasing student reach, and enhancing scalability.

• Cloud has enabled educational institutions to scale up their learning applications. And manage the usage peaks and traffic spikes caused due to mass training registrations or assignment submissions. 
• Educational organizations that deliver learning remotely through the cloud can use a VPN to ensure data security. VPN protocols are helpful for the automatic encryption of outgoing data and traffic. This helps to deliver the learning content to the learners without compromising its integrity. Learners can also protect their privacy by using a VPN for cloud-based learning applications.  
• Cloud remains unmatched in terms of accessibility; learners can easily access the course content, applications, and data anytime and anywhere. Cloud tech also ensures seamless content delivery; learners can enroll for courses and participate in group activities.
• The requirements of hardware resources are minimal with cloud-based applications. As they can operate seamlessly on internet browsers, both on desktops and mobile devices. 
•  Gamification-enabled digital learning platforms make learning fun while providing greater convenience to students and teachers. They allow students to collaborate & develop skills and help teachers develop & improve their teaching styles.

The convenience of accessing learning on the go remains unmatched with cloud tech. Choose a cloud service provider that will improve collaboration across departments, boost IT efficiency and provide maximum ROI.

Our Recommendations to Effectively Migrate Legacy Data to the Cloud

Any business that needs to reduce costs, enhance scalability, improve security, stay updated with market trends, and avail itself of the benefits of cloud computing, can migrate to the cloud. But how? Let’s look at a few key steps:

• Firstly, establish a business case for cloud migration, as cloud migration is not suitable for everything and everyone.
• Clean the data being migrated. Find out how much data can be migrated if there are inactive users or accounts- remove them.
• Check the source of the data. Should the original application owner be involved in the data extraction process, and is there any associated cost for the same?
• Confirm the timing of data extraction. Does it need to occur within a specific timeframe, or is there a deadline?
• Since the migration will encompass sensitive data, determine in advance if you need additional security.
• Avoid legal trouble by ensuring that the data is not part of a lawsuit or other legal action. If the data is part of a legal action, find out how it will be managed in its new location.
• If the data is still active, do make sure the necessary application can access it in the cloud with a proper service level agreement.
• Check for data transformation. Verify if any data transformation is planned during the migration process. Also, ensure that the cloud vendor can handle the data type.
• Stay updated with the data extraction process. If an on-premises software is used to extract and migrate the data, or will you rely on APIs to extract the data?

Connect with us today! We are experienced to explore your cloud migration options or enhance your cloud computing portfolio. We are an experienced cloud app development company. We offer the following services like cloud consulting, cloud integration, cloud migration, cloud managed services, legacy app modernization, cloud maintenance and support.