INDUSTRY WATCH
Up next is the business value to be had . It is essential to estimate the benefits in terms of costs , efforts , and resultant capabilities that moving to the cloud will bring to the company . Tracking KPIs in each of these areas will help technology teams justify the time , money , and resources spent on the shift .
Phillip de Waal , Systems Engineering
Manager at Nutanix Sub- Saharan Africa
Three phases
The most prominent cloud vendors typically perform migration projects in three distinct phases : plan , migrate , run . While these might seem self-explanatory , CTOs and IT leaders must assess several critical factors before embarking on a migration process .
Initially , a business must establish an application performance baseline . This will reflect the health of applications before the migration and help in monitoring it once the migration is complete . It provides excellent guidance on whether performance has benefitted or worsened following the move from on-premises to the cloud .
The benefits of the cloud are not only limited to a monetary or business perspective . When operational functionality is enhanced and system capabilities are added , the migration can be deemed successful , and ultimately , both employees and customers are happier .
Custom thinking
As with any technology project , there is no one-sizefits-all approach . This would be the case regarding cloud migration projects across the continent with different regulatory environments to consider .
A multi-cloud model works well as it enables the company to match each application or workload to the IT infrastructure best suited to handle it . But what constitutes best can change over time . This means businesses want the agility to move resources around when conditions warrant it .
And then there is the potential for downtime to consider . The tools , processes , and procedures developed for a datacentre environment must be adapted to the cloud or replaced with cloud versions . Migration teams must determine if monitoring , network security , and other functions can be transferred seamlessly to the cloud or require an overhaul .
How an enterprise deals with these issues depends on its culture and staff expertise . Compliance requirements also play a role . For example , some industry and geographic rules mandate hosting data in an IT environment over which the enterprise has complete control .
Although the benefits of cloud migration can be substantial , it can be complex and challenging to accomplish . For big companies , cloud providers are available to provide a lot of help . Smaller businesses are challenged to find personnel and consultants with solid experience in the destination cloud environments to help them migrate efficiently and with the least disruption possible .
It comes down to leveraging a flexible IT architecture that assumes the continual migration of applications across environments is the new normal . p
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