What to Expect When You’re in the Cloud

You’re probably looking this up on Google because you’re thinking about moving your business to the cloud. That’s a good move because you’re now one step closer to a more well-oiled and efficient team.  

But before you transition to the cloud, it’s important to understand what cloud computing is.  

What is Cloud Computing 

Cloud Computing refers to the shifting of business practices from local devices into the cloud. This eponymous “cloud” has everything to do with users accessing data through the Internet instead of the computer’s hard drive or local storage device. 

These resources include applications and tools like servers (physical and virtual servers), databases, data storage, and software. Cloud computing allows businesses to store files and apps on remote servers which can be accessed by employees remotely. 

It will also be more cost-efficient if you’ll pay around $12/month for cloud storage which can be accessed anywhere instead of a 1 TB hard drive that costs $100 each and can only be accessed in one area. 

Now that you’re convinced that shifting to the cloud is a great idea, it’s time to discuss what to expect from start to finish of your transition process.  

6 Expectations When Moving to the Cloud  

Lots of planning time 

The easy part is the execution and the migration to the cloud. However, every successful cloud migration involved hours planning.  

If this is your first time shifting your workload to the cloud, reach out to a qualified provider of migration services. They can assess if your business is cloud-ready and help you plan the migration. Even though you know a thing or two about cloud migration, an expert can save you from a mountain of headaches as you go along.  

READ: Preparing Your Small Business for the Cloud 

Accountability at every level 

There’s nothing worse than finger-pointing to a team member whenever cloud migration goes awry. Misunderstandings are avoidable when tasks are assigned accordingly during the planning process. Hold each team member accountable for their tasks to ensure the project goes as planned. They must understand their role in the migration process to efficiently do their part.  

Performance metrics 

With all the efforts and resources that’ll go into transition, there should be a good measure on whether the move is beneficial and not just a spontaneous decision. Your goals should be clear and measurable to help you evaluate the success of your cloud migration. 

Lots of discussions 

Expect that you and your team will have a lot of discussions. It’s better to have a frank and open discussion so each challenge, opinion, and suggestion can be addressed properly. Most importantly, don’t forget to discuss your security systems. Because when you're migrating to the cloud, you're leaving your website vulnerable— which hackers can easily penetrate.   

READ: Make Sense of the Cloud: Private, Public, or Hybrid? 

A phased migration 

With an in-house infrastructure, the bulk of the job of your IT department was in maintaining servers, upgrading software, and managing daily IT operations. These tasks will be delegated to your service provider if you move to a public cloud. This provides staff with more opportunities to work on innovative and development-related projects rather than on purely maintenance tasks.  

The nature of having a shared infrastructure also enables teams to do more collaborative work. This obviously requires significant adjustments in the workflow but, if done right, would yield higher productivity in the long run. 

A dry run 

Before migrating every workload, perform a dry run to ensure your cloud migration will be successful. It will allow you to see unforeseen problems which can save you time and effort.  

For example, a European company wants to move its workload to one of Australia’s data centres. But during the planning and testing phase, their bandwidth and internet connection turned out to be insufficient. It would’ve taken them months to finish their migration if they had started right away.  

The Future is In the Cloud 

Businesses from all over the world are now slowly transitioning to the cloud. And with proper planning and foresight, companies can ensure that their transition to the cloud yields the benefits they expect.