Migration to public cloud is a seemingly overwhelming task. However if there is a proper understanding of the initial process of migration and the final objective of adopting public cloud capability much before the actual process starts, then the entire gamut of steps involved in public cloud migration is easy to implement. 

Every stakeholder should be able to appreciate value of shifting either few or all workloads to cloud. It must be noted that cloud migration cannot be implemented without support of a reliable guide or a trusted Sherpa. 

Infrastructure IT can be moved to public cloud in part or full to let IT teams concentrate on improving the bottom-line of the organization. Every enterprise that adopts or is planning to adopt cloud computing must be able to derive the vital advantages of cloud including mitigation of total cost of ownership, scalability, enhanced security, and agility. 

This calls for significant involvement of third party provider in terms of care and management in addition to the five vital initiatives as elucidated below.

Maintain a Broader View of the Entire Exercise

While making a move to public cloud hosting one must not either lose the sight of the final outcome or the overall process of reaching there. This also involves taking along every stake-holder by actually involving them in the migration process by understanding every stake-holder’s priorities. 

For example, Chief Executive Officers are inclined towards applications that promote growth in sales while strengthening customer relationships through customer satisfaction. Chief Finance Officers are obsessed with improving profits by containing costs. 

Service level improvement is the domain of Chief Information Officer and so forth. If you are successful in winning approval of C level executives to the process of cloud migration by focusing on their individual areas of priorities, then you have almost won the battle. 

Check Existing Status of Apps

After defining IT infrastructure goals of the organization with respect to cloud migration, the next vital step is to execute a high level stock inventory of existing apps that are being run across the entire organizational structure. This may lead to unearthing of websites, utilities or databases by concerned departments and teams. 

The inventory should offer in-depth overview of these applications in terms of significance and sensitivity of the apps and their relative importance to the overall business. It is not possible to map your journey to cloud unless there is a clear understanding of current status of every single app that is being run in the organization.
 
Demand Projection

It is significant and crucial to map the demand while designing cloud migration strategies. The entire process of planning relies on ability to properly anticipate future levels of surges in traffic. Managers can provide their own predictions of demand projections for the specified period. 

While arriving at projections we also need to cover new applications that will be introduced in the due course of time. It will be easy to meet the incremental demand and traffic spikes if there is a precise understanding about expected demand by robust demand mapping. 

Identifying Ideal Candidates for Cloud

Once you have gained deeper insights into inventory of all applications, you will be in a position to determine the most suitable candidates to be migrated to and implemented in cloud environment. This will also help you to pick the right applications for cloud adoption and decide the ones to be retained for running on site. 

Ideal apps to be moved to cloud are those that involve batch or parallel processing and apps that are prone to face challenges of demand spikes. In addition to this one can also migrate apps that require extensive global positioning as well as the ones that depend upon disaster recovery. 

Understanding the Extent of Cloud Adoption

It is not necessary that all apps should be moved to cloud environment. There are certain legacy applications that need to be continued in legacy environments. As such these apps are not designed for cloud scalability. Such apps may be migrated to cloud in the event of any pending CAPEX associated investment that would refresh infrastructure that supports legacy apps. 

This underlines the growing demand for cloud adoption among large number of organizations. It is easier to pick low risk applications including file sharing, project management, or any application that is not associated with generation of revenues. One of the distinct advantages of cloud is one can begin its adoption at slower pace and accelerate further in response to business growth. 

In Conclusion

It is obvious that moving into uncharted land is bound to be a bumpy ride especially in the ever changing IT landscape. The journey is sure to be littered with unexpected challenges and issues. 

Therefore it is advisable to get support from experienced professionals who have witnessed or experienced pangs of transition. The cloud voyage must begin with a well researched list of probable providers of managed cloud services to make the transition as painless as possible. 

Interesting Topic:

Gauging the Impact of Enterprise Cloud Adoption Strategy