Today, the global spread of the novel coronavirus has accelerated the pace of
cloud migration for many companies.
There are many benefits for enterprises to migrate key systems to cloud platforms, such as the flexibility of remote workers, system availability, security, and scalability.
In a rapidly changing environment such as the current novel coronavirus epidemic, it is particularly important to develop a prudent plan, because the subconscious pushes for faster decisions instead of carefully weighing various options.
What should be migrated?
The first step in any cloud computing or digital transformation project is to determine what to migrate first. If the project is scoped or specified by the company’s board of directors or senior management, there may be no choice in this regard, but for the project leader, it is necessary to review the current workloads and systems and understand how to move each workload and system To the benefits of the cloud platform in order to know which project to start first.
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a useful process that can be used to justify the business investment in a business decision and should help determine which project to migrate first.
If the company does not implement a complete cost-benefit analysis (CBA) process, at least some time needs to be allocated to classify each system or workload in order to finally obtain a priority list, as this will push the company to make other decisions, such as cost and time plan.
May not be able to migrate everything
The idea of transferring all on-premises systems to Yunping Zhongtai is easily accepted. Although this is a good goal, it may not be realistic unless it is a small SME network, or working for an organization that already has most of the systems in the cloud platform and is migrating some load.
Under normal circumstances, the original business application may be the biggest challenge.
If you do encounter a system that cannot be migrated, add it to the IT planning roadmap. This will enable companies to re-evaluate these systems in the future and consider migrating to other vendors or solutions that use cloud computing as the center.
Hybrid cloud still has value
In a hybrid cloud environment, companies run some workloads on the cloud platform, while other workloads are run in the on-premises data center.
First of all, it is a convenient migration tool for handling large-scale projects. In large-scale projects, enterprises may not be able to "cut into" the cloud platform on the agreed date. For example, in a large-scale migration from Microsoft Exchange to Office 365, it may take several weeks to migrate data from on-premises servers to the cloud platform. It is best to keep large mailboxes in the on-premises data center and migrate them one by one.
Similarly, sometimes servers in an on-premises data center can quickly cache access to data, or facilitate seamless logins in branch offices with poor network connectivity.
In the planning stage, you need to consider reusing existing physical equipment, as long as the equipment is under warranty and is up to date.
Does the company have its own skills and tools?
Before proceeding and running the migration plan, companies need to ensure that they have the right skills and tools in-house to ensure the successful implementation of the project, which can make it easier for many internally deployed migration projects to the cloud platform to be managed by a lesser technical team .
However, even with the use of migration tools, companies still need to have a good technical understanding of what is happening and how to solve the problems that need to be migrated to the cloud platform. Otherwise, the enterprise may fall into the trap of trying to repair a failed migration without being able to completely solve the situation that is happening.
Unless the business has many similar migrations, this may be the ideal time to hire an experienced consultant or managed service provider (MSP) to work with the team to complete the project.
Always put safety first
The flexibility of accessing data in the cloud platform from anywhere has brought a series of new security issues, because enterprises no longer need to worry about the security of the edge of the network, so they need to ensure that security issues are considered at all stages of the migration process.
When employees are unable to work properly, it is tempting to relax security permissions to temporarily solve the problem, especially when the CEO cannot access their data or email. However, these temporary solutions are often forgotten and may leave loopholes in security, which can be exploited by cyber attackers.
On the other hand, when an enterprise is planning a cloud migration project, now is the best time to reassess the current IT and operational security to ensure that the workload cloud platform is as safe as possible.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be mandatory on any cloud platform. This includes third-party web applications that other departments may be using, such as web-based financial and accounting systems.
When companies are considering future cloud computing plans, now is a good time to evaluate all current cloud platforms so that they can find a unified option for multi-factor authentication (MFA) that can be used on all platforms.
Using a single application (such as Duo or Okta) for multi-factor authentication (MFA) simplifies management, but since it is not necessary to log in to multiple sites to configure external users, the possibility of reduced security is less.
Similarly, single sign-on (SSO) can also be tied to the same platform, which means that enterprise users do not need to remember passwords, which once again improves security.
What will happen in the end?
A common mistake that people see is that companies have made a good plan for their cloud migration, but have not made any plans for what will happen after the migration.
Some of the key things that companies need to consider are who will be responsible for monitoring the cloud platform, who will be the key supporters when problems arise in the future, and who can conduct migration audits.
The migration review should have an in-depth understanding of the migration situation to understand where the next project can be improved, and whether it is possible that the actions that need to be taken are not as planned.
As part of this process, a team member or external IT support needs to be assigned to record the new cloud platform process so that the company can support or handle critical tasks with the internal team.
Finally, in all these operations, companies may have eliminated some hardware devices and need to ensure that they can be handled in a safe and environmentally friendly manner.
